feveral books on Plants, of which the firft and second difplay the qualities of Herbs, in elegiac verfe; the third and fourth the beauties of Flowers in various measures; and in the fifth and fixth, the ufes of Trees in heroick numbers.

At the fame time were produced from the fame univerfity, the two great Poets, Cowley and Milton, of diffimilar genius, of oppofite principles; but concurring in the cultivation of Latin poetry, in which the English, till their works and May's poem appeared, feemed unable to conteft the palm with any other of the lettered nations.

If the Latin performances of Cowley and Milton be compared, for May I

hold

hold to be superior to both, the advantage seems to lie on the fide of Cowley. Milton is generally content to exprefs the thoughts of the ancients in their language; Cowley, without much lofs of purity or elegance, accommodates the diction of Rome to his own conceptions.

At the Restoration, after all the diligence of his long fervice, and with consciousness not only of the merit of fidelity, but of the dignity of great abilities, he naturally expected ample preferments; and, that he might not be forgotten by his own fault, wrote a Song of Triumph. But this was a time of fuch general hope, that great numbers were inevitably disappointed;

and

and Cowley found his reward very tediously delayed. He had been promised by both Charles the first and second the Mastership of the Savoy, but "he loft it," fays Wood, " by certain persons, "enemies to the Mufes."

The neglect of the court was not his only mortification; having by fuch alteration, as he thought proper fitted his old Comedy of the Guardian for the ftage, he produced it to the public under the title of the " Cutter of Cole"man-street." It was treated on the stage with great severity, and was afterwards cenfured as a fatire on the king's party.

Mr. Dryden, who went with Mr. Sprat to the first exhibition, related to

Mr.

Mr. Dennis," that when they told Cow"ley how little favour had been fhewn "him, he received the news of his ill "fuccefs, not with fo much firmness as 66 might have been expected from fo "6 great a man."

What firmness they expected, or what weakness Cowley difcovered, cannot be known. He that miffes his end will never be as much pleafed as he that attains it, even when he can impute no part of his failure to himself; and when the end is to please the multitude, no man perhaps has a right, in things admitting of gradation and comparison, to throw the whole blame upon. his judges, and totally to exclude diffi

dence

dence and shame by a haughty conscioufness of his own excellence.

For the rejection of this play, it is difficult now to find the reason: it certainly has, in a very great degree, the power of fixing attention and exciting merriment. From the charge of dif affection he exculpates himself in his preface, by obferving how unlikely it is that, having followed the royal family through all their diftreffes," he should "chufe the time of their restoration to "begin a quarrel with them." It appears, however, from the Theatrical Register of Downes the prompter, to have been popularly confidered as a fa

tire on the royalists.

That