Mae. 20. 1852.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



267. 



COWLEY AND HIS MOXUMENT. 



If Pope in his time could ask, " Who now reads 

 Cowley ? " and if Cowper, at a later period, could 

 lament that his " splendid wit" should have been 

 ^' entangled in the cobwebs of the schools," it may 

 be in our day, when most good people who culti- 

 vate poetry, either as readers or writers, swear by 

 Wordsworth or Tennyson, that the bare mention 

 of Cowley's name, in some circles, would be re- 

 sented as a kind of impertinence. But Pope's 

 answer to his own question is as apposite now as 

 when the question was first put. If Cowley — 



♦' pleases yet, 



His moral pleases, not his pointed wit ; 



Forgot his epic, nay pindaric art. 



But still I love the language of his heart." 



The Davideis and the Herbs and Plants find 

 few readers beyond those who resort to them for 

 special purposes ; but poets of more recent times, 

 even whilst contemning his " conceits," have (as 

 your volumes have frequently shown) often bor- 

 rowed his ideas without improving upon the 

 phraseology in which they have been clothed. 

 Witness, for instance, Cowper's transmutation of 

 his noble line : 



" God the first garden made — ■ the first city, Cain," 

 into his own smooth generality of — 



" God made the country, and man made the town." 



And Cowley's love of Nature, and his beautiful 

 lyrics in praise of a country life, will always keep 

 his name before us. However, to desist from this 

 " nothing-if-not-critical" strain, let me beg of you 

 to lay the accompanying transcript [see the next 

 page^ of a manuscript in my possession before 

 your readers — that is, if you deem it of sufficient 

 interest. 



The verses themselves, evidently of a date not 

 long subsequent to the erection of the Cowley 

 monument in Westminster Abbey, are written on 

 the back of a damaged copy of Faithorne's en- 

 graved portrait of him. They comprise a not very 

 correct transcript of the Latin inscription on the 

 monument, a translation and paraphrase of the 

 same, and what is styled a " burlesque," in which 

 one of the chief features of the monument itself is 

 ludicrously associated with the profession of Sir 

 Charles Scarborough, Cowley's friend. The " Per 

 Oarolum Scarborough, Militem, Med. Doctorem," 

 implies, it may be presumed, that Sir Charles was 

 the author of the Latin epitaph, of which it has 

 always been understood, and indeed it is so stated 

 in the later biographies of the poet, that Cowley's 

 close friend and literary executor Sprat, Bishop of 

 Rochester, was the author. Scarborough pub- 

 lished an elegy to Cowley's memory, of which I 

 am informed there is no copy in the British Mu- 

 seum library ; and being unable to refer to It in 

 any other collection, I have no means of ascer- 



taining whether this elegy discloses the fact of 

 the authorship of the epitaph. This is not an 

 unimportant point, since it will be recollected that 

 Dr. Johnson expends a considerable amount of 

 indignation upon the epitaph, not on account of 

 its Latinity, but on account of what he considers 

 as the false sentiments of which it is made the 

 vehicle. 



The value of the manuscript depends of course 

 upon the possibility of the chief item of its con- 

 tents being unpublished. Whatever respect the 

 writer may have entertained towards Cowley, he 

 certainly seems inclined to be merry at the ex- 

 pense of Sir Charles Scarborough. The unwieldy 

 urn which surmounts the monument, is variously 

 designated as a "whimwham urn as broad as 

 sawcer," and as " the surgeon's gally-pot." These 

 are not very complimentary epithets, it is true ; 

 but if they ever met the courtly physician's eye, 

 he could afford to laugh with the laughers. Cow- 

 ley's lack of success in his attempt to obtain the 

 mastership of the Savoy is not forgotten ; but the' 

 satirist speaks of the dead poet very goodhumour- 

 edly, and may be said to concur in opinion with 

 those of his admirers who predicted for his writ- 

 ings an enduring immortality. But " sugar-candy 

 Cowley," as the burlesquer terms him, is low 

 obliged to be content with a few pages in the 

 Selections from British Poets, where indeed he is 

 entitled to a very eminent position ; whilst " dull 

 Chaucer," as he is irreverently called, with whom 

 the writer quietly prays that Cowley may quietly 

 " sleep in beggar's limbo," seems to live almost 

 bodily amongst us ; and his vivid pictures and 

 naiVe descriptions are so acceptable, that it may 

 safely be predicted that an edition of the Canter- 

 bury Tales will always be a more profitable ven- 

 ture for a publisher than a speculation in a new 

 edition of the Davideis. 



But, after all, Cowley's acceptance amongst 

 those who Immediately survived him, is perhaps 

 due quite as much to the recollection of his ami- 

 able personal qualities, as to his poetic abilities ; 

 and when Charles II., "who never said a foolish 

 thing," declared, on being informed of the poet's 

 death, that " Mr. Cowley had not left a better man 

 behind him in England," the merry monarch may 

 have intended exactly what he said, and no more. 

 With these rambling remarks I leave the matter, 

 only trusting, if I shall be found to have called 

 attention to what may possibly be an old acquaint- 

 ance of some of your learned readers, that my 

 desire to contribute an occasional mite to the 

 pages of a periodical, from which I gather so much 

 information, will be accepted as an apology. 



The words in brackets are supplied, conjec- 

 turally, in consequence of the manuscript being 

 faulty in those places. Henrt Campkin. 



