Cowley, ABRAHAM, in his own day considered the greatest of English poets, was born in London, 1618. His father was a stationer in that city, and died before his son's birth. By the exertions of his mother, Cowley received a learned education. At an early age he was sent to Westminster School, where he displayed an almost unparalleled precocity. It was by the reading of the Faëry Queen, a copy of which lay in his mother's window, that his mind was turned to poetry. He wrote excellent verses at the age of ten, and published a volume of poems at fifteen. In 1637 he proceeded to Cambridge, and while here wrote, among many other pieces, a large portion of his epic, the Davideis, on the subject of the life of King David. On the outbreak of the Civil War, he was ejected (1644) from Cambridge for refusing to take the oath tendered to all the members of the university. At Oxford, however, the headquarters of the king's party, he continued his studies for other two years. On the queen's flight to Paris, Cowley followed her, and did effectual service to the royalist cause by various missions, and by carrying on the secret correspondence in cipher between the queen and Charles. In 1656 he returned to England, but was arrested and only allowed at large on a bail of £1000. To conciliate the party in power, he qualified himself as a doctor of medicine, by way of proving that he had abandoned all political connections. On Cromwell's death, Cowley again went to Paris, but returned to England at the Restoration. He was disappointed in the hope of preferment, especially of the mastership of the Savoy, which both Charles and his father had led him to expect. By the generosity of the Duke of Buckingham and Cowley's lifelong friend the Earl of St Albans, he at length received a comfortable provision. Cowley died at Chertsey, London, 28th July 1667.
Cowley's most ambitious works are the Davideis, the Pindarique Odes, written in supposed imitation of Pindar, and the Mistress, a series of love poems. His fate as a poet is one of the most singular in literature. Deemed unapproachable in his own day, he has ever since sunk steadily in popular estimation. Dr Johnson's explanation is still accepted as the best that can be suggested. Cowley wrote for the court and the reigning taste, and not for the general heart of men. What he is still admired for is his astonishing ingenuity and agility of mind. Moreover, though the bulk of his verse can never again have any living interest, he has not a few passages characterised by delicacy and power. By his small collection of essays, Cowley takes rank with Goldsmith and Addison as one of the masters of simple and graceful prose style. It is by these essays that Cowley is now best known to modern readers. They are included in Grosart's complete edition (1881). See Sprat's Life of Cowley (1668), and Johnson's Lives of the Poets.