The calm spirit of Cowley's "Essays" was in all his life. As he
tells us in his Essay "On Myself," even when he was a very young boy
at school, instead of running about on holidays and playing with his
fellows, he was wont to steal from them and walk into the fields,
either alone with a book or with some one companion, if he could
find any of the same temper. He wrote verse when very young, and
says, "I believe I can tell the particular little chance that filled
my head first with such chimes of verse as have never since left
ringing there; for I remember when I began to read and to take some
pleasure in it, there was wont to lie in my mother's parlour (I know
not by what accident, for she herself never in her life read any
book but of devotion), but there was wont to lie Spenser's works."
The delight in Spenser wakened all the music in him, and in 1628, in
his tenth year, he wrote a "Tragical Historie of Pyramus and
Thisbe."

In his twelfth year Cowley wrote another piece, also in sixteen
stanzas, with songs interspersed, which was placed first in the
little volume of Poetical Blossoms, by A. C., published in 1633. It
was a little quarto of thirty-two leaves, with a portrait of the
author, taken at the age of thirteen. This pamphlet, dedicated to
the Dean of Westminster, and with introductory verses by Cowley and
two of his schoolfellows, contained "Constantia and Philetus," with
the "Pyramus and Thisbe," written earlier, and three pieces written
later, namely, two Elegies and "A Dream of Elysium." The
inscription round the portrait describes Cowley as a King's Scholar
of Westminster School; and "Pyramus and Thisbe" has a special
dedication to the Head Master, Lambert Osbalston. As schoolboy,
Cowley tells us that he read the Latin authors, but could not be
made to learn grammar rules by rote. He was a candidate at his