Cowley, although he is now little remembered as a dramatic writer, was among the first who seized the earliest opportunity after the Restoration to set up as playwrights; but Cowley failed, and was certainly mortified at his failure. He re-trimmed a play of his early days, the "Guardian," and called it the "Cutter of Coleman Street." All there is broad farce, in which the Puritan "congregation of the spotless" is coarsely ridiculed, and cavalierism held up to admiration. The audience condemned the former as "profane," and Cowley's cavaliers were found to be such scamps that he was suspected of disloyalty. Gentle as he was by nature, Cowley was irritable under criticism. "I think there was something of faction against it," he says, "by the early appearance of some men's disapprobation before they had seen enough of it to build their dislike upon their judgment." "Profane!" exclaims Abraham, with a shudder, and declares it is enough to "knock a man down." Is it profane, he asks, "to deride the hypocrisy of those men whose skulls are not yet bare upon the gates since the public and just punishment of it," namely, profanity. Thus were the skulls of the Commonwealth leaders tossed up in comedy. He adds, in a half saucy, half deprecatory sort of way, that "there is no writer but may fail sometimes in point of wit, and it is no less frequent for the auditors to fail in point of judgment." Nevertheless, he had humbly asked favour at the hands of the critics when his piece was first played, in these words:-- "Gentlemen critics of Argier, For your own int'rest, I'd advise ye here To let this little forlorn hope go by Safe and untouch'd. 'That must not be!' you'll cry. If ye be wise, it must: I'll tell ye why. There are 7, 8, 9,--stay, there are behind Ten plays at least, which wait but for a wind And the glad news that we the enemy miss; And those are all your own, if you spare this. Some are but new-trimm'd up, others quite new, Some by known shipwrights built, and others too By that great author made, whoe'er he be, That styles himself 'Person of Quality.'" The "Cutter" rallied a little, and then was laid aside; but some of its spars were carried off by later gentlemen, who have piqued themselves on their originality. Colonel Jolly's advice to the bully, Cutter, if he would not be known, to "take one more disguise at last, and put thyself in the habit of a gentleman," has been quoted as the wit of Sheridan, who took his Sir Anthony Absolute from Truman, _senior_. And when Cowley made Aurelia answer to the inquiry, if she had looked in Lucia's eye, that she had, and that "there were pretty babies in it," he little thought that there would rise a Tom Moore to give a turn to the pretty idea, and spoil it, as he has done, in the "Impromptu," in _Little's Poems_.