Abraham Cowley

English poet

  • Born: 1618
  • Birthplace: London, England
  • Died: July 28, 1667
  • Place of death: Chertsey, England

A published poet by the age of fifteen, Cowley ultimately emerged as the premier English poet of his generation. He also supported the Royalist cause during the English Civil War, and his influential essays helped pave the way both for modern prose style and for the creation of the Royal Society.

Early Life

Abraham Cowley (KEW-lee) was born in London in 1618, the seventh child of Thomas Cooley, a prosperous stationer, who died before Cowley was born. Around 1630, Cowley was enrolled as a student at Westminster School, where he received a solid grounding in the Greek and Roman classics. However, Cowley had already begun his literary career, ensuring for himself a reputation as a child prodigy in the canon of English literature.

At the age of ten years, Cowley composed a poem entitled The Tragicall History of Piramus and Thisbe (pb. 1633). Around 1630, Cowley wrote another lengthy poem, Constantia and Philetus (pb. 1633), and in 1631 he composed Elegy on the Death of Dudley, Lord Carlton (pb. 1633). These three poems were published in a collection entitled Poeticall Blossomes (1633), which was dedicated to the headmaster at Westminster School. As his youthful work was well received, Cowley obtained literary fame by the age of fifteen.

Cowley next composed a pastoral comedy entitled Loves Riddle (wr. 1634, pb. 1638). In 1637, Cowley enrolled in Trinity College, Cambridge, from which he received a B.A. in 1639. While he was at Cambridge, Cowley’s Naufragium Joculare (pr., pb. 1638), a comedy composed in Latin, was printed, as was Loves Riddle. In 1640, Cowley was elected as a fellow of Trinity College, and he received an M.A. in 1643. According to Cowley’s preface to the 1656 edition of his works, many of the poems printed later in his life, such as the celebrated elegies On the Death of Mr. Crashaw (pb. 1656) and On the Death of Mr. William Hervey (pb. 1656), were composed during his years as a student at Cambridge.

Life’s Work

Throughout the First English Civil War (1642-1646), Cowley linked himself with the Royalist cause. In 1644, Cowley, who had published two anti-Puritan pamphlets, Puritan’s Lecture (1642) and The Puritan and the Papist (1643), had his Cambridge fellowship taken away by commissioners in Parliament allied to Oliver Cromwell. Cowley had already moved to Oxford in 1643, where the embattled King Charles I and a cadre of royalist supporters were residing. In Oxford, Cowley became friends with Lucius Cary, second Viscount Falkland, who introduced the poet into the circle of the royal family.

After the Parliamentarian victory in the Battle of Marston Moor (1644), Cowley went to Paris, where Queen Henrietta Maria had established a residence for her Royalist supporters. Cowley became secretary to Henry Jermyn, the queen’s vice chamberlain and master of horse, and he was engaged in a number of secret diplomatic missions necessitating his travel to such places as the Netherlands and Scotland. Cowley also became the cipher secretary to the queen, taking upon himself the painstaking task of encoding and decoding messages sent from Henrietta Maria to her husband, Charles.

From France, Cowley published The Mistress: Or, Several Copies of Love Verses (1647), a collection containing almost one hundred poems. In the volume, the poet reports on his unsuccessful pursuit of an unnamed woman of a higher social status than he, offering much commentary on the arbitrariness of women and the cruelty of love. The collection, which is heavily influenced by the metaphysical style of John Donne , gained for Cowley a very high degree of literary celebrity.

In 1654, upon returning to England, Cowley was imprisoned as a Royalist spy by the Cromwell regime. After being released on bail, Cowley proved to be a hapless practitioner of politics, managing both to remain a suspected Royalist and to raise suspicions in the regime of Charles II that he was in fact a Parliamentarian double agent.

In 1656, Poems , a collection of Cowley’s work that included The Mistress, Miscellanies, Anacreontics, Pindaric Odes, and four books of Davideis, was printed. Cowley’s Pindaric Odes proved to be quite popular, triggering a vogue for its eccentric style of composition: Eschewing any attempt to mimic the meter of the Greek poet Pindar for which he named the work, Cowley instead used very irregular rhythms while still retaining regular rhyme patterns. The books of Davideis are all that remains of Cowley’s attempt, begun in the 1630’s, to write an epic in couplets on the subject of the biblical King David.

Cowley next applied himself to the study of medicine, demonstrating his enthusiasm for the contemporary movement toward scientific progress. On December 2, 1657, Cowley earned from Oxford University the degree of Doctor of Physic. In 1658, Cowley prepared for print a play, The Cutter of Coleman Street , which was not published until 1663.

After the death of Oliver Cromwell in 1658, Cowley traveled again to Paris, returning to England after the Restoration of Charles II. In 1661, Cowley’s fellowship at Cambridge was restored, and he was given a grant of land in Chertsey. He published a pamphlet entitled A Proposition for the Advancement of Experimental Philosophy (1661), in which he endorsed the creation of an academy dedicated to the advancement of science. Cowley’s last collection of poetry was entitled Verses Lately Written upon Several Occasions (1663).

Cowley passed the remainder of his life at Barn’s Elm, his country residence in Chertsey, devoting most of his intellectual endeavors to the writing of essays. Cowley’s essays, such as his Of Myself (pb. 1668), are often highly personalized studies, revealing the influence of the French essayist Michel Eyquem de Montaigne. Cowley’s interest in science endured for the rest of his life, much of which was spent upon the study of botany . Cowley wrote a number of poems in Latin on the subject of plants, works that were first published in part as Libri Plantarum (1662) and later printed as a collection entitled Poemata Latina (1668).

On July 28, 1667, Cowley died, apparently of complications brought about by a common cold, at his country residence in Chertsey. On August 3, 1668, Cowley’s esteemed status as a national poet was confirmed when he was buried beside Chaucer and Spenser in Westminster Abbey. Cowley’s works were collected in 1668 by Thomas Sprat, who also produced a biography of the poet.

Significance

Though his literary fame would not be long lasting, Cowley was revered by many of his contemporaries as the premier poet of England. Cowley thus had many imitators, and echoes of his work resonate throughout the seventeenth century. Cowley’s Pindaric Odes was particularly influential, with poets such as John Dryden producing compositions in the innovative form Cowley had introduced. Cowley’s Davideis, though it is often criticized as artificial, stands as a significant attempt at an English epic, and may well have influenced John Milton in his decision to avoid rhyme in his later Paradise Lost (1667, 1674).

Cowley’s vigorous endorsement of experimental science contributed to the successful foundation of the Royal Society (c. 1661), an academy to which he would give advice until the end of his life. Perhaps more important, Cowley’s numerous essays helped fashion a prose style more fit for the progressive science in which he was so interested. Cowley’s essays were influential as models of composition and have been cited as a key factor in the transition from the highly rhetorical prose style of the Renaissance to a more concise, modern style of prose.

Bibliography

Cummings, Robert, ed. Seventeenth-Century Poetry: An Annotated Anthology. Oxford, England: Blackwell, 2000. Offers a diverse selection of poems by Cowley and his contemporaries with very full notes on literary and historical context. Includes bibliographical data.

Gough, Alfred B., ed. The Essays and Other Prose Writings of Abraham Cowley. Oxford, England: Clarendon Press, 1915. Includes prefaces Cowley wrote as introductions to his collections of poems and to his plays.

Griffin, Julia, ed. Selected Poems of Abraham Cowley, Edmund Waller, and John Oldham. New York: Penguin, 1998. Generous selection of Cowley’s verse, offering full notes on cultural and historical context. The inclusion of texts by Waller and Oldham allows for a broad understanding of seventeenth century English verse.

Martin, L. C., ed. Abraham Cowley: Poetry and Prose, with Thomas Sprat’s “Life,” and Observations by Dryden, Addison, Johnson, and Others. Oxford, England: Clarendon Press, 1949. Includes selections from Cowley’s poems and essays, as well as the earliest biography of the poet. Extracts from later poets offer insight about the reception of Cowley by key players in the English literary canon.

Nethercot, Arthur Hobart. Abraham Cowley: The Muse’s Hannibal. 2d ed. New York: Russell and Russell, 1967. Biography of the poet, offering comparisons of Cowley’s work with that of other canonical authors. Includes plates of pictorial depictions of Cowley.

Taafe, James G. Abraham Cowley. New York: Twayne, 1972. Biography of the poet. Includes a bibliography.

Trotter, David. The Poetry of Abraham Cowley. Totowa, N.J.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1979. Offers extended analysis of Cowley’s verse, providing full treatment of the literary historical background for Cowley’s compositions.