‘THE BEST MATERIALS IN THE WORLD FOR POESY’

Passages proclaiming the literary superiority of the Scriptures to all literature were given a new turn by the poet Abraham Cowley (1618–67) in his ‘Preface to poems’ (1656). He describes the current situation of poetry as one in which with grief and indignation he sees ‘that divine science employing all her inexhaustible riches of wit and eloquence either in the wicked and beggarly flattery of great persons, or the unmanly idolising of foolish women, or the wretched affectation of scurril laughter, or at best on the confused antiquated dreams of senseless fables and metamorphoses’ (p. 12). Reform of poetry's subject matter rather than of the art itself is needed:

The reform is of two kinds: it is not merely that poetry will be reformed, but, so high is his conception of poetry, men will be reformed and, given the conversion of the Jews, the kingdom of God established by the reunification of poetry and religion.