Abraham
Cowley (pronounced Cooley) was born in London, the posthumous son
of a wealthy London stationer. He was educated at
Westminster School and at
Trinity College, Cambridge, where he took his BA in 1639, was made
fellow in 1640, and became MA in 1643. Cowley published his first
volume of verse,
Poetical Blossoms (1633), when he was 15. The collection
consisted of five poems, one of which Cowley had written at age 10. He
wrote a pastoral drama and a Latin comedy,
Naufragium Ioculare
(1638), when he was but 20.
During the
Civil War,
the Parliamentary party deprived Cowley of his fellowship, but he had
already left Cambridge to join the King at Oxford and, in 1644, followed
Queen
Henrietta Maria to France as her secretary. His first collection of
verse,
The Mistress: or, Several Copies of Love Verses was published
in 1647.
Upon his return to England in 1654, Cowley was imprisoned; after
his release he seems to have worked as a Royalist spy. He began
studying medicine at Oxford, becoming
an MD in 1657. Cowley's fellowship at Cambridge was reinstated at the
Restoration, and Henrietta Maria granted him land. Thereafter,Cowley
lived in retirement at
Chertsey, writing essays and studying botany.
A multiple collection of Cowley's works was published in 1656;
it included Mistress, Miscellanies, Pindaric Odes
and four books of Davideis, an epic based on King David of the
Old Testament. In 1660, Cowley wrote an “Ode upon the Blessed
Restoration”, and A Discourse by Way of Vision Concerning the
Government of Oliver Cromwell in 1661. Also in 1661 appeared his
Proposition for the Advancement of Experimental Philosophy. A folio
edition of his Works, including Cowley's famous essays, was
published in 1668, the year after his death.
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Cowley was
buried in Westminster Abbey alongside
Chaucer and
Spenser.
However, while Cowley had enjoyed high esteem during his lifetime, his
reputation declined with the years. Although he influenced Swift, and
was also the first subject of Johnson's The Lives of the Poets,
his fame was not lasting. Already Alexander Pope asked “Who now reads
Cowley?” The answer then was probably what it is today: very few. Yet,
there are many Cowley works worth reading: “Ode:
of Wit” is intellectual, energetic, and a worthy example of its time
period; “On
the Death of Mr. William Hervey” is an intensely heartfelt, personal
elegy for a beloved friend and its emotion transcends time itself.
Johnson did not know just how right he would be when he said Cowley has
been “at one time too much praised and too much neglected at another.”
Sources
for further study:
Hinman, Robert B. Abraham Cowley's World of Order. Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1960.
Johnson, Samuel. "The
Life of Cowley." Prefaces, Biographical and Critical to
the Works of the English Poets. 10 vols. Vol 1.
London: J. Nicols, 1779.
Nethercot, A. H. Abraham Cowley, the Muse's Hannibal. London: H.
Milford, 1931, (repr. 1967)
Nethercot, A. H.
Reputation of Abraham Cowley, 1660-1800. New York: Haskell House
Pub, 1970.
Taaffe, J. G. Abraham Cowley. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1972.
Trotter, David.
The Poetry of Abraham Cowley. Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield,
1979
Jokinen, Anniina. "Life of Abraham
Cowley." Luminarium.
27 Mar 2003.
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