409 



COWLEY, ABRAHAM. 



COWLEY, LORD. 



410 . 



at Cambridge. Being in his early years attached to the religiou 

 iu which he was brought up, he became an Augustiu monk. In 

 1514 he entered into holy orders, and was ordained at Norwich; 

 but he afterwards changed liis religious opinions. Bale says he was 

 one of the first who, together with Dr. Robert Barnes, his 'quondam' 

 prior, taught the purity of the gospel, and dedicated himself wholly 

 to the service of the Reformation. About this time, probably 1530 or 

 1531, the reformed religion began to show itself at Cambridge, where 

 various eminent men, and Miles Covenlale amongst them, began to 

 assemble for conference on those points which had been discussed by 

 the reformers abroad. In 1532 he appears to have been abroad, aud 

 assisted Tyndale in his translation of the Bible; and in 1535 his own 

 translation of the Bible appeared, with a dedication to King Henry VIII. 

 It formed a folio volume, priuted, as Humphrey Wanley thought, 

 from the appearance of the types, at Zurich, by Christopher Froa- 

 ehover. He thus had the honour of editing the first English Bible 

 allowed by royal authority, and the tirst translation of the whole Bible 

 printed in our language. TUe Pgaluis in it are those now used in tho 

 Book of Common Prayer. About the end of the year 1538 Coverdale 

 went abroad again on the business of a new edition of the Bible. 

 Grafton, the English printer, had permission from Francis I., at the 

 ;t of King Henry VIII. himself, to print Bible at Paris, 0:1 

 account of the superior skill of tho workmen, and the goodness and 

 chenpneas of the paper. But, notwithstanding the royal licence, the 

 Inquisition interposed by an instrument) dated December 17, 1538. 

 Tho French printers, their English employers, and Coverdale, who 

 was the corrector of the press, were summoned before the inquisitors, 

 and the impression, consisting of '2500 copies, was seized and con- 

 demned to the flames. The avarice of the officer who superintended 

 the burning of thj copies however, induced him to sell several chests 

 of them to a haberdasher, for the purpose of wrapping his wares, by 

 which means a few copies were preserved. The English proprietors, 

 who had fled at the alarm, returned to Paris when it subsided ; and 

 not only recovered some of tho copies which had escaped the fire, but 

 brought with them to London the presses, types, and printers. This 

 importation enabled Grafton and Whitchurch to print, in 153',', what 

 is called Cranmer'a, or ' The Great Bible," in which Coverdale com- 

 pared the translation with the Hebrew, corrected it in many places, 

 aud was the chief overseer of the work. Coverdale was almoner, som.- 

 time afterward, to Queen Catherine Parr, the last wife of Henry VIII., 

 at whose funeral he officiated in the chapel of Sudeley Castle, 

 in Gloucestershire, in 1548. On August 14, 1551, he succeeded Dr. 

 John Harman, otherwise Voysey, in the see of Exeter. On his appoint- 

 ment to this bishopric, Coverdale was so poor as to be unable to pay 

 the first-fruite, which therefore the king, at the solicitation of Arch- 

 bishop Cranmer, excused. On the accession of Queen Mary, and the 

 consequent re-establishment of Catholicism, he was ejected from his 

 see, and thrown into priaon, out of which he was released after two 

 years' imprisonment, at the earnest request of the King of Denmark, 

 whose chaplain, Dr. John Machabams, had married the sister of Cover- 

 dale's wife. On hia release, which was on the condition of banishing 

 himself, Coverdale repaired to the court of Denmark ; he went after- 

 wards to Wesel, thence to Bergzabern, and finally to Geneva, where 

 he joined several other English exiles in producing that version of the 

 English Bible which is usually called ' The Geneva Translation ; ' 

 part of which, the New Testament, was printed at Geneva in 1557, 

 by Conrad Uadius, and again iu 1560, in which last year the whole 

 Bible was printsd in the same place by Rowland Harte. On tho 

 accession of Queen Elizabeth, Coverdale returned from exile ; but 

 having imbibed the principles of the Geneva reformers, as far as 

 respected tho ecclesiastical habits aud ceremonies, he was not allowed 

 to resume his bishopric, nor was any preferment offered to him for 

 a considerable time. In 1563 Bishop Grindal recommended him to 

 the bishopric of LlandafT; but it is supposed that Coverdalo's age aud 

 infirmiti>,"<, and the remains of the plague, from which he had just 

 recovered, made him decline so great a charge. In lieu of it, however, 

 the bishop collated Lim to the rectory of St. Magnus London Bridge. 

 He resigned this living in 1566. The date of his death has been 

 variously stated. The parish register of St. Bartholomew, behind the 

 Royal Exchange, however, proves that he was buried February 10, 

 iu the chancel of which church a Latin epitaph for him re- 

 mained till it was destroyed along with the church in the great fire of 

 1666. Coverdale was the author of several tracts calculated to pro- 

 moto the doctrines of the Reformation, and of several translations 

 from the writings of the foreign reformers. 



Tho third centenary of the publication of Coverilale's Bible vrni cele- 

 lir.it d by the clergy throughout the churches of England, October 4, 

 1S-JO ; and several medals were struck upon the occasion. 



COWLEY, ABRAHAM, tho son of a grocer resident in Fleet-street, 

 London, was born in 1618, and educated at Westminster School, aud 

 Trinity College, Cambridge. He wa* nn early poet, and attributes the 

 direction of his genius to the perusal of Spenser, whose works, he says, 

 " wore wont to lye in his mother's parlour;" and with which he made 

 himself familiar before he was twelve years old. At the age of fifteen 

 (not thirteen) he published a volume called ' Poetic Blossoms,' con- 

 t lining, among other things, 'The Tragical History of Pyramus and 

 Thisbc,' written when he was ten years old. At college he increased 

 his reputation by tho elegance of hii exercises; and, not to mention 



BHXJ. DIV. VOL. II. 



minor works, composed the greater part of his ' Davideis,' an unfinished 

 epic, in four books, on the troubles of David. Being attached to the 

 court party, he was ejected in 1643, after he had taken his degree of 

 M.A.; aud he then settled in St. John's College, Oxford, where he 

 became known and esteemed by some leading men ; and b'>ing 

 appointed secretary to Lord Jermyn, afterwards Earl of St. Albau's, 

 was employed in the honourable and confidential oilice of cyphering 

 and decyphering the correspondence of the king and queen. He fol- 

 lowed the queen to Paris in 1646, and remained abroad ten years. 

 Returning iu 1656, as a sort of spy, " to take occasion of giving notice 

 of the posture of affairs iu this nation," he was seized, aud obliged to 

 give heavy security for his future behaviour. Iu the same year he 

 published an edition of his poems, with a preface, iu which ho inserted 

 some things suppressed in subsequent editions, which were interpreted 

 to denote some relaxation of his loyalty. He also obtained, Wood 

 says, through the influence of tho men theu iu power, the degree of 

 M.D. at Oxford in 1657 having professed the study of physic iu order, 

 it is said, to cloak the real motive of his visin to England. Ho does 

 not appear ever to have practised, and the ouly fruit of his studies was 

 a Latin poem upon plants in six books. Upon Cromwell's death he 

 returned to France, and resumed his office. At the Restoration he 

 expected to obtain the mastership of the Savoy, which had been pro- 

 mised to him both by Charles I. and Charles II. In this, to his great 

 mortification, he was disappointed ; but some amends were mado him 

 by a beneficial lease of the queen's lands at Chertsey iu Surrey, whither 

 he retired in 1665, and died iu July 1667 in his forty-ninth year. He 

 was buried near Chaucer aud Spenser iu Westminster Abbey, where 

 iu 1675 the Duke of Buckingham erected a monument to his memory. 



