Godwin, William (1756-1836)

Thoughts on Man: His Nature, Productions, and Discoveries

London

Effingham Wilson, Royal Exchange; Printed by Richard Wilson

1831

Cowley "was a most amiable man; and the loveliness of his mind shines out in his productions"

Cowley stands forward as a memorable instance of the inconstancy of fame. He was a most amiable man; and the loveliness of his mind shines out in his productions. He had a truly poetic frame of soul; and he pours out the beautiful feelings that possessed him unreservedly and at large. He was a great sufferer in the Stuart cause, he had been a principal member of the court of the exiled queen; and, when the king was restored, it was a deep sentiment among his followers and friends to admire the verses of Cowley. He was "the Poet." The royalist rhymers were set lightly by in comparison with him. Milton, the republican, who, by his collection published during the civil war, had shewn that he was entitled to the highest eminence, was unanimously consigned to oblivion. Cowley died in 1667; and the duke of Buckingham, the author of the Rehearsal, eight years after, set up his tomb in the cemetery of the nation, with an inscription, declaring him to be at once "the Pindar, the Horace and Virgil of his country, the delight and the glory of his age, which by his death was left a perpetual mourner." -- Yet -- so capricious is fame -- a century has nearly elapsed, since Pope said,

Who now reads Cowley? If he pleases yet,
His moral pleases, not his pointed wit;
Forgot his epic, nay, Pindaric art,
But still I love the language of his heart.

Light::Shining

Searching "mind" at Electronic Text Center at UVA Library

Godwin, William. Thoughts on Man. London: Richard Wilson, 1831. Online edition by Charles Keller and Christine Ruotolo, UVa Electronic Text Center, 1997. <Link to UVa's Electronic Text Center>

08/11/2005