ll. 14 ff. At the instance of Jermyn, Cowley had been promised by both Charles I and Charles II the mastership of the Savoy Hospital, but the post was given in 1660 to Sheldon, and in 1663, on Sheldon's promotion to the Archbishopric of Canterbury, to Henry Killigrew: see W.J. Loftie, Memorials of the Savoy, 1878, pp. 145 ff., and Wood, Fasti Oxonienses, ed. Bliss, part I, col. 494. In the Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series, 1661-2, p. 210, there is the statement of the case of Abraham Cowley, 'showing that the place may be held by a person not a divine, and that Cowley … having seen all preferments given away, and his old University companions advanced before him, is put to great shame by missing this place'. He is called 'Savoy missing Cowley' in the Restoration Session of the Poets, printed in Poems on State Affairs.
l. 21. Thou, neither. In the ode entitled 'Destinie', Pindarique Odes, 1656 (ed. 1668, p. 31, 'That neglected').
l. 28. A Corps perdu, misprinted A Corps perdi, edd. 1668, 1669, A Corpus perdi, 1672, 1674, &c.; Perdue, Errata, 1668.
Page 202, l. 1. St. Luke, xii. 16-21.
ll. 3-5. 'Out of hast to be gone away from the Tumult and Noyse of the City, he had not prepar'd so healthful a situation in the Country, as he might have done, if he had made a more leasurable choice. Of this he soon began to find the inconvenience at Barn Elms, where he was afflicted with a dangerous and lingring Fever…. Shortly after his removal to Chertsea [April 1665], he fell into another consuming Disease. Having languish'd under this for some months, he seem'd to be pretty well cur'd of its ill Symptomes. But in the heat of the last Summer [1667], by staying too long amongst his Laborers in the Medows, he was taken with a violent Defluxion, and Stoppage in his Breast, and Throat. This he at first neglected as an ordinary Cold, and refus'd to send for his usual Physicians, till it was past all remedies; and so in the end after a fortnight sickness, it prov'd mortal to him' (Sprat). In the Latin life prefixed to Cowley's Poemata Latina, 1668, Sprat is more specific: 'Initio superioris Anni, inciderat in Morbum, quem Medici Diabeten appellant.'
l. 6. Non ego. Horace, Odes, ii. 17. 9, 10.
ll. 11 ff. Nec vos. These late Latin verses may be Cowley's own, but they are not in his collected Latin poems. Compare Virgil, Georgics, ii. 485-6. 'Syluæq;' = 'Sylvæque': 'q;' was a regular contraction for que: cf. p. 44, l. 6.
61.
The Works of Mr. Abraham Cowley, 1668.—'An Account of the Life and
Writings of M'r Abraham Cowley'. (pp. [18]-[20].)
Thomas Sprat (1635-1713), author of The History of the Royal-Society, 1667, afterwards Bishop of Rochester, 1684, was entrusted by Cowley's will with 'the revising of all his Works that were formerly printed, and the collecting of those Papers which he had design'd for the Press'; and as literary executor he brought out in 1668 a folio edition of the English works, and an octavo edition of the Latin works. To both he prefixed a life, one in English and the other in Latin. The more elaborate English life was written partly in the hope that 'a Character of Mr. Cowley may be of good advantage to our Nation'. Unfortunately the ethical bias has injured the biography. In Johnson's words, 'his zeal of friendship, or ambition of eloquence, has produced a funeral oration rather than a history: he has given the character, not the life of Cowley; for he writes with so little detail that scarcely any thing is distinctly known, but all is shewn confused and enlarged through the mist of panegyrick.' Similarly Coleridge asks 'What literary man has not regretted the prudery of Sprat in refusing to let his friend Cowley appear in his slippers and dressing-gown?' (Biographia Literaria, ch. iii). His method is the more to be regretted as no one knew Cowley better in his later years. His greatest error of judgement was to suppress his large collection of Cowley's letters. But with all its faults Sprat's Life of Cowley occupies an important place at the beginning of English biography of men of letters. It is the earliest substantial life of a poet whose reputation rested on his poetry. Fulke Greville's life of Sir Philip Sidney was the life of a soldier and a statesman of promise; and to Izaak Walton, Donne was not so much a poet as a great Churchman.