The Works of M'r Abraham Cowley. Consisting of Those which were
formerly Printed: and Those which he Design'd for the Press, Now
Published out of the Authors Original Copies. London, 1668.—'Several
Discourses by way of Essays, in Verse and Prose,' No. II. (pp. 143-6.)
Cowley's Essays were written towards the close of his life. They were 'left scarce finish'd', and many others were to have been added to them. They were first published posthumously in the collected edition of 1668, under the superintendence of Thomas Sprat (see No. 61). This edition, which alone is authoritative, has been followed in the present reprint of the eleventh and last Essay, probably written at the beginning of 1667.
Page 198, l. 1. at School, Westminster.
ll. 19 ff. The concluding stanzas of 'A Vote', printed in Cowley's Sylva, 1636. Cowley was then aged eighteen. The first stanza contains three new readings, 'The unknown' for 'Th' ignote', 'I would have' for 'I would hug', and 'Not on' for 'Not from'.
Page 199, l. 15. out of Horace, Odes, iii. 29. 41-5.
Page 200, l. 4. immediately. The reading in the text of 1668 is 'irremediably', but 'immediately' is given as the correct reading in the 'Errata' (printed on a slip that is pasted in at the conclusion of Cowley's first preface). The edition of 1669 substitutes 'immediately' in the text. The alteration must be accepted on Sprat's authority, but it is questionable if it gives a better sense.
ll. 6-10. Cowley was admitted to Trinity College, Cambridge, as a Westminster scholar on June 14, 1637. He was admitted Minor Fellow in 1640, and graduated M.A. in 1643. He was ejected in the following year as a result of the Earl of Manchester's commission to enforce the solemn League and Covenant in Cambridge. See Cowley's Pure Works, ed. J.R. Lumby, pp. ix-xiii, and Johnson's Lives of the Poets, ed. G.B. Hill, vol. i, p. 5.
ll. 9, 10. Cedars … Hyssop. I Kings, iv. 33.
l. 12. one of the best Persons, Henry Jermyn, created Baron Jermyn, 1643, and Earl of St. Albans, 1660, chief officer of Henrietta Maria's household in Paris: see Clarendon, vol. iv, p. 312. As secretary to Jermyn, Cowley 'cyphcr'd and decypher'd with his own hand, the greatest part of all the Letters that passed between their Majesties, and managed a vast Intelligence in many other parts: which for some years together took up all his days, and two or three nights every week' (Sprat). He told Sprat that he intended to dedicate all his Essays to St. Albans 'as a testimony of his entire respects to him'.
Page 201, l. 10. Well then. The opening lines of 'The Wish', included in The Mistress, 1647 (ed. 1668, pp. 22-3).