that his compliance gained him confidence enough to be trusted without
security, for the bond of his bail was never cancelled; nor that it made
him think himself secure, for, at that dissolution of government which
followed the death of Oliver, he returned into France, where he resumed
his former station, and staid till the restoration[11].

"He continued," says his biographer, "under these bonds, till the
general deliverance;" it is, therefore, to be supposed, that he did not
go to France, and act again for the king, without the consent of his
bondsman; that he did not show his loyalty at the hazard of his friend,
but by his friend's permission.

Of the verses on Oliver's death, in which Wood's narrative seems to
imply something encomiastick, there has been no appearance. There is a
discourse concerning his government, indeed, with verses intermixed, but
such as certainly gained its author no friends among the abettors of
usurpation.

A doctor of physick, however, he was made at Oxford, in December, 1657;
and, in the commencement of the Royal Society, of which an account
has been given by Dr. Birch, he appears busy among the experimental
philosophers, with the title of Dr. 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