網頁圖片
PDF
ePub 版

fometimes in flowers fading as her beauty, and fometimes in gems lafting as her virtues.

At Paris, as fecretary to lord Jermin, he was engaged in tranfacting things of real importance with real men and real women, and at that time did not much employ his thoughts upon phantoms of gallantry. Some of his letters to Mr. Bennet, afterwards earl of Arlington, from April to December in 1650, are preserved in "Miscellanea Aulica,” a collection of papers published by Brown. These letters being written like thofe of other men whofe mind is more on things than words, contribute no otherwife to his reputation than as they fhew him to have been above the affec

tation of unfeasonable elegance, and to

have known that the business of a statesman can be little forwarded by flowers of rhetorick.

One paffage, however, seems not unworthy of fome notice. Speaking of the Scotch treaty then in agitation : "The Scotch treaty," fays he, “is "the only thing now in which we are "vitally concerned; I am one of the "laft hopers, and yet cannot now abstain "from believing, that an agreement

will be made: all people upon the place incline to that of union. The "Scotch will moderate fomething of "the rigour of their demands, the "mutual neceffity of an accord is visible, "the King is perfuaded of it.

And to

"" tell

"tell you the truth (which I take to "be an argument above all the rest)

[ocr errors][merged small][merged small]

purpose." C

This expreffion from a fecretary of the prefent time, would be confidered as merely ludicrous, or at most as an oftentatious display of scholarship; but the manners of that time were so tinged with fuperftition, that I cannot but fufpect Cowley of having confulted on this great occafion the Virgilian lots, and to have given some credit to the answer of his oracle.

Some years afterwards, "bufinefs," fays Sprat," paffed of courfe into other "hands;" and Cowley being no longer ufeful at Paris, was in 1656 fent back

into England, that "under pretence of "privacy and retirement, he might "take occafion of giving notice of the "posture of things in this nation."

Soon after his return to London, he was feized by fome meffengers of the ufurping powers, who were fent out in queft of another man; and being examined, was put into confinement, from which he was not difmiffed without the fecurity of a thousand pounds given by Dr. Scarborow.

[ocr errors]

This year he published his poems, with a preface, in which he seems to have inferted fomething, fuppreffed in fubfequent editions, which was interpreted to denote fome relaxation of his loyalty. In this preface he declares,

that

that his defire had been for fome days "paft, and did ftill very vehemently "continue, to retire himself to fome of "the American plantations, and to for"fake this world for ever."

From the obloquy which the appearance of fubmiffion to the ufurpers brought upon him, his biographer has been very diligent to clear him, and indeed it does not feem to have leffened his reputation. His with for retirement we can easily believe to be undif fembled; a man harraffed in one kingdom, and perfecuted in another, who, after a course of business that employed all his days and half his nights in cyphering and decyphering, comes to his own country and steps into a prifon, will

« 上一頁繼續 »