information upon the course of home affairs. In England he was presently seized by mistake for another man, and, when his name and position were known, he was imprisoned, until a friendly physician, Sir Charles Scarborough, undertook to be security in a thousand pounds for his good conduct. In this year, 1656, Cowley published the first folio volume of his Poems, prepared in prison, and suggested, he said, by his finding, when he returned to England, a book called “The Iron Age,” which had been published as his, and caused him to wonder that any one foolish enough to write such bad verses should yet be so wise as to publish them under another man’s name. Cowley thought then that he had taken leave of verse, which needed less troubled times for its reading, and a mind less troubled in the writer. He left out of his book, he said, the pieces written during the Civil War, including three books of the Civil War itself, reaching as far as the first battle of Newbury. These he had burnt, for, he said, “I would have it accounted no less unlawful to rip up old wounds than to give new ones.” “When the event of battle and the unaccountable Will of God has determined the controversy, and that we have submitted to the will of the conqueror, we must lay down our pens as well as arms.” The first part of this folio contained early poems; the second part “The Mistress;” the third part “Pindaric Odes;” and the fourth and last his “Davideis.”

In September of the following year, 1657, Cowley acted as best man to George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, on his marriage at Bolton Percy, to Fairfax’s daughter; Cowley wrote also a sonnet for the bride. In December he obtained, by influence of friends, the degree of M.D. from the University of Oxford, and retired into Kent to study botany. Such study caused him then to write a Latin poem upon Plants, in six books: the first two on Herbs, in elegiac verse; the next two on Flowers, in various measures; and the last two on Trees, in heroic numbers:—“Plantarum, Libri VI.”

After the death of Cromwell, Cowley returned to France, but he came back to England in 1660, when he published an “Ode on His Majesty’s Restoration and Return,” and “A Discourse by way of Vision concerning the Government of Oliver Cromwell.” He was admitted, as Dr. Cowley, among the first members of the Royal Society then founded; but he was excluded from the favour of the king. He had written an “Ode to Brutus,” for which, said his Majesty, it was enough for Mr. Cowley to be forgiven. A noble lord replied to Cowley’s Ode, in praise of Brutus, with an Ode against that Rebel. Cowley’s old friend, Lord Jermyn, now made Earl of St. Alban’s, joined, however, with George Villiers, Duke of 

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