xlvi INTRODUCTION 



the agreement of their learning and manners " he 

 adulates with more pardonable hyperbole : 



Learning would rather chuse 



Her Bodley, or her Vatican to lose; 



All things that are but writ and printed there, 

 In his unbounded breast engraven are. 



And before Pope, he discovered that 



Let Nature and let Art do what they please, 

 When all's done Life is an incurable Disease. 



As writers in praise of Gardens and Country 

 life, the palm will, I think, be given by all modern 

 readers to Andrew Marvell. Genuine as is the love 

 of both for the Country and to Cowley the desire 

 for retirement and repose was assuredly no pose 

 Cowley's voice is that of the scholar and the student, 

 and his verse smells of the lamp and grates of the 

 file, while Marvell's song brings the magic of the 

 meadow, the breath of the flowers and new-mown 

 hay, the swish of the scythe, and the lamp of the 

 glow-worm right across the centuries, before our eyes 

 and into our hearts and we love Marvell's poems, 

 while at the best we can only admire and sympathise 

 with Cowley's verse. 



The latter's elaborate set-piece on Plants we re- 

 cognise at once for what it purported to be, viz. an 



