Cowley’s Essays

Rome’s would-be masters run through the streets in the dirt, kissing tradesmen’s cheeks and handing out bread, wine, and money to win office. Abraham Cowley asks: what kind of freedom is bought by such humiliations?

Writing in seventeenth-century England, Cowley begins this collection with a bracing meditation on liberty—not the freedom of a people alone, but the private person’s claim to command his own time and actions. The ambitious, he argues, surrender that birthright in pursuit of greatness, bending their words, friendships, and even their bodies to the demands of power. Yet the same trap can wear the respectable face of hard work and success. Across essays on liberty and other subjects, Cowley weighs the cost of the lives people choose. How much of yourself can you give away and still call yourself free?

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