The works of John Dryden, now first collected in eighteen volumes. Volume 09
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Title: The works of John Dryden, now first collected in eighteen volumes. Volume 09
Author: John Dryden
Editor: Walter Scott
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WORKS OF JOHN DRYDEN, NOW FIRST COLLECTED IN EIGHTEEN VOLUMES. VOLUME 09 ***
THE
WORKS
OF
JOHN DRYDEN,
NOW FIRST COLLECTED
_IN EIGHTEEN VOLUMES_.
ILLUSTRATED
WITH NOTES,
HISTORICAL, CRITICAL, AND EXPLANATORY,
AND
A LIFE OF THE AUTHOR,
BY
WALTER SCOTT, ESQ.
VOL. IX.
LONDON:
PRINTED FOR WILLIAM MILLER, ALBEMARLE STREET,
BY JAMES BALLANTYNE AND CO. EDINBURGH.
1808.
CONTENTS OF VOLUME NINTH.
PAGE.
POEMS, HISTORICAL AND POLITICAL.
Heroic Stanzas to the Memory of Oliver Cromwell, 3
Notes, 15
Astrea Redux, 25
Notes, 41
To his Sacred Majesty, a Panegyric on his Coronation, 53
Notes, 59
To Lord Chancellor Hyde, presented on New-year's-day, 1662, 63
Satire on the Dutch, 71
To her Royal Highness the Duchess of York, on the
Victory gained by the Duke over the Dutch, &c. 73
Notes, 79
Annus Mirabilis, the Year of Wonders, 1666, an Historical Poem, 81
Dedication to the Metropolis of Great Britain, 89
An Account of Annus Mirabilis, in a Letter
to the Hon. Sir Robert Howard, 92
Notes, 158
Absalom and Achitophel, Part I. 195
To the Reader, 208
Notes on Part I. 249
Part II. 319
Notes on Part II. 354
The Medal, a Satire against Sedition, 407
Epistle to the Whigs, 417
Notes, 441
POEMS,
HISTORICAL AND POLITICAL.
HEROIC STANZAS
TO
THE MEMORY OF OLIVER CROMWELL.
These verses compose the earliest of our author's political poems, and
are among the first which he wrote, of any length or consequence. The
first edition is now before me, by the favour of my friend Richard
Heber, Esq.; and, while correcting this sheet, I received another
copy from Mr Finlay, author of the "Vale of Ellerslie." It is of the
last degree of rarity, since it has escaped the researches even of Mr
Malone. The full title is, "A Poem upon the Death of his late Highness
Oliver, Lord Protector of England, Scotland, and Ireland; written by
Mr Dryden. London, printed for William Wilson, and are to be sold in
Well-Yard, near Little St Bartholomew's Hospital, 1659," 4to. Upon
comparing this rare edition with those of a later date, no material
alterations occur, excepting that the spelling is modernized, and the
title abridged.
Some of our author's biographers have deemed it necessary to apologise
for his chusing this subject, by referring to his near connection
with Sir Gilbert Pickering, the friend and confident of the deceased
usurper. There is, however, little reason to suppose, that Dryden did
any violence to his own inclinations, to gratify the political feelings
of his kinsman and patron. He had been bred in anti-monarchical
principles, and did not probably change, till the nation changed with
him. The character of Cromwell was in itself an inviting theme to so
true a poet. The man, of whom Clarendon said, that "even his enemies
could not condemn him, without commending him at the same time," and
of whose exploits Cowley has given so animating a detail; whom, in
short, his very enemies could not mention without wonder, if they
with-held applause,--afforded to those who favoured his politics many a
point of view, in which the splendour of his character might hide its
blemishes.[1] It is remarkable, however, that, in handling this theme,
Dryden has observed a singular and happy delicacy. The topic of the
civil war is but slightly dwelt on; and, although Cromwell is extolled,
his eulogist abstains from any reflections against those, through whom
he cut his way to greatness. He considers the Protector when in his
meridian height, but passes over the steps by which he attained that
elevation. It is also remarkable, that although Sir Gilbert Pickering
was one of Richard Cromwell's council, our author abstains from any
compliment to that pageant of authority; when a panegyrick upon the son
was a natural topic of consolation after mourning over the loss of his
father. Sprat, upon the same occasion, did not omit this obvious topic,
but launched forth into prophecies, to which the event did very little
credit.[2]
Notwithstanding these symptoms of caution and moderation, the subject
of this first public essay of our author's poetical talents was
repeatedly urged against him during the political controversies in
which, through the reigns of Charles II. and his brother, he was
constantly engaged. One offended antagonist carried his malice so far,
as actually to reprint an edition of the Elegy, with a dull postscript,
in which he makes Dryden acknowledge his alleged apostacy.[3]
Of the poetical merits of the Elegy, we have elsewhere spoken more
fully. The manly and solemn march of the stanza gave promise of that
acute poetical ear, which afterwards enabled Dryden to harmonize our
verification. The ideas, though often far-fetched, and sometimes
ambiguously expressed, indicate the strength and vigour of his mind.
They give obvious tokens of a regeneration of taste; for though, in
many instances, the conceits are very extravagant, yet they are,
in general, much more moderate than those in the Elegy upon Lord
Hastings, whose whole soul was rendered a celestial sphere, by the
virtues which were stuck in it; and his body little less brilliantly
ornamented by the pustules of small pox, which were first rose-buds,
and then stars. The symptoms of emerging from the false taste and
impertinent witticisms of Donne and Cowley, were probably more owing
to our author's natural feeling of what were the proper attributes of
poetry, than to any change in the taste of the age. Sprat, who also
solemnizes the decease of Cromwell, runs absolutely riot in pindarics,
and furnishes as excellent an instance of useless labour, and wit
rendered ridiculous by misapplication, as can be found in Cowley
himself. Cromwell's elevation is compared to the raising up of the
brazen serpent, in the Pentateuch;[5] the classic metamorphosis of
Ajax's blood into the hyacinth[6] furnishes a simile for the supposed
revival of letters through the blood spilled by Cromwell; his sword is
preferred to the flaming brand of the cherub, because it had made a
paradise, which the other only guarded; finally, the Protector's temper
grew milder in the progress of his warfare, as his armour, being made
of steel, grew smoother by use.[7] It must be allowed, that there are,
in Dryden's poem, many, and greatly too many, epigrammatic turns; each
is, however, briefly winded up in its own stanza; while the structure
of Sprat's poem enabled him to hunt down his conceits through all the
doubling and winding of his long pindaric strophé. Dryden, for example,
says, that Cromwell strewed the island with victories,
Thick as the galaxy with stars is sown.
Sprat spins out nearly the same idea, in the following extraordinary
manner:
Others' great actions are
But thinly scattered, here and there;
At best, but all one single star;
But thine the milky way;
All one continued light of undistinguished day.
They thronged so close, that nought else could be seen,
Scarce any common sky did come between.
By turning the reader's attention to this comparison betwixt the poems
of Sprat and Dryden, I mean to shew, that our author was already
weaning himself from that franticly witty stile of composition, which
the most ingenious of his contemporaries continued to practise and
admire; although he did not at once abandon it, but retrenched his
quaint conceits before he finally discarded them.
The poem of Waller on Cromwell's death, excepting one unhappy and
celebrated instance of the bathos,[8] is the best of his compositions;
and, separately considered, must be allowed to be superior to that of
Dryden, by whom he was soon after so far distanced in the poetical
career.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 1: "What can be more extraordinary, than that a person of
mean birth, no fortune, no eminent qualities of body, which have
sometimes, or of mind, which have often, raised men to the highest
dignities, should have the courage to attempt, and the happiness to
succeed in, so improbable a design, as the destruction of one of the
most ancient, and most solid founded monarchies upon the earth? That
he should have the power, or boldness, to put his prince and master
to an open and infamous death? To banish that numerous and strongly
allied family? To do all this under the name and wages of a parliament?
To trample upon them, too, as he pleased, and spurn them out of doors
when he grew weary of them? To raise up a new and unheard-of monster
out of their ashes? To stifle that in the very infancy, and set up
himself above all things that ever were called sovereign in England?
To oppress all his enemies by arms, and all his friends afterwards by
artifice? To serve all parties patiently for a while, and to command
them victoriously at last? To over-run each corner of the three
nations, and overcome with equal facility both the riches of the south
and the poverty of the north? To be feared and courted by all foreign
princes, and adopted a brother to the gods of the earth? To call
together parliaments with a word of his pen, and scatter them again
with the breath of his mouth? To be humbly and daily petitioned, that
he would please to be hired, at the rate of two millions a year, to be
the master of those who had hired him before to be their servant? To
have the estates and lives of three kingdoms as much at his disposal,
as was the little inheritance of his father, and to be as noble and
liberal in the spending of them? And, lastly, (for there is no end of
all the particulars of his glory,) to bequeath all this with one word
to his posterity? To die with peace at home, and triumph abroad? To be
buried among kings, and with more than regal solemnity? And to leave a
name behind him, not to be extinguished but with the whole world, which
as it is now too little for his praises, so might have been too for his
conquests if the short line of his human life could have been stretched
out to the extent of his immortal designs?"--COWLEY'S _Works_, Vol. II.
p. 583.
Perhaps the facetious Tom Brown has hit upon the true reason of
Dryden's choice of a subject, when he makes him say, "that he had no
particular kindness for the person of Oliver; but that it was much
the same with the poets as with the Jews--a hero cannot start up in
any quarter of the world, be his quarrel right or wrong, but both are
apt to think him the Messias, and presently pitch upon him as the
fittest person to deliver the twelve tribes and the nine muses out of
captivity."--_Reasons of Mr Bayes' changing his religion._]
[Footnote 2:
Nor only didst thou for thy age provide,
But for the years to come beside;
Our after times, and late posterity,
Shall pay unto thy fame as much as we;
They too are made by thee.
When Fate did call thee to a higher throne,
And when thy mortal work was done;
When Heaven did say it, and thou must be gone,
Thou him to bear thy burden chose,
Who might, if any could, make us forget thy loss.
Nor hadst thou him designed,
Had he not been,
Not only to thy blood, but virtue, kin;
Not only heir unto thy throne, but mind:
'Tis he shall perfect all thy cares,
And with a finer thread weave out thy loom.
So one did bring the chosen people from
Their slavery and fears;
Led them through their pathless road,
Guided himself by God;
H'ad brought us to the borders, but a second hand
Did settle and secure them in the promised land.
_Verses to the happy Memory of the late Lord Protector._
]
[Footnote 3: This edition occurs in the Luttrell Collection, and the
title runs thus: "An Elegy on the Usurper O. C. by the Author of
'Absalom and Achitophel;' published to show the loyalty and integrity
of the Poet."
POSTSCRIPT.
The printing of these rhimes afflicts me more
Than all the drubs I in Rose-Alley bore;
This shows my nauseous, mercenary pen,
Would praise the vilest and the worst of men.
A rogue like Hodge[4] am I, the world well know it;
Hodge was his fiddler, and I, John, his poet.
This may prevent the pay for which I write;
For I for pay against my conscience fight.
I must confess, so infamous a knave
Can do no service, though the humblest slave:
Villains I praise, and patriots accuse; }
My railing and my fawning talents use; }
Just as they pay, I flatter or abuse }
But I to men in power a ---- am still,
To rub on any honest face they will.
Thus on I'll go; for libels I declare; }
Best friends no more than worst of foes I'll spare; }
And all this I can do, because I dare. }
He who writes on, and cudgels can defy,
And, knowing he'll be beaten, still writes on, am I.
_London, printed for J. Smith, 1681._
J. D.
]
[Footnote 4: Sir Roger L'Estrange, whose skill in music is said to have
amused Cromwell, who had some turn that way.]
[Footnote 5:
Thou, as once the healing serpent rose,
Was lifted up, not for thyself, but us.
]
[Footnote 6:
When Ajax died, the purple blood,
That from his gaping wound had flowed,
Turned into letters; every leaf
Had on it wrote his epitaph:
So from that crimson flood,
Which thou by fate of times wert led
Unwillingly to shed,
Letters and learning rose, and arts renewed.
]
[Footnote 7:
Like steel, when it much work hath past,
That which was rough does shine at last;
Thy arms, by being oftener used, did smoother grow.
]
[Footnote 8:
Beneath the tropics is our language spoke,
And _part of Flanders_ has received our yoke.
]
HEROIC STANZAS
CONSECRATED
TO THE MEMORY OF
HIS HIGHNESS OLIVER,
LATE LORD PROTECTOR OF THIS COMMONWEALTH,
WRITTEN AFTER THE CELEBRATING OF HIS FUNERAL.
I.
And now 'tis time; for their officious haste,
Who would before have borne him to the sky,
Like eager Romans, ere all rites were past,
Did let too soon the sacred eagle fly.[9]
II.
Though our best notes are treason to his fame,
Joined with the loud applause of public voice;
Since heaven, what praise we offer to his name,
Hath rendered too authentic by its choice.
III.
Though in his praise no arts can liberal be,
Since they, whose muses have the highest flown,
Add not to his immortal memory,
But do an act of friendship to their own:
IV.
Yet 'tis our duty, and our interest too,
Such monuments as we can build to raise;
Lest all the world prevent what we should do,
And claim a title in him by their praise.
V.
How shall I then begin, or where conclude,
To draw a fame so truly circular?
For in a round, what order can be shewed,
Where all the parts so equal perfect are?
VI.
His grandeur he derived from heaven alone;
For he was great, ere fortune made him so:
And wars, like mists that rise against the sun,
Made him but greater seem, not greater grow.
VII.
No borrowed bays his temples did adorn,
But to our crown he did fresh jewels bring;
Nor was his virtue poisoned soon as born,
With the too early thoughts of being king.
VIII.
Fortune, (that easy mistress to the young,
But to her ancient servants coy and hard,)
Him at that age her favourites ranked among,
When she her best-loved Pompey did discard.[10]
IX.
He, private, marked the faults of others' sway,
And set as sea-marks for himself to shun;
Not like rash monarchs, who their youth betray
By acts their age too late would wish undone.
X.
And yet dominion was not his design;
We owe that blessing, not to him, but heaven,
Which to fair acts unsought rewards did join;
Rewards, that less to him, than us, were given.
XI.
Our former chiefs, like sticklers of the war,
First sought to inflame the parties, then to poise:
The quarrel loved but did the cause abhor;
And did not strike to hurt, but make a noise.[11]
XII.
War, our consumption, was their gainful trade;
We inward bled whilst they prolonged our pain;
He fought to end our fighting, and essayed
To staunch the blood, by breathing of the vein.[12]
XIII.
Swift and resistless through the land he past,
Like that bold Greek, who did the East subdue;
And made to battles such heroic haste,
As if on wings of victory he flew.
XIV.
He fought, secure of fortune as of fame,
Till by new maps the island might be shewn;
Of conquests, which he strewed where'er he came,
Thick as the galaxy with stars is sown.[13]
XV.
His palms, though under weights they did not stand,
Still thrived;[14] no winter could his laurels fade:
Heaven, in his portrait, shewed a workman's hand,
And drew it perfect, yet without a shade.
XVI.
Peace was the prize of all his toil and care,
Which war had banished, and did now restore:
Bolognia's walls thus mounted in the air,
To seat themselves more surely than before.[15]
XVII.
Her safety rescued Ireland to him owes;[16]
And treacherous Scotland, to no interest true,
Yet blest that fate which did his arms dispose
Her land to civilize, as to subdue.[17]
XVIII.
Nor was he like those stars which only shine,
When to pale mariners they storms portend;
He had his calmer influence, and his mien
Did love and majesty together blend.
XIX.
'Tis true, his countenance did imprint an awe,
And naturally all souls to his did bow;
As wands of divination downward draw,
And point to beds where sovereign gold doth grow.[18]
XX.
When past all offerings to Feretrian Jove,[19]
He Mars deposed, and arms to gowns made yield;
Successful councils did him soon approve,
As fit for close intrigues, as open field.
XXI.
To suppliant Holland he vouchsafed a peace,
Our once bold rival of the British main;
Now tamely glad her unjust claim to cease,
And buy our friendship with her idol, gain.[20]
XXII.
Fame of the asserted sea, through Europe blown,
Made France and Spain ambitious of his love;
Each knew that side must conquer he would own,
And for him fiercely, as for empire, strove.
XXIII.
No sooner was the Frenchman's cause embraced,
Than the light Monsieur the grave Don outweighed:[21]
His fortune turned the scale where'er 'twas cast,
Though Indian mines were in the other laid.
XXIV.
When absent, yet we conquered in his right;
For, though some meaner artist's skill were shown,
In mingling colours, or in placing light,
Yet still the fair designment was his own.
XXV.
For, from all tempers he could service draw;
The worth of each, with its alloy, he knew;
And, as the confident of Nature, saw
How she complexions did divide and brew.[22]
XXVI.
Or he their single virtues did survey,
By intuition, in his own large breast;
Where all the rich ideas of them lay,
That were the rule and measure to the rest.
XXVII.
When such heroic virtue heaven sets out,
The stars, like commons, sullenly obey;
Because it drains them when it comes about,
And therefore is a tax they seldom pay.[23]
XXVIII.
From this high spring our foreign conquests flow,
Which yet more glorious triumphs do portend;
Since their commencement to his arms they owe,
If springs as high as fountains may ascend.
XXIX.
He made us freemen of the continent,
Whom nature did like captives treat before;
To nobler preys the English lion sent,
And taught him first in Belgian walks to roar.[24]
XXX.
That old unquestioned pirate of the land,
Proud Rome, with dread the fate of Dunkirk heard;
And, trembling, wished behind more Alps to stand,
Although an Alexander were her guard.[25]
XXXI.
By his command we boldly crossed the line.[26]
And bravely fought where southern stars arise;
We traced the far-fetched gold unto the mine,
And that, which bribed our fathers, made our prize.
XXXII.
Such was our prince; yet owned a soul above
The highest acts it could produce to show:
Thus, poor mechanic arts in public move,
Whilst the deep secrets beyond practice go.
XXXIII.
Nor died he when his ebbing fame went less,
But when fresh laurels courted him to live:
He seemed but to prevent some new success,
As if above what triumphs earth could give.
XXXIV.
His latest victories still thickest came,
As near the centre motion doth increase;
'Till he, pressed down by his own weighty name,
Did, like the vestal, under spoils decease.[27]
XXXV.
But first the ocean as a tribute sent
The giant prince of all her watry herd;
And the isle, when her protecting Genius went,
Upon his obsequies loud sighs conferred.[28]
XXXVI.
No civil broils have since his death arose,
But faction now by habit does obey;
And wars have that respect for his repose,
As winds for halcyons when they breed at sea.
XXXVII.
His ashes in a peaceful urn shall rest;[29]
His name a great example stands, to show,
How strangely high endeavours may be blessed,
Where piety and valour jointly go.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 9: Note I.]
[Footnote 10: Note II.]
[Footnote 11: Note III.]
[Footnote 12: Note IV.]
[Footnote 13: Note V.]
[Footnote 14: Note VI.]
[Footnote 15: Note VII.]
[Footnote 16: Note VIII.]
[Footnote 17: Note IX.]
[Footnote 18: Note X.]
[Footnote 19: To which deity the Romans usually sacrificed before
marching to war, according to an ancient institution of Romulus.]
[Footnote 20: Note XI.]
[Footnote 21: Note XII.]
[Footnote 22: Note XIII.]
[Footnote 23: The author seems to allude to the old proverb, "_Sapiens
dominabitur astris_." The influence of the stars yielded reluctantly to
Cromwell's heroic virtues, as the commons submit sullenly to be taxed.]
[Footnote 24: Note XIV.]
[Footnote 25: Note XV.]
[Footnote 26: Note XVI.]
[Footnote 27: Note XVII.]
[Footnote 28: Note XVIII.]
[Footnote 29: Note XIX.]
NOTES
ON
HEROIC STANZAS.
Note I.
_And now 'tis time; for their officious haste,
Who would before have borne him to the sky,
Like eager Romans, ere all rites were past,
Did let too soon the sacred eagle fly._--St. I. p. 8.
Cromwell's disease, a fever and tertian ague, was accompanied by fits
of swooning, which occasioned, more than once, a premature report of
his death. It was probably this circumstance, which made some of his
fanatical chaplains doubt the fact, after it had actually taken place.
"Say not he is dead," exclaimed one of them, like Omar over the corpse
of Mahomet; "for, if ever the Lord heard my prayers, he has assured me
of the life of the Protector." The two last lines of the stanza allude
to the Roman custom of letting an eagle fly from the funeral pile of a
deceased emperor, which represented his spirit soaring to the regions
of bliss, or his guardian genius convoying it thither. It is described
at length in the fourth book of Herodian, who says, that, after this
ceremony of consecration, the deceased emperor was enrolled among the
Roman deities.
Note II.
_Fortune, (that easy mistress to the young,
But to her ancient servants coy and hard,)
Him at that age her favourites ranked among,
When she her best-loved Pompey did discard._--St. VIII. p. 9.
Cromwell was upwards of forty before he made any remarkable figure; and
Pompey, when he had attained the same period of life, was deserted by
the good fortune which had accompanied his more early career.
Note III.
_Our former chiefs, like sticklers of the war,
First sought to inflame the parties, then to poise:
The quarrel loved, but did the cause abhor;
And did not strike to hurt, but make a noise._--St. XI. p. 10.
Essex, Manchester, Sir William Waller, and the earlier generals of
the Parliament, were all of the Presbyterian party, who, though they
had drawn the sword against the king, had no will to throw away the
scabbard. They were disposed so to carry on the war, that, neither
party being too much weakened, a sound and honourable peace might have
been accomplished on equal terms. But the Independants flew at higher
game; and, as the more violent party usually prevail during times of
civil discord, they attained their object. Cromwell openly accused the
Earl of Manchester of having refused to put an end to the war, after
the last battle at Newbury, when a single charge upon the King's rear
might have dissipated his army for ever. "I offered," he averred, "to
perform the work with my own brigade of horse; let Manchester and the
rest look on, if they thought fit: but he obstinately refused to permit
the attempt, alleging, that, if the king's army was beaten, he would
find another; but if that of the Parliament was overthrown, there would
be an end of their cause, and they would be all punished as traitors."
This suspicion of the compromising temper of the Presbyterian leaders,
led to the famous _self-denying ordinance_, by which all members of
both houses were declared incapable of holding a military command.
By this new model, all the power of the army was thrown, nominally,
into the hands of Fairfax, but, really and effectually, into that of
Cromwell, who was formally excepted from the operation of the act, and
of the Independants; men determined to push the war to extremity, and
who at length triumphed over both King and Parliament.
Note IV.
_He fought to end our fighting, and essayed
To staunch the blood, by breathing of the vein._--St. XII. p. 10.
This passage, which seems to imply nothing farther than that Cromwell
conducted the war so as to push it to a conclusion, was afterwards
invidiously interpreted by Dryden's enemies, as containing an explicit
approbation of the execution of Charles I.
Thus, in the panegyric quoted in the introductory remarks to this poem,
Such wonders have thy powerful raptures shewn,
Pythagoras' transmigration thou'st outdone;
His souls of heroes and great chiefs expired,
Down into birds and noble beasts retired:
But then to savages and monsters dire,
Canst infuse sparks even of celestial fire;
Make treason glory, murderers heroes live,
And even to regicides canst godhead give.
Thus in thy songs the yet warm bloody dart,
Fresh reeking in a martyred monarch's heart,
Burnished by verse, and polished by thy lines,
The rubies in imperial crowns outshines;
Whilst in applause to that sad day's success,
So black a theme in so divine a dress,
Thy soaring flights Prometheus' thefts excel,
Whilst thou steal'st fire from heaven to enlighten hell.
The same accusation is urged in another libel, called "The Laureat:"
Nay, had our Charles, by Heaven's severe decree,
Been found, and murdered in the royal tree,
Even thou hadst praised the fact. His father slain,
Thou call'dst but _gently breathing of a vein_.
Impious and villainous, to bless the blow }
That laid at once three lofty nations low, }
And gave the royal cause a fatal overthrow! }
Another witling, to add to the heinousness of this expression, assures
us, that Dryden had at first declared for the king, then for the
parliament, and, finally, for Cromwell:
I for the Royal Martyr first declared,
But, ere his head was off, I was prepared
To own the Rump, and for that cause did rhime;
But, those kicked out, next moment turned to him
Who routed them: called him my sovereign,
And praised his opening of the kingly vein.
_Dialogue in Bedlam between Oliver's Porter, Fidler, and Poet._
These are examples of the inveteracy, with which Dryden's enemies were
ready to wrest his expressions from the common interpretation into one
more strong and unwarrantable. Dryden, sufficiently embarrassed by the
praises he had bestowed on the Usurper, a charge from which he could
not vindicate himself, took no notice of the uncandid lengths to which
it was carried.
Note V.
_He fought, secure of fortune as of fame,
Till by new maps the island might be shewn;
Of conquests, which he strewed where'er he came,
Thick as the galaxy with stars is sown._--St. XIV. p. 10.
Notwithstanding the inconstancy of Victory during the civil war, she
never deserted the banner of Cromwell. Even in undecided conflicts, the
brigade, or wing, with which he fought, had always the superiority. The
royalists never once saw him fly before them, during all the pitched
battles in which he was engaged in England, Scotland, and Ireland.
Note VI.
_His palms, though under weights they did not stand,
Still thrived._--St. XV. p. 10.
It was anciently a popular notion, that the palm-tree throve best when
pressed down with weights. An old scholiast defines it as "_arbor
nobilissima illa, quæ nulli cedit ponderi, sed contra assurgit et
reluctatur_."--Fabri Thesaurus ad verbum _palma_.
Note VII.
_Bolognia's walls thus mounted in the air,
To seat themselves more surely than before._--St. XVI. p. 11.
This odd simile is borrowed from a very singular, and somewhat dubious
event, said to have happened during the siege of Bologna in 1512. A
mine had been run by the Spanish besieging army under a part of the
wall, on which was built a chapel dedicated to the Blessed Virgin.
Upon the explosion, the chapel and portion of the wall which formed
its support were heaved into the air, so high, that (in spite of all
the smoke and dust accompanying such an eruption) an elegant historian
assures us, the besiegers could see, through the vacant space, the
buildings of the town, and the defenders ready to man the breach.
Nevertheless, the chapel and fragment of wall descended so exactly into
the space they had formerly occupied, that the breach was completely
and accurately repaired. The chapel acquired by this incident a great
reputation for miraculous sanctity. The event is more fully narrated in
the following passage of the original:
"_Finita in ultimo la mina, e stando l'esercito armato per dare
incontinente la battaglia, la quale perchè si desse con maggiori forze,
era stata richiamata l'antiguardia, fece il Navarra dare il fuoco alla
mina; la quale con grandissimo impeto, e romore gittò talmente in alto
la cappella, che per quello spatio, che rimase tra'l terreno, e'l muro
gittato in alto, fu da quelli, ch' erano fuora, veduta apertamente la
città dentro, et i soldati che stavano preparati per difenderla; ma
subito scendendo in giừ ritornò il muro intero nel luogo medesimo, onde
la violentia del fuoco l'areva sbarrato, e si ricongiunse insieme,
come se mai non fusse stato mosso: onde si non si potendo assaltare
da quella parte, i capitani giudicurono non si dovere dare solamente
dall' altