In his twelfth year Cowley wrote another piece, also in sixteen stanzas,
with songs interspersed, which was placed first in the little volume of
_Poetical Blossoms_, _by A_. _C._, published in 1633. It was a little
quarto of thirty-two leaves, with a portrait of the author, taken at the
age of thirteen. This pamphlet, dedicated to the Dean of Westminster,
and with introductory verses by Cowley and two of his schoolfellows,
contained “Constantia and Philetus,” with the “Pyramus and Thisbe,”
written earlier, and three pieces written later, namely, two Elegies and
“A Dream of Elysium.” The inscription round the portrait describes
Cowley as a King’s Scholar of Westminster School; and “Pyramus and
Thisbe” has a special dedication to the Head Master, Lambert Osbalston.
As schoolboy, Cowley tells us that he read the Latin authors, but could
not be made to learn grammar rules by rote. He was a candidate at his
school in 1636 for a scholarship at Cambridge, but was not elected. In
that year, however, he went to Cambridge and obtained a scholarship at
Trinity.
Cowley carried to Cambridge and extended there his reputation as boy
poet. In 1636 the “Poetical Blossoms” were re-issued with an appendix of
sixteen more pieces under the head of “Sylva.” A third edition of the
“Poetical Blossoms” was printed in 1637—the year of Milton’s “Lycidas”
and of Ben Johnson’s death. Cowley had written a five-act pastoral
comedy, “Love’s Riddle,” while yet at school, and this was published in
1638. In the same year, 1638, when Cowley’s age was twenty, a Latin
comedy of his, “Naufragium Joculare,” was acted by men of his College,
and in the same year printed, with a dedication to Dr. Comber, Dean of
Carlisle, who was Master of Trinity. The poet Richard Crashaw, who was
about two years older than Cowley, and, having entered Pembroke Hall in
1632, became a Fellow of Peterhouse in 1637, sent Cowley a June present
of two unripe apricots with pleasant verses of compliment on his own
early ripeness, on his April–Autumn:—
“Take them, and me, in them acknowledging
How much my Summer waits upon thy Spring.”
Cowley was able afterwards to help Crashaw materially, and wrote some
lines upon his early death.
In 1639 Cowley took the degree of B.A. In 1640 he was chosen a Minor
Fellow, and in 1642 a Major Fellow, of Trinity, and he proceeded to his
M.A. in due course. In March, 1641, when Prince Charles visited
Cambridge, a comedy called “The Guardian,” hastily written by Cowley, was
acted at Trinity College for the Prince’s entertainment. Cowley is said
also to have written during three years at Cambridge the greater part of
his heroic poem on the history of David, the “Davideis.” One of the
occasional poems written at this time by Cowley was on the early and
sudden death of his most intimate friend at the University, William
Hervey, to whom he was dearer than all but his brothers and sisters, and,
says Cowley:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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