Aurea dum volitant late tua scripta per orbem,
Et fama aeternum vivis, divine poeta,
Hic placida jaceas requie: custodiat urnam
Cana fides, vigilentque perenni lampade musae
Sit sacer iste locus; nee quis temerarius ausit
Sacrilega turbare manu venerabile bustum.
Intacti maneant; maneant per saecula dulces
Cowleii cineres, serventque immobile saxum.
Sic vovatque
Votumque suum apud posteros sacratum esse voluit
Qui viro incomparabili posult sepulchrale marmor,
Georgius Dux Buckinghamiae.
Excessit e vita Anno Aetatis suae 49° et honorifica pompa elatus
ex Aedibus
Buckinghamianis, viris illustribus omnium ordinum exequias
celebrantibus,
sepultus est die 3° M. Augusti, Anno Domini 1667.
[Footnote 6: This volume was not published before 1633, when Cowley was fifteeyears old. Dr. Johnson, as well as former biographers, seems to have been misled by the portrait of Cowley being, by mistake, marked with the age of thirteen years. R.]
[Footnote 7: He was a candidate this year at Westminster school for election to Trinity college, but proved unsuccessful.]
[Footnote 8: In the first edition of this life, Dr. Johnson wrote, "which was never inserted in any collection of his works;" but he altered the expression when the Lives were collected into volumes. The satire was added to Cowley's works by the particular direction of Dr. Johnson. N.]
[Footnote 9: Consulting the Virgilian lots, Sortes Virgilianae, is a method of divination by the opening of Virgil, and applying to the circumstances of the peruser the first passage in either of the two pages that he accidentally fixes his eye on. It is said, that king Charles the first, and lord Falkland, being in the Bodleian library, made this experiment of their future fortunes, and met with passages equally ominous to each.
That of the king was the following:
At bello audacis populi vexatus et armis,
Finibus extorris, complexu avulsus luli,
Auxilium imploret, videatque indigna suorum
Funera, nec, cum se sub leges pacis iniquae
Tradiderit, regno aut optata luce fruatur:
Sed cadat ante diem, mediaque inhumatus arena. Aeneid. iv. 615.
Yet let a race untam'd, and haughty foes,
His peaceful entrance with dire arms oppose,
Oppress'd with numbers in th' unequal field,
His men discourag'd and himself expell'd:
Let him for succour sue from place to place,
Torn from his subjects and his son's embrace.
First let him see his friends in battle slain,
And their untimely fate lament in vain:
And when, at length, the cruel war shall cease,
On hard conditions may he buy his peace;
Nor let him then enjoy supreme command.
But fall untimely by some hostile hand,
And lie unburied on the barren sand. DRYDEN.
Lord Falkland's: