eral
Discourses by way of Essays, in Verse and Prose,' No. II. (pp. 143-6.)

Cowley's Essays were written towards the close of his life. They were
'left scarce finish'd', and many others were to have been added to
them. They were first published posthumously in the collected edition
of 1668, under the superintendence of Thomas Sprat (see No. 61).
This edition, which alone is authoritative, has been followed in the
present reprint of the eleventh and last Essay, probably written at
the beginning of 1667.

Page 198, l. 1. _at School_, Westminster.

ll. 19 ff. The concluding stanzas of 'A Vote', printed in Cowley's
_Sylva_, 1636. Cowley was then aged eighteen. The first stanza
contains three new readings, 'The unknown' for 'Th' ignote', 'I would
have' for 'I would hug', and 'Not on' for 'Not from'.

Page 199, l. 15. _out of Horace_, _Odes_, iii. 29. 41-5.

Page 200, l. 4. _immediately_. The reading in the text of 1668 is
'irremediably', but 'immediately' is given as the correct reading in
the 'Errata' (printed on a slip that is pasted in at the conclusion of
Cowley's first preface). The edition of 1669 substitutes 'immediately'
in the text. The alteration must be accepted on Sprat's authority, but
it is questionable if it gives a better sense.

ll. 6-10. Cowley was admitted to Trinity College, Cambridge, as a
Westminster scholar on June 14, 1637. He was admitted Minor Fellow
in 1640, and graduated M.A. in 1643. He was ejected in the following
year as a result of the Earl of Manchester's commission to enforce the
solemn League and Covenant in Cambridge. See _Cowley's Pure Works_,
ed. J.R. Lumby, pp. ix-xiii, and Johnson's _Lives of the Poets_, ed.
G.B. Hill, vol. i, p. 5.

ll. 9, 10. _Cedars ... Hyssop_. I Kings, iv. 33.

l. 12. _one of the best Persons_, Henry Jermyn, created Baron Jermyn,
1643, and Earl of St. Albans, 1660, chief officer of Henrietta Maria's
household in Paris: see Clarendon, vol. iv, p. 312. As secretary
to Jermyn, Cowley 'cyphcr'd and decypher'd with his own hand, the
greatest part of all the Letters that passed between their Majesties,
and managed a vast Intelligence in many other parts: which for some
years together took up all his days, and two or three nights every
week' (Sprat). He told Sprat that he intended to dedicate all his
Essays to St. Albans 'as a testimony of his entire respects to him'.

Page 201, l. 10. _Well then_. The opening lines of 'The Wish',
included in _The Mistress_,