I believe that the only contemporaries who rivaled him in popularity were Herbert and Cleveland, for Waller did not come to his own until after Cowley’s death. Herbert’s “Temple,” posthumously printed in 1634, had already become a religious classic. Masson computes its annual sale at a thousand copies for the first twenty years of its publication. Of Cleveland’s poems eleven editions were issued during his lifetime—and none afterward. Apropos of the author’s arrest at Norwich in 1655 and his magniloquent letter to Cromwell on that occasion, Carlyle caustically remarks: “This is John Cleveland, the famed Cantab scholar, Royalist Judge Advocate, and thrice illustrious satirist and son of the muses, who had gone through eleven editions in those times, far transcending all Miltons and all mortals—and does not now need any twelfth edition that we hear of.” This was true till 1903 when Professor Berdan brought out the first modern and critical, and probably the final, edition of Cleveland. But neither Herbert nor Cleveland enjoyed anything like Cowley’s literary eminence. Cleveland was a sharp political lampooner whose verses had a temporary vogue like “M’Fingal” or “The Gospel according to Benjamin.” A few years later Butler did the same thing ten times as cleverly. Even “Hudibras” has lost much of its point, though its originality, learning, and wit have given it a certain sort of immortality, while Cleveland is utterly extinct. Herbert’s work is, of course, more permanent than Cleveland’s, and he is a truer poet than Cowley, though his appeal is to a smaller public, and he has but a single note. For many years after his death, Cowley’s continued to be a great name and fame; yet the swift decay of his real influence became almost proverbial. Dryden, who learned much from him; Addison, who uses him as a dreadful example in his essay on mixed wit; and Pope, who speaks of him with a traditional respect, all testify to this rapid loss of his hold upon the community of readers. It was in 1737 that Pope asked, “Who now reads Cowley?” which is much as if one should ask to-day, “Who now reads Byron?” or as if our grandchildren should inquire in 1960, “Who reads Tennyson?”