25 July: Boreham on Abraham Cowley

A Pensive Bard
The anniversary, on the 28th July, of the death of Abraham Cowley, suggests an interesting question. Does anybody read him nowadays? And, if not, is there anything further to be said about him? To this there can be but one reply. Cowley sleeps beside Tennyson and Browning in the classical seclusion of Poets' Corner, and his epitaph grandiloquently proclaims him to be the Pindar, the Horace, and the Virgil of England. Yet, in spite of that noble and, on the whole faithful eulogy, the fact remains that his works are as undisturbed as are his bones. No poet borne to burial within the solemn splendours of the old Abbey was more loudly lamented than was he. His final resting place was watered by a nation's tears, and the King himself exclaimed that, in dying, Cowley had not left a better person behind him. Yet, strange to say, of all our English singers, none was more swiftly and completely forgotten.

From every point of view the career of Cowley was remarkable. He was but a small boy when his first work was published, but he knew his own mind, was sure of his destiny, and had addressed himself seriously to his life work. Greybeards marvelled at the confidence that seemed to be matched by rare ability, and the cynics, unable to deny the merit of the boy's productions, assured each other that it could only be a flash in the pan; such brilliance was too dazzling to last. It is true that, in respect of sheer precocity, our literary annals can produce nothing worthy of serious comparison with this bewildering phenomenon. Even Macaulay's startling record pales into insignificance. "Pyramus and Thisbe" was written before Cowley had attained his 10th birthday and "Constantius and Philetus" was produced just after he had passed his 12th, yet the most penetrating critic may search these poems in vain for any obvious trace of puerility. Cowley commenced his work very early and commenced it in deadly earnest. At 15 we find him sighing—

What shall I do to be for ever known
And make the age to come my very
own?

An Eveless Eden A Doubtful Paradise
Does the question argue inordinate vanity, overweening ambition? Perhaps. But we are not inclined to quarrel with him on such grounds. Had that feeling, be it good or bad, never impelled him to that early start he would probably have missed the lustre he afterwards attained. His riper years were so clouded by countless and crushing disappointments that, had he not dedicated himself in childhood to the worship of the muse, he might not later on, have had the heart to strike his lyre. Living in England, he was mortified by his treatment at the hands of the English court. He went to France and, meeting with humiliating rebuffs, was subjected to bitter disillusionment at every turn. He dwelt in cities and, as a result, learned heartily to hate. He felt that his only course was to get away into the primrosed woods and quiet fields.

Well, then, I now do plainly see
This busy world and I shall ne'er
agree
The very honey of all earthly joy
Does of all meats the sonnest
cloy
And they, methinks, deserve my pity,
Who, for it, can endure the
stings,
The crowd and buzz and murmurings
Of that great hive—the city!

Sad to say his sylvan retirement was no less a disappointment. The fragrance of the dew-drenched meadows; the shade of beeches, oaks, and elms; the murmur of brooks and trout streams; and the song of linnets and finches, all failed to satisfy him. The most delicious solitudes bored him. For what is Eden without Eve? And here we touch the inmost soul of his restlessness and discontent. He looked round upon a paradise that was unutterably idyllic and beautiful. But—

How happy here should I
And one dear she, live, and embracing, die!
The
who is all the world and can exclude
I should have then this only
fear,
Lest men, when they my pleasure see,
Should all commence to mimic me
And so make a city here!

But this, too, was a taunting illusion, a cruel chimera. Cowley never possessed that "dear she" for whom he sighed so ardently and so wistfully.


A Lone Star In An Empty Sky
It is an extraordinary circumstance that the one poet who, as Pope says, could speak most musically the language of the heart, had no personal experience of tumultuous passion. He knew neither love, courtship, nor marriage. There are those who aver that he did once meet a lady who seemed to him to be the angel of his dreams, the Leonora of his Chronicle, but he could not muster the courage to speak of his devotion. In consequence he has earned for himself, for all time, the pathetic sobriquet of "The melancholy Cowley." But his tongue was tied and the inward flames consumed him secretly. A strange and contradictory creature then, is Abraham Cowley. As a boy he has the audacity to proclaim himself, an immortal poet: as a man he lacks the fortitude to tell a pretty girl that he loves her. What is the extent of our obligation to this amazing oddity? We owe it to him that he gave to English poetry, which had been largely emotional and imaginative, a critical and analytical turn.

Inspired, it may be, by the temper of his time, he became practical, almost political. He did not, it is true, carry his Pindaric method to that perfection which it afterwards attained in the work of Dryden, but it was he who first broke from the old track and pointed out the possibilities of the new treatment. For many reasons, therefore, Cowley richly deserves to be remembered. If his own writings are now lost in obscurity and buried in oblivion, it is something to have influenced the thought and style of all his successors and to have left an indelible and valuable impress on the whole of our subsequent literature.

F W Boreham

Image: Abraham Cowley