Grew scarce and dear, and yet sophisticate;
Still it was bought, like emp’ric wares or charms,
Hard words, sealed up with Aristotle’s arms.’
l. 164-182: It ought not to be forgotten that this poem appeared first prefixed to Sprat’s History of the Royal Society of London, London, 1667. Though not published till the year 1667, the year of Cowley’s death, the book had in great part been printed, as Sprat informs us, two years before, which exactly agrees with Cowley’s statement here. The position which the poem thus occupied should be kept in mind, otherwise the encomium on Sprat’s History might seem dragged in with no sufficient motive, and merely out of motives of private friendship. It may be added that the praise is not at all so exaggerated as those who know Addison’s ‘tuneful prelate’ only by his verse might suppose. The book has considerable merits, and Johnson speaks of it as in his day still keeping its place, and being read with pleasure. I only observed when it was too late to profit by the observation, that after l. 143, three lines occur, on this the first publication of the poem, which, by a strange heedlessness, have dropt out of all subsequent editions. They are as follows:
‘She with much stranger art than his that put
All the Iliads in a nut,
The numerous work of life does into atoms shut.’
[P. 129], No. cix.—This chorus, or fragment of a chorus, from the Thyestes of Seneca, beginning
Me dulcis saturet quies,