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It is remarkable that most of the prologues and epilogues of her plays were written by herself. She had a peculiar turn for such compositions, and conformably to an aphorism which was probably unknown to her, that 'prepossession of mind requires preface of speech," she exercised an instinctive faculty not only for preparing the temper of an audience to listen favourably, but also for inciting them to crown her efforts with acceptance and applause. She evidently had learned all that she best knew from experience, and from a sort of unintentional observation of surrounding life and conversation. In her comedies she described the manners she saw, wrote the phrases she heard, and invented with original and untaught skill, out of materials acquired she knew not how, all the complexities and varieties of plots and pleasant dialogues. In the characters her scope is not wide, and her favourites reappear with different names in all; more especially the sprightly, elegant, and virtuous woman of fashion, highly cultivated, yet natural and spontaneous, self-possessed, and "mistress of her whole situation." Probably the idea of this dramatic personage was caught from the innocent and airy bearing of some lady of her acquaintance. Her celebrity must have won many fashionable patronesses, the graces of polished society were congenial to her taste, and she could throw herself successfully into any ideal form. Perhaps a recollection of Molière's Clarinda might influence this conception, and certainly the fascinations of a Younge and a Farren conduced to the effect, if not to the production of these charming heroines.

The preface to her 'Collected Works,' 3 vols. 8vo., 1813, gives a very meagre account of her life, and of the development and working of her mind. It states, however, that "she was accustomed to say that she always succeeded

best when she herself did not know what she was going to do, and suffered the plot to grow under her pen."

It is added-" In her plays posterity may, perhaps, find as complete specimens as will reach them of English colloquy towards the close of the eighteenth century, and of manners as characteristic of the day as the style of the elder dramatists is of theirs."

This is most true; even the ungrammatical phrase, "You was," constantly occurs in her comedies; and all contemporary literature proves that she rightly delineated the people of her generation. She excelled in sketching and colouring surfaces; the ripples, light waves, and little weirs of the social stream, she traced with admirable skill; but the ocean depths of thought and feeling lay far beyond her sounding-lead, and consequently her tragedies were worthless, and her poems inane.

In confessing that she was the Anna Matilda who corresponded with Mr. Merry, under his signature of Della Crusca, the style of her poetry is announced, and declaration made, that her verses are mere artificial compositions, devoid of real bardic inspiration. In the language of conversation, whether grave or gay, sentimental or satirical, Mrs. Cowley is invariably fluent; but when she leaves the causeway of ordinary life for the airy mountain regions of poetry, she loses her power, wants apt thoughts, apt words, and all the true graces of diction, while, retaining an unfortunate facility wholly verbose, she pours forth reversed sentences and turgid phrases in unequal and inharmonious measures. In her comedies all is easy and natural, in her tragedies and poems all is distorted and bombastic; and her darling epithet, tortuous, exactly expresses the effect of such poetasting upon her readers.

She never was fond of reading, but preferred travels to

any other books, as they suited the habit of superficial observation, which was congenial to her mind. Her memory was not remarkably tenacious, but it served to illustrate her own lines::

"What others gain by study hard,

Flows in upon the musing bard,
A word, the slightest hint will do,
To bring all knowledge in review."

In poetry, however, be the subject what it may, those illustrations and enhancements are needed which only a rich memory can pour forth from its treasures; and consequently there the poverty of an unstored mind must be helplessly laid open. In a collateral line with her dramatic triumphs runs the series of her once admired poems. In 1780, she published the first part and a fragment of the second part of her tale in blank verse called 'The Maid of Arragon.' The story is as ill-concocted as the verse: nothing more silly could be devised than the heroine's conduct, in going out alone by moonlight, encountering an utter stranger, telling him the secret which involved her own and her father's life and liberty, and discovering too late, that this insidious new acquaintance is a suborned traitor, who has come there on purpose to make them captives.

In 1786, she wrote The Scottish Village,' which, being in rhymed iambics, has a little more order, if not more rhythm, than her blank verse; but her notion of poetry seemed to be comprised in a fettered, cramped, and deformed style of ordinary English. No sooner does she begin to write verse, than all is "mellifluous," "tortuous," and Della Cruscan. In 'The Scottish Village,' her praise of her contemporaries, Miss Seward, Mrs. Barbauld, and Miss Burney, evinces a heart free from envy and full of generous enthusiasm.

Her Elegy on a Field of Battle' contains a few good lines. For instance;

“Ah, wayward Fancy bids dread scenes revive,

Which Time's dark mists had veiled from mortal ken;
Embattled squadrons rush as when alive,

And shadowy falchions gleam o'er shadowy men !"

Dryden appears to have been her poetical model, and well selected in one particular; for there was, alike in the imitated and the imitator, an essentially prosaic element; but she unfortunately adds the want of energy to his deplorable want of sentiment. The harmony of her versification improves chronologically, but she was incapable of attaining the full and free command of a poetic lyre of any form or size.

The home occupations of her 'Edwina the Huntress,' are those of the fine ladies of Mrs. Cowley's own days.

"Her needle's skill made tenderest flowerets blow,
Which now in sweet festoons around her glow;
In cooling grots her shell-work seized the eye,
With skill arranged to show each blending dye;
The age's taste her garden well displayed,
Her vivid fancy each parterre arrayed,
Here yews in shape of solid walls she reared,
Or there a dreary castle they appeared;

In box the eagle hovered o'er its nest,

Or couchant lions seemed resigned to rest."

The fair Edwina's field-sports, however, differed essentially from those of Mrs. Cowley's time:

"For her the hawking party was prepared,

She roused the wolf, the foaming boar she chased,
And danger's self was in her presence graced."

The following lines, from the third book of 'The Siege of Acre,' afford a favourable specimen of Mrs. Cowley's descriptive poetry :—

"Soft twilight's gentle mission came in vain,

No more the signal now to quit the plain,

And soon the night her shades more thickly threw

And hid creation from the tortured view.

But raging battle gives its own dread light,
From roofs on fire, flames flash upon the sight,
Amidst the vast of sable ether soar

The dismal dirges of the cannon's roar,

In flames sent forth in curving flight shells glow,
And Death's own beams his frequent murders show.
The sea's black surges catch the lurid lay,
And every billow foams with fiery spray,
Here waves terrific drown the cannon's roar,
Sinuous roll along and sparkle up the shore;
There mounts of aqueous flame arrest the sight,
And ocean heaves its Heclas on the night;
Now, on their points, the vessels seem to burn,
Or down abysses dark to overturn,
Unquenched the glowing masts again aspire,
The men ascending ropes of tortuous fire.
On shore, the palms deception lift in air,
And branchy sycamores unhurtful glare;

Quick floods of flame bring out each darkened hill,
Their rough contours with transient radiance fill,
And gleam down every slope, point every line,
And each sharp ridge with pencilled fire define :
They pierce the gloom which hovered o'er the slain,
Revealing those who lay convulsed with pain.
Here showing men who heave with doubtful life,
There, where last agonies have closed the strife.
The moans of pain are floating through the air,
The shrieks of torture, groans of deep despair.
That scene excites too torturous a sigh,

Where as men kill, they 're slain, by others who must die."

This is her most ambitious and elaborate poem, and was written in or about the year 1799. It acquired great popularity from the historic interest of the subject and the fame of its hero, Sir Sydney Smith; nevertheless, its animation is merely galvanic, and possesses none of the real attributes of continuous life.

Mrs. Cowley was a woman of retired habits, and of unaffected and agreeable manners. Her happiness was in her home; she dearly loved her parents, her husband, and her four children, and liked the quiet occupations of painting and sculpture. Just before the outbreak of the first French Revolution, she spent a year in France for the benefit of her daughter's education. In 1797, she became