[108] Mr. Cowley died at Chertsey, on the borders of the Forest, and was from thence conveyed to Westminster.—Pope.
Pope told Spence that Cowley was killed by a fever brought on by lying out all night in the fields. He had got drunk, in company with his friend Dean Sprat, at the house of a neighbour, and they lost their way in the attempt to walk home. Sprat had long before related that Cowley caught his last illness in the "meadows," but says it was caused "by staying too long amongst his labourers in the heat of the summer." The drunkenness, and the lying out all night, appear to have been the embellishments of scandal.
[109] Cowley died July 28, 1667, in the 49th year of his age. Pope's "O early lost!" is copied from the "O early ripe!" of Dryden in his lines to the Memory of Oldham.
[110] Oldham's Imitation of Moschus:
This, Thames, ah! this, is now thy second loss
For which in tears thy weeping current flows.
[111] On the margin of his manuscript Pope wrote the passage of Virgil which he imitated:
quæ, Tiberine, videbis
Funera, cum tumulum præterlabere recentem.
The "pomp" was not a poetical exaggeration. Evelyn, who attended the funeral, says that Cowley's body was "conveyed to Westminster Abbey in a hearse with six horses, near a hundred coaches of noblemen, and persons of quality following."
[112] Originally:
What sighs, what murmurs, filled the vocal shore!
His tuneful swans were heard to sing no more.—Pope.