Excerpt from Essays, Plays and Sundry Verses They were apparently written in 1641 and 1658 respectively. Pepys (ed. Wheatley, ii, p. 155) records in 1661 that he went ' after dinner to the Opera, where there was a new play ("Cutter of Coleman Street"), made in the year 1658, with reflections much upon the late times, and it being the first time, the pay was doubled, and so to save money, my wife and I went up into the gallery, and there saw very well; and a very good play it is.' The Proposition For the Advancement Of Experimental Philosophy was printed in 1661. I am indebted to Mr W. Aldis Wright for the loan of a copy of that year for the purpose of reproduction. The essay was included in the prose miscellanies of the folio of 1668 referred to above, but the important Preface was omitted. The tract is given here, therefore, as it was published in 1661. The Discourse By way of Vision, Concerning the Government of Oliver Cromwell, published also in 1661, has been printed from the folio of 1668 and so have the Several Discourses by way of Essays, in Verse and Prose. At the end of these (see p. 462) I have added a poem which was printed in the ninth edition of Cowley's works (folio, 1700, Printed for Henry Herringman, etc.). Attention is drawn to this poem on the title page of the ninth edition by the words ' To which are added, some Verses by the AUTHOR | Never before Printed.' And I have ventured to add, also as part of the text, the unfinished poem on the Civil War first printed in 1679 (see Cowley's reference to this in the first volume of the present edition, p. 9). About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.