ll. 3-5. 'Out of hast to be gone away from the Tumult and Noyse of the City, he had not prepar'd so healthful a situation in the Country, as he might have done, if he had made a more leasurable 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 _Chertsea_ [April 1665], he fell into another consuming Disease. Having languish'd under this for some months, he seem'd to be pretty well cur'd of its ill Symptomes. But in the heat of the last Summer [1667], by staying too long amongst his Laborers in the Medows, he was taken with a violent Defluxion, and Stoppage in his Breast, and Throat. This he at first neglected as an ordinary Cold, and refus'd to send for his usual Physicians, till it was past all remedies; and so in the end after a fortnight sickness, it prov'd mortal to him' (Sprat). In the Latin life prefixed to Cowley's _Poemata Latina_, 1668, Sprat is more specific: 'Initio superioris Anni, inciderat in _Morbum_, quem Medici _Diabeten_ appellant.' l. 6. _Non ego_. Horace, _Odes_, ii. 17. 9, 10. ll. 11 ff. _Nec vos_. These late Latin verses may be Cowley's own, but they are not in his collected Latin poems. Compare Virgil, _Georgics_, ii. 485-6. 'Syluæq;' = 'Sylvæque': 'q;' was a regular contraction for _que_: cf. p. 44, l. 6. 61. The Works of Mr. Abraham Cowley, 1668.--'An Account of the Life and Writings of M'r Abraham Cowley'. (pp. [18]-[20].) Thomas Sprat (1635-1713), author of _The History of the Royal-Society_, 1667, afterwards Bishop of Rochester, 1684, was entrusted by Cowley's will with 'the revising of all his Works that were formerly printed, and the collecting of those Papers which he had design'd for the Press'; and as literary executor he brought out in 1668 a folio edition of the English works, and an octavo edition of the Latin works. To both he prefixed a life, one in English and the other in Latin. The more elaborate English life was written partly in the hope that 'a Character of Mr. _Cowley_ may be of good advantage to our Nation'. Unfortunately the ethical bias has injured the biography. In Johnson's words, 'his zeal of friendship, or ambition of eloquence, has produced a funeral oration rather than a history: he has given the character, not the life of Cowley; for he writes with so little detail that scarcely any thing is distinctly known, but all is shewn confused and enlarged through the mist of panegyrick.' Similarly Coleridge asks 'What literary man has not regretted the prudery of Sprat in refusing to let his friend Cowley appear in his slippers and dressing-gown?' (_Biographia Literaria_, ch. iii). His method is the more to be regretted as no one knew Cowley better in his later years. His greatest error of judgement was to suppress his large collection of Cowley's letters. But with all its faults Sprat's Life of Cowley occupies an important place at the beginning of English biography of