COWLEY'S PROSE WORKS.
As Cowley's name has been brought before the public in the disquisition on his monument by MR. H. CAMPKIN ("N. & Q." Vol. v., pp. 267-8.), may I be allowed, now that his character and merits are revived, to direct attention to his prose works in preference to his poetical; although, as MR. CAMPKIN remarks, "his beautiful lyrics in praise of a country life will always keep his name before us."
Miss Mitford, in her recent publication, Recollections of a Literary Life, has done good service to Cowley's character, and her criticisms will doubtless direct attention, as they have done to the septuagenarian who is now writing, to a re-perusal of his prose works. With my school-fellow Charles Lamb, and his sister, Cowley's prose essays were always especial favourites, and were esteemed by them as some of the best specimens of the "well of English undefiled." A tyro in literature could not, I am persuaded, form a better style of composition, than by taking Cowley's prose essays for his model. I consider the prose writings both of Cowley and Dryden master-pieces. "Praised in his day as a great poet, the head of the school of poets called metaphysical, Cowley will now be chiefly known," says Miss Mitford, "by those prose essays, all too short and all too few, which, whether for thought or for expression, have rarely been excelled by any writer in any language. They are eminently distinguished for the grace, the finish, and the clearness which his verse too often wants." "His thoughts," also says Dr. Johnson, "are natural; and his style has a smooth and placid equability, which has never yet obtained its due commendation."
As the columns of "N. & Q." do not admit of long quotations, I would respectfully direct attention to the beautiful essays, "Of Obscurity," "The Garden," "Of Solitude," and "Of Liberty." Southey and Cobbett, as writers of pure English, are, in my opinion, the only two modern authors who can be compared with Cowley.
J. M. G.
Worcester.