ODE, UPON THE BLESSED RESTORATION AND RETURNE OF HIS SACRED MAJESTIE, CHARLS [CHARLES] THE SECOND
Hardcover
1660 · London
by Cowley, A. [Abraham]
London: Printed for Henry Herringman, 1660. Hardcover. Very good/No dust jacket. London: Printed for Henry Herringman, 1660. title page + 19 pp. Hardcover. 4to. Bound in red cloth covered boards. "Ode Cowley" stamped in gilt on the front board. All edges dyed red. Signatures: A-B4, C-C3 (A, A3, A4, B2, B4, C3 unsigned). Light wear to boards, with small patch of rubbing on spine. Corners slightly bumped. Pages have been trimmed, leading to loss of text on title page (top half of "Ode"), page 9 (most of the final line of text), and the second set of page numbers near the top margin of each page. A small section at the lower margin of the final three leaves has chipped away, not affecting text. Previous owner and bookseller notations on added ffep. Inked note on title page. With faults as noted quite good. Very good/No dust jacket. Cowley (1618-1667), a poet and sometime diplomat/secretary to Queen Henrietta Maria (wife of Charles I), may have worked as a spy for the royalists during the late Cromwell era. His collections "The Mistress" (1647) and "Poems" (1656) were immensely popular during the poet's lifetime. MacLean writes of this piece "Cowley's Ode is highly figurative, blending biblical and classical allusions with motifs from astrology and medicine. Highly dynastic in argument, the poem is structured as a royal entry in which the king, other members of the royal family, Monk, and members of the two houses of parliament mingle with allegorical personifications of Liberty, Plenty, Riches, Honour and Safety. Along the way Cowley notices the slightly embarrassing absence of Henrietta Maria, who had stayed behind in France having become estranged from Charles as a result of her Catholicism." Samuel Johnson, who made Cowley his first subject in "The Lives of the Poets," wrote that he had been "at one time too much praised and too much neglected at another." A lovely example of Restoration-era political verse. ESTCR202041; Wing (1994), C6677; Pforzheimer, 229. (Insurance required to ship this item). (Inventory #: 35775)