ABRAHAM COWLEY was born in London in the year 1618. His father who who was a grocer, dying before his birth, his mother procured his admission as a king's scholar, at Westminster school. While here the accidental perusal of Spencer's "Fairy Queen," gave impulse to his natural propensity of composing poetry. When at school such was his deficiency in memory that his teachers could not bring it to retain the ordinary rules of grammar, and were obliged to allow him to make up this deficiency by perpetual reference. It was in this way that he attained the Greek and Roman languages. Besides writing a comedy called "Love's Riddle," he gave to the world, in the 15th year of his age, a volume of poems, containing among other pieces, a tragical history of " Pyramus and Thisbe," produced in his tenth year, and his "Constantia and Philetus," written two years afterwards. In 1636 he was removed to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he composed the greater part of his "Davideis," the materials for which required great application; yet the subject was so ill conducted that the piece never rose into esteem, and is utterly neglected. The prince of Wales happening to pass through Cambridge at the breaking out of the civil war, he was amused by the scholars with a play called the "Guardian,” sketched out by Cowley. This play, after the restoration, was brought upon the stage, under the title of the "Cutter of Coleman-street;" but it was damned for being a supposed satire on the royalists! The piece is now scarcely known. The loyalty and independence of Cowley proving displeasing to the reLiterary Miscellany, No. 77. 1 |