sion of the
other party. "Many an encounter they had, till at last the
Parliament was obliged by a law to put an end to this city
strife, which had this good effect, that upon the pulling
down of the Mughouse in Salisbury Court, for which some boys
were hanged on this act, the city has not been troubled with
them since." It was the custom in these houses to allow no
other drink but ale to be consumed, which was brought in mugs
of earthenware; a chairman was elected, and he called on the
members of the company for songs, which were generally party
ballads of a strongly-worded kind, as may be seen in the
small collection printed in 1716, entitled "A Collection of
State Songs, Poems, &c., published since the Rebellion, and
sung in the several Mughouses in the cities of London and
Westminster."--ED.

COWLEY.

OF HIS MELANCHOLY.

The mind of COWLEY was beautiful, but a querulous tenderness in his
nature breathes not only through his works, but influenced his habits
and his views of human affairs. His temper and his genius would have
opened to us, had not the strange decision of Sprat and Clifford
withdrawn that full correspondence of his heart which he had carried
on many years. These letters were suppressed because, as Bishop Sprat
acknowledges, "in this kind of prose Mr. Cowley was excellent! They
had a domestical plainness, and a peculiar kind of familiarity." And
then the florid writer runs off, that, "in letters, where the souls of
men should appear undressed, in that negligent habit they may be fit
to be seen by one or two in a chamber, but not to go abroad into the
streets." A false criticism: which not only has proved to be so since
their time by Mason's "Memoirs of Gray," but which these friends of
Cowley might have themselves perceived, if they had recollected that
the Letters of Cicero to Atticus form the most delightful chronicles
of the heart--and the most authentic memorials of the man. Peck
obtained one letter of Cowley's, preserved by Johnson, and it exhibits
a remarkable picture of the miseries of his poetical solitude. It is,
perhaps, not too late to inquire whether this correspondence was
destroyed as well as suppressed? Would Sprat and Clifford have burned
what they have told us they so much admired?[27]

Fortunately for our literary sympathy, the fatal error of these
fastidious cr