Davenant Waller's employment of the unbroken couplet, and his satisfaction at the result of his unsuccessful suit, are exemplified in The Story of Phoebus and Daphne Applied, which runs as follows: POEMS, &c. WRITTEN BY "Thyrsis, a youth of the inspirèd train, Fair Sacharissa loved, but loved in vain. Mr. ED. WALLER With numbers he the flying nymph pursues, of Beckonsfield, Elquire; Lately a And Printed by a Copy of With numbers such as Phoebus' self might use! Such is the chase when Love and Fancy leads O'er craggy mountains and through flowery meads; Invoked to testify the lover's care, Or form some image of his cruel fair. All the Lyrick Poems in this Booke O'er these he fled, and now, approaching were fet by Mr.HENRY LAVVES, Gent. Printed and Published according to Order. LONDON, Printed by 1. N. for Hu. Mosley, at the Princes 1645 Title-page of Waller's Poems, First Edition near, Had reached the nymph with his harmonious lay, Whom all his charms could not incline to Yet what he sung in his immortal strain, Attend his passion and approve his song. Sir William Davenant (1606-1668) was baptized at Oxford on the 3rd of March 1606, as the son of John Davenant, the landlord of the Crown Inn. Shakespeare lodged here as he passed between Stratford and London, and it was early reported that William was Shakespeare's son. Davenant complacently encouraged this idea in later years. He was educated at the All Saints' Grammar School, Oxford, and when he was eleven years of age, at the death of Shakespeare, he wrote an ode on that event. In 1621 John Davenant was Mayor of Oxford, and it is the same year he and his wife died. William, who had entered Lincoln College, was removed to London, where he was attached to the service of the Duchess of Richmond as her page, and afterwards to that of the poet Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke, with whom he was living when that peer was murdered by his valet, in 1628. In 1629 Davenant produced his first play, Albovine. He attracted the notice of the queen, and enjoyed a place at court. When Ben Jonson died, in 1637, Davenant succeeded him as Poet Laureate. Like other Royalists, he fell with the king's cause. In 1641, he was charged with complicity in a plot against Parliament, and fled; after being twice captured, he succeeded at last in escaping to France, where he joined the queen. But he made frequent clandestine visits to England in the royal interest, and during one of these Charles I. knighted him before the walls of Gloucester. After Marston Moor, Davenant retired finally to France, and became a Roman Catholic. He was given rooms in the Louvre by he finished in January 1650. He then left France on a mission from the queen, but was captured and shut up in Cowes Castle. He was presently moved to the Tower, and would have been executed but, it is said, for the generous interposition of Milton. Gondibert was published in 1651. In 1656 Davenant began, very cautiously, to resume dramatic entertainments in London, and led public opinion on towards the foundation of a Restoration Theatre. When Charles II. returned, sentiment was ripe, and Sir William Davenant was granted a patent for a company of players (August 1660). He enjoyed a period of great theatrical prosperity, and brought out many plays by himself and other men. He died on the 7th of April Sir William Davenant From an Engraving by Faithorne after Greenhill Davenant had a broken nose, an afflic 1668, and was buried in Westminster Abbey. SONG. The lark now leaves his watery nest, And climbing shakes his dewy wings, He takes your window for the east, And to implore your light he sings, The merchant bows unto the seaman's star, The ploughman from the sun his season takes ; Who look for day before his mistress wakes: Abraham Cowley (1618-1667) was born late in 1618, in the parish of St. Cowley Michael le Quern, Cheapside; he was the posthumous son of Thomas Cowley, stationer, and his wife Thomasine. Mrs. Cowley was left substantially provided for. Her youngest child entered Westminster School about 1628; here he showed a Abraham Cowley After the Portrait by Mrs. Mary Beale or Sir Peter Lely In 1640 he was elected a fellow of Trinity. In 1641, when Prince Charles visited Cambridge, Cowley produced his comedy of The Guardian. The breaking out of the Civil War proved a crisis in the brilliant scholastic and literary career of Cowley. Not greatly interested in political questions, he had yet to choose a part, and he threw in his lot with the king's party. In his satire of The Puritan and the Papist, printed in 1643, he had burned his ships, and he was ejected from his University appointments, "torn," as he says, "from Cambridge, by that violent. public storm which would suffer nothing to stand where it did." He was thrown "into the court of one of the best princesses in the world," Queen Henrietta. He settled in Oxford, but after the battle of Marston Moor, he fled to Paris with, or after, the queen. The next twelve years were "wholly spent either in bearing a share in the distresses of the royal family, : remarkable precocity. In his twelfth year he composed his little epical romance of Constantia and Philetus; in his fifteenth year he published his first collection of poems, Poetical Blossoms. He was much observed at school, as a boy certain to "increase the noble genius peculiar to that place." At sixteen he proceeded to Cambridge, being already famous, and was made a scholar of Trinity; a second edition of his poems, to which Sylva was added, having preceded him. Two plays-Love's Riddle and Naufragium Joculare-belong to 1637 and 1638, and before his twentieth year Cowley had "laid the design of divers of his most masculine works, which he finished long after." Abraham Cowley After an Engraving by V'ertue This is nothing mon pleasant then to see to return you my most hum the thanks for an in all things am Letter from Cowley to John Evelyn BARNS, March 29, 1663 There is nothing more pleasant than to see kindnes in a person for whom wee have great esteem and respect (noe not the sight of yr garden in May, or even the haveing such a one) wch maks me the more obliged to return you my most humble thanks for the testimonies I have lately received of yours both by yr Letter and yr Presents. I have already sowed such of yr seeds as I thought most proper, upon a Hot bed, but cannot find in all my books a Catalogue of those plants weh require yt culture nor of such as must bee set in pots, wch defects and all others I hope shortly to see supplyd, yt as I hope to see shortly yr work of Horticulture finished and published, and long to bee in all things yr Disciple, as I am in all things now. Se Yr most humble and most obedient servant A. COWLEY. or in labouring in their affairs." Cowley made dangerous journeys, on the king's business, into Jersey, Scotland, Flanders, Holland, and elsewhere. The private correspondence between the king and queen was entrusted to his discretion. 1656 he could endure exile no longer, and came over to London; he was arrested, Title-page of Abraham Cowley's Poetical Blossoms In and for some time closely imprisoned. On being released, Cowley returned to the practice of literature. In 1647 had been published, in his absence, his famous and long-admired miscellany of lyrics, The Mistress; he found himself, ten years later, the most popular living English poet. In order to conceal his political intentions, Cowley went to Oxford and there took the degree of M.D., pretending that he was about to practise as physician; and he even wrote a poetical treatise PlanIn 1656 he published a tarum. the folio of his Works, in which first appeared his sacred epic, the Davideis, and his celebrated Pindaric Odes, in which Cowley introduced into the garden of English literature a coarse metrical weed which throve apace for the next halfcentury. At the death of Cromwell, Cowley returned to France, and stayed there till the Restoration, when he published an Ode. He was one of the original members of the Royal Society. In 1661 he published two prose works, The Advance ment of Experimental Philosophy and A Discourse Concerning the Government of Oliver Cromwell. A supplementary volume of his poems appeared in 1663. Charles II. behaved to Cowley with striking ingratitude; for all his self-sacrifice and his long laborious services the poet received no reward. The Mastership of the Savoy had been promised him, but it was given to a brother of one of the king's mistresses. Cowley took his cue; he retired instantly and conclusively from public life and from the agitations of a court; he was weary of the vexations and formalities of an active condition." He was saved by the bounty of two old friends-Lord St. Albans and the Duke of Buckingham-from anything like penury, and he bought an agricultural estate on the Thames at Chertsey. "Con |