Cowley ia characterised by Dr. Johnson as " the last aud undoubtedly 

 the best " of the metaphysical authors, a curious class, of whom the 

 biographer, in his life of Cowley, has given a critical account : " In 

 his own time he was considered of unrivalled excellence Clarendon 

 represents him as having taken a flight beyond all that went before 

 him ; and Milton is said to have declared that the three greatest 

 English poets were Spenser, Shakspeare, aud Cowley." For a long 

 time he was an object of supreme admiration, aud his Pindaric Odoa 

 were imitated to weariness by those who could emulate his extrava- 

 gance, but not his learning, wit, and fertility. This fashion has long 

 been at an end ; aud while the simpler of our older poets have of late 

 years been increasing in popularity, Cowley, we conceive, is scarcely 

 known to a majority even of tho pootical readers of this country. 

 His merits are summed up by Johnson in the following passage, which, 

 making allowance for its JohnsouUsm of thought aud expression, very 

 fairly characterises the poetry of Cowley : " He brought to his poetic 

 labours a mind replete with learniug, aud his pages are embellished 

 with all the ornaments which books could supply : he was the first 

 who imparted to English numbers the enthusiasm of the greater ode 

 aud the gaiety of the less ; he was qualified for sprightly sallies and 

 for lofty flights; he was among thos-3 who freed translation from 

 servility, aad instead of following his author at a distance, walked by 

 his side; and if he left versification yet improvable, he left likewise 

 from time to time such specimens of excellence as enabled succeeding 

 poets to improve it." His faults are negligent and sometimes vulgar 

 diction, rugged and prosaic versification, pedantry, hyperbolical exag- 

 geration, aud au abundance, unchecked by judgment, of that particular 

 sort of wit which Johuson defines to be the discovery of occult 

 resemblances in things apparently unlike. His poetry proceeds from 

 the head more than the heart, and dazzles oftener than it touches. 

 Tho poetry of Cowley, in a word, is forceJ, affecte;!, aud unnatural, 

 yet it is not undeserving of the careful examination of the student. 

 His prose, on the other hand, is simple, manly, aud rythmical; easy 

 without vulgarity, and strong without coarseness. 



COWLEY, MRS. HANNAH, whose maiden name was Parkhouse, 

 was bora at Tiverton, in Devonshire, in 1743. She was married about 

 1772 to Mr. Cowley, a captain in the East India Company's army, by 

 whom she had three children. Her husband was a man of taste, whom 

 she consulted in the composition of her works ; and the first of her 

 plays, 'The Runaway,' was commenced half in jest, on her husband 

 rallying her for expressing in the theatre a belief that she could write 

 a drama. Her life was spent iu retirement, mixing but little in the 

 world, and, notwithstanding her dramatic turn, visiting even the 

 theatre very seldom. She died at Tiverton on the llth of March 1809, 

 having survived her husband about ten years. ' The Works of Mrs. 

 Cowley, Dramas and Poems,' were published in a collected edition, 

 1809-13, 3 vols. Svo. Among them are three narrative poems of con- 

 siderable length, but indifferent merit, ' The Maid of Aragon,' ' The 

 Scottish Village,' and the ' Siege of Acre.' The artificial character of 

 her poetical taste is indicated by the fact that she was the 'Anna 

 Matilda ' who "corresponded with Mr. Merry under his newspaper 

 signature of ' Delia Crusca.' Her two tragedies likewise are worthless. 

 Of her nine comedies several are much better. Ono of them, ' The 

 Belle's Stratagem,' which first appeared in 1780, still maintains its 

 place as a lively and excellent acting play ; and ' A Bold Stroke for a 

 Husband,' a play somewhat similar, has been repeatedly revived both 

 in its original shape and with alterations. 



COWLEY, HENRY RICHARD WELLESLEY, second LORD, 

 eldest son of the first Lord (better known as Sir Henry Wullesley), 

 inauy years British ambassador at Paris aud other courts, wns born iu 



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