ABSTRACT
Clarendon's essays were first printed in 1727 in A Collection of Several Tracts of the Right Honourable Edward, Earl of Clarendon, Author of The History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England. Published from His Lordship's Original Manuscripts, where they were accompanied by two lengthy dialogues as well as his monumental Contemplations and Reflexions upon the Psalmes of David: Applying those Devotions to the Troubles of this Time. Notwithstanding their shared commitment to the Stuarts, Clarendon, Cowley and Temple were far from homogenous ideologically. Clarendon's profound disagreements with Cowley dated from the mid-1640s when Cowley, then in Paris, was managing Queen Henrietta Maria's personal correspondence as well as 'a vast Intelligence in many other parts'. Once retired, Cowley and Temple slipped effortlessly into hortulan mode. This was hardly surprising given their botanical interests. In 1729, Anthony Collins, the freethinker and protege of John Locke, published A Discourse Concerning Ridicule and Irony in Writing.
