But he pleaded in vain; there was no sympathy for him. Ought there to be for a man who writes a book of a thousand quarto pages--on any subject? The violence of this diatribe made a reaction in favor of the theatre; his fellow-barristers of Lincoln’s Inn hustled him out of their companionship, and got up straightway a gay masque to demonstrate their scorn of his reproof. They say he bore his punishment sturdily, though the fumes of his book, which was burned just below his nose, came near to suffocate him. Later still, he underwent another sentence for offences growing out of his unrelenting and imperious Puritanism--this time in company with one Burton (not Robert Burton,[54] of the _Anatomy of Melancholy_), who was a favorite with the people and had flowers strown before him as he walked to the pillory. But Prynne had no flowers, and his ears having been once cropt, the hangman had a rough time (a very rough time for Prynne) in getting at his task. Thereafter he was sent to prison in the isle of Jersey; but he kept writing, ears or no ears, and we may hear his strident voice again--hear it in Parliament, too. _Cowley and Waller._ Two other poets of these times I name, because of the great reputation they once had; a reputation far greater than they maintain now. These are Abraham Cowley and Edmund Waller.[55] The former of these (Cowley) was the son of a London grocer, whose shop was not far from the home of Izaak Walton; he was taught at Westminster School, and at Cambridge, and blazed up precociously at the age of fifteen in shining verses.[56] Indeed his aptitude, his ingenuities, his scholarship, kept him in the first rank of men of letters all through his day, and gave him burial between Spenser and Chaucer in Westminster Abbey. He would take a humbler place if he were disentombed now; yet, in Cromwell’s time, or in that of Charles II., the average reading man knew Cowley better than he knew Milton, and admired him more. I give you a fragment of what is counted his best; it is from his “Hymn to Light:” “When, Goddess, thou lift’st up thy waken’d head Out of the morning’s purple bed, Thy quire of birds about thee play, And all the joyful world salutes the rising day. “All the world’s bravery, that delights our eyes, Is but thy sev’ral liveries, Thou the rich dye on them bestowest, Thy nimble pencil paints this landscape as thou goest. “A crimson garment in the Rose thou wear’st; A crown of studded gold thou bear’st, The virgin lilies in their white, Are clad but with the lawn of almost naked light!” If I were to read a fragment from Tennyson in contrast with Cowley’s treatment of a similar theme I think you might wonder less why his reputation has suffered gradual eclipse. Shall we try? Cowley wrote a poem in memory of a dear friend, and I take one of the pleasantest of its verses: