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Abraham Cowley (;〔Alan Hager (ed.), (''The Age of Milton: An Encyclopedia of Major 17th-Century British and American Authors'' ), ABC-CLIO, 2004, p. 89.〕 1618 – 28 July 1667) was an English poet born in the City of London late in 1618. He was one of the leading English poets of the 17th century, with 14 printings of his ''Works'' published between 1668 and 1721.〔''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'' "Abraham Cowley"〕 ==Early life and career== His father, a wealthy citizen, who died shortly before his birth, was a stationer. His mother was wholly given to works of devotion, but it happened that there lay in her parlour a copy of ''The Faerie Queene''. This became the favourite reading of her son, and he had read it twice before he was sent to school. As early as 1628, that is, in his tenth year, he composed his ''Tragicall History of Piramus and Thisbe'', an epic romance written in a six-line stanza, a style of his own invention. It is not too much to say that this work is the most astonishing feat of imaginative precocity on record; it is marked by no great faults of immaturity, and possesses constructive merits of a very high order. Two years later the child wrote another and still more ambitious poem, ''Constantia and Philetus'', being sent about the same time to Westminster School. Here he displayed extraordinary mental precocity and versatility, and wrote in his thirteenth year the ''Elegy on the Death of Dudley, Lord Carlton''. These three poems of considerable size, and some smaller ones, were collected in 1633, and published in a volume entitled ''Poetical Blossoms'', dedicated to the head master of the school, and prefaced by many laudatory verses by schoolfellows. The author at once became famous, although he had not, even yet, completed his fifteenth year. His next composition was a pastoral comedy, entitled ''Love's Riddle'', a marvelous production for a boy of sixteen, airy, correct and harmonious in language, and rapid in movement. The style is not without resemblance to that of Randolph, whose earliest works, however, were at that time only just printed. In 1637 Cowley was elected into Trinity College, Cambridge, where he betook himself with enthusiasm to the study of all kinds of learning, and early distinguished himself as a ripe scholar. Portraits of Cowley, attributed to William Faithorne and Stephen Slaughter, are in Trinity College's collection.〔(【引用サイトリンク】url=http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/yourpaintings/paintings/search/located_at/trinity-college-cambridge-5846_locations )〕 It was about this time that he composed his scriptural epic on the history of King David, one book of which still exists in the Latin original, the rest being superseded in favour of an English version in four books, called the ''Davideis'', which were published after his death. The epic deals with the adventures of King David from his boyhood to the smiting of Amalek by Saul, where it abruptly closes. In 1638 ''Love's Riddle'' and a Latin comedy, the ''Naufragium Joculare'', were printed, and in 1641 the passage of Prince Charles through Cambridge gave occasion to the production of another dramatic work, ''The Guardian'', which was acted before the royal visitor with much success. During the civil war this play was privately performed at Dublin, but it was not printed till 1650. It is bright and amusing, in the style common to the "sons" of Ben Jonson, the university wits who wrote more for the closet than the public stage. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Abraham Cowley」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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