I never had any other desire so strong, and so like to covetousness, as that one which I have had always, that I might be master at last of a small house and a large Garden.

Abraham Cowley (1618–1667), a poet and essayist associated with the royalist cause, spent years in exile during the English Civil Wars and later returned to England after the Restoration. In his later life he repeatedly expressed a wish to withdraw from public business and courtly ambition into private retirement. The line about wanting “a small house and a large Garden” comes from Cowley’s prose reflections on the ideal of retreat—an ideal sharpened by political upheaval, disappointment with public life, and his own desire for quiet study. It encapsulates the mid-17th-century literary topos of the country retreat as a space for health, contemplation, and independence.

Cowley frames his longing for retirement as a kind of “covetousness,” ironically borrowing the language of vice to describe what he presents as a modest, even virtuous ambition. The contrast—“small house” but “large Garden”—signals a preference for simplicity in possessions alongside abundance in nature, leisure, and self-sufficiency. The garden suggests cultivation, learning, and a life ordered by personal rhythms rather than political demands. The quote also participates in a long classical and Renaissance tradition (Horace, Virgil, Montaigne) that treats withdrawal from public striving as a route to freedom and contentment, while acknowledging how powerfully such peace can be desired.