COWL E Y.

T

HE Life of Cowley, notwithstanding the penury of English biography, has been written by Dr. Sprat, an author whose pregnancy of imagination and elegance of language have deservedly fet him high in the ranks of literature; but his zeal of friendship, or ambition of eloquence, has produced a funeral oration rather than a history: he has given the character, not the life of Cow ley; for he writes with fo little detail, that fcarcely any thing is diftinctly known, but all is fhewn confused and enlarged through the mist of panegyrick.

ABRAHAM COWLEY was born in the year one thousand fix hundred and eighteen. His father was a grocer, whofe condition

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dition Dr. Sprat conceals under the general appellation of a citizen; and, what would probably not have been lefs carefully fuppreffed, the omiffion of his name in the regifter of St. Dunstan's parish gives reason to suspect that his father was a fectary. Whoever he was, he died before the birth of his fon, and confequently left him to the care of his mother; whom Wood reprefents as ftruggling earnestly to procure him a literary education, and who, as the lived to the age of eighty, had her folicitude rewarded by feeing her fon eminent, and, I hope, by seeing him fortunate, and partaking his profperity. We know at least, from Sprat's account, that he always acknowledged her care, and justly paid the dues of filial gratitude.

In the window of his mother's apartment lay Spenfer's Fairy Queen; in which he very early took delight to read, till, by feeling the charms of verfe, he became, as he relates, irrecoverably a poet. Such are the accidents, which, fometimes remembered, and perhaps fometimes forgotten, produce that particular defignation of mind, and propenfity for fome certain fcience or employment,

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ment, which is commonly called Genius. The true Genius is a mind of large general powers, accidentally determined to fome particular direction. Sir Joshua Reynolds, the great Painter of the prefent age, had the first fondness for his art excited by the perufal of Richardfon's treatise.

By his mother's folicitation he was admitted into Westminster school, where he was foon distinguished. He was wont, fays Sprat, to relate, "That he had this defect in his "memory at that time, that his teachers "never could bring it to retain the ordinary "rules of grammar."

This is an inftance of the natural defire of man to propagate a wonder. It is furely very difficult to tell any thing as it was heard, when Sprat could not refrain from amplifying a commodious incident, though the book to which he prefixed his narrative contained its confutation. A memory admitting fome things, and rejecting others, an intellectual digestion that concocted the pulp of learning, but refused the hufks, had the appearance of an instinctive elegance, of a particular provi fion made, by Nature for literary politenefs.

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But in the author's own honeft relation, the marvel vanishes: he was, he fays, fuch" an "enemy to all constraint, that his master

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never could prevail on him to learn the "rules without book." He does not tell that he could not learn the rules, but that, being able to perform his exercises without them, and being an 66 enemy to constraint," he fpared himself the labour.

Among the English poets, Cowley, Milton, and Pope, might be faid "to lifp in numbers ;" and have given fuch early proofs, not only of powers of language, but of comprehenfion of things, as to more tardy minds feems fcarcely credible. But of the learned puerilities of Cowley there is no doubt, fince a volume of his poems was not only written but printed in his thirteenth year; containing, with other poetical compofitions, “The tragical History of Pyramus and Thisbe," written when he was ten years old; and "Conftantia and Philetus," written two years. after.

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While he was yet at fchool he produced a comedy called "Love's Riddle,” though