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Dromo's Den
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[Up] [Dromo's Den] Abraham Cowley COWLEY,
Abraham (1618-67). An English poet and essayist. He was born in
London and was educated at Westminster School and Trinity College, Cambridge.
According to his own statement, he received his poetical inspiration from Spenser's Faerie Queene, a copy of
which lay in his mother's parlor. A volume of poems, entitled Poetical Blossoms, was published by him at the age of 15, and one of
the pieces contained therein was written when he was only 10 years old. At
Cambridge he obtained distinction for the elegance of his translations; and
while there he composed the greater part of the Davideis, an epic in four books on the life of David- a work which
he never completed. He was attached to the court party, and, in consequence, was
ejected from his college in 1643, after he had taken his degree of M.A. In 1646
he followed the Queen to Paris, where he remained 10 years; and on his return to
England, being under suspicion, he was seized and bound in heavy securities for
his future behavior. In the same year (1656) he published an important
collection of his poems, including his elegies on Harvey and Crashaw, Pindaric
odes, The Mistress, and the Davideis.
He now studied medicine, receiving his degree the following year. After the
Restoration he obtained a lease of the Queen's Lands at Chertsey in Surrey,
whither he retired in 1665. He was buried in Westminster Abbey, near Chaucer and
Spenser. Cowley belongs to what Dr. Johnson called the, "metaphysical"
school of poets. He
abounds in subtleties of thought and expression, enjoyed in his own day, but
long since out of fashion. To us his fanciful love poems, displaying no emotion,
seem very strange. Of his longer poems, the elegies cited above are the best.
His most natural verse is scattered through his essays, which are graceful and
beautiful. Convenient modern editions are: Complete
Works (ed. Grosart, London, 1880-81); Poems
(ed. A. R. Waller, Cambridge, 1905); Essays,
Plays, etc. (ed. A. R. Waller, ib., 1906). Johnson's Lives
of the Poets may be consulted. The New International Encyclopaedia, Vol. VI (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1920) 201. |