IX.

This only grant me, that my means may lye,
Too low for envy, for contempt too high: 
Some honour I would have;
Not from great deeds, but good alone,
The unknown are better than ill known,
Rumour can ope the grave: 
Acquaintance I would have, but when ’t depends
Not on the number, but the choice of friends.

X.

Books should, not business, entertain the light
And sleep, as undisturbed as death, the night: 
My house a cottage, more
Than palace, and should fitting be
For all my use, no luxury: 
My garden painted o’er
With nature’s hand, not art, and pleasures yield,
Horace might envy in his Sabine Field.

XI.

Thus would I double my life’s fading space,
For he that runs it well, twice runs his race;
And in this true delight,
These unbought sports, that happy state,
I could not fear; nor wish my fate;
But boldly say, each night,
To-morrow let my sun his beams display,
Or in clouds hide them:  I have lived to-day.

It is remarkable of Mr. Cowley, as he himself tells us, that he had this defect in his memory, that his teachers could never bring him to retain the ordinary rules of grammar, the want of which, however, he abundantly supplied by an intimate acquaintance with the books themselves, from whence those rules had been drawn.  In 1636 he was removed to Trinity College in Cambridge, being elected a scholar of that house[2].  His exercises of all kinds were highly applauded, with this peculiar praise, that they were fit, not only for the obscurity of an academical life, but to have made their appearance on the true theatre of the world; and there he laid the designs, and formed the plans of most of the masculine, and excellent attempts he afterwards happily finished.  In 1638 he published his Love’s Riddle, written at the time of his being a scholar in Westminster school, and dedicated by a copy of verses to Sir Kenelm Digby.  He also wrote a Latin Comedy entitled Naufragium Joculare, or the Merry Shipwreck.  The first occasion of his entering into business, was, an elegy he wrote on the death of Mr. William Harvey, which introduced him to the acquaintance of Mr. John Harvey, the brother of his deceased friend, from whom he received many offices of kindness through the whole course of his life[3].  In 1643, being then master of arts, he was, among many others, ejected his college, and the university; whereupon, retiring to Oxford, he settled in St. John’s College, and that same year, under the name of a scholar of Oxford, published a satire entitled the Puritan and the Papist.  His zeal in the Royal cause, engaged him in the service of the King, and he was present in many of his Majesty’s journies and expeditions; by this means he gained an acquaintance and familiarity with the personages of the court and of the gown, and particularly had the entire friendship of my lord Falkland, one of the principal secretaries of state.