It appears by Wood’s Fasti Oxon. that our poet was created Dr. of Physic at Oxford, December 2, 1657, by virtue of a mandamus from the then government.  After the King’s restoration, Mr. Cowley, being then past the 4Oth year of his age, the greatest part of which had been spent in a various and tempestuous condition, resolved to pass the remainder of his life in a studious retirement:  In a letter to one of his friends, he talks of making a voyage to America, not from a view of accumulating wealth, but there to chuse a habitation, and shut himself up from the busy world for ever.  This scheme was wildly romantic, and discovered some degree of vanity, in the author; for Mr. Cowley needed but retire a few miles out of town, and cease from appearing abroad, and he might have been sufficiently secured against the intrusion of company, nor was he of so much consequence as to be forced from his retirement; but this visionary scheme could not be carried into execution, by means of Mr. Cowley’s want of money, for he had never been much on the road of gain.  Upon the settlement of the peace of the nation, he obtained a competent estate, by the favour of his principal patrons, the duke of Buckingham, and the earl of St. Albans.  Thus furnished for a retreat, he spent the last seven or eight years of his life in his beloved obscurity, and possessed (says Sprat) that solitude, which from his very childhood he so passionately desired.  This great poet, and worthy man, died at a house called the Porch-house, towards the West end of the town of Chertsey in Surry, July 28, 1667, in the 49th year of his age.  His solitude, from the very beginning, had never agreed so well with the constitution of his body, as his mind:  out of haste, to abandon the tumult of the city, he had not prepared a healthful situation in the country, as he might have done, had he been more deliberate in his choice; of this, he soon began to find the inconvenience at Barn-elms, where he was afflicted with a dangerous and lingring fever.  Shortly after his removal to Chertsey, he fell into another consuming disease:  having languished under this for some months, he seemed to be pretty well cured of its ill symptoms, but in the heat of the summer, by staying too long amongst his labourers in the meadows, he was taken with a violent defluxion, and stoppage in his breast and throat; this he neglected, as an ordinary cold, and refused to send for his usual physicians, ’till it was past all remedy, and so in the end, after a fortnight’s sickness, it proved mortal to him.

He was buried in Westminster Abbey, the 3d of August following, near the ashes of Chaucer and Spenser.  King Charles ii. was pleased to bestow upon him the best character, when, upon the news of his death, his Majesty declared, that Mr. Cowley had not left a better man behind him in England.  A monument was erected to his memory in May 1675, by George, duke of Buckingham, with a Latin inscription, written by Dr. Sprat, afterwards lord bishop of Rochester.