account has been published by Dr. Birch, he appears busy among the
experimental philosophers with the title of Doctor Cowley.

There is no reason for supposing that he ever attempted practice:
but his preparatory studies have contributed something to the honour
of his country. Considering botany as necessary to a physician, he
retired into Kent to gather plants; and as the predominance of a
favourite study affects all subordinate operations of the intellect,
botany in the mind of Cowley turned into poetry. He composed, in
Latin, several books on plants, of which the first and second
display the qualities of herbs, in elegiac verse; the third and
fourth, the beauties of flowers, in various measures; and the fifth
and sixth, the use of trees, in heroic numbers.

At the same time were produced, from the same university, the two
great poets, Cowley and Milton, of dissimilar genius, of opposite
principles, but concurring in the cultivation of Latin poetry; in
which the English, till their works and May's poem appeared, seemed
unable to contest the palm with any other of the lettered nations.

If the Latin performances of Cowley and Milton be compared (for May
I hold to be superior to both), the advantage seems to lie on the
side of Cowley. Milton is generally content to express the thoughts
of the ancients in their language; Cowley, without much loss of
purity or elegance, accommodates the diction of Rome to his own
conceptions.

At the Restoration, after all the diligence of his long service, and
with consciousness, not only of the merit of fidelity, but of the
dignity of great abilities, he naturally expected ample preferments;