He possessed talents for eloquence as well as poetry; and till his death, which happened in a good old age, he was the delight of the house of commons.

The errors of his life proceeded more from want of courage, than of honor or integrity.

He died in 1687, aged eighty-two.
Cowley is an author extremely corrupted by the bad taste of his age; but had he lived even in the purest times of Greece nor Rome, he must always have been a very indifferent poet.

He had no ear for harmony; and his verses are only known to be such by the rhyme which terminates them.

In his rugged untenable numbers are conveyed sentiments the most strained and distorted; long-spun allegories, distant allusions, and forced conceits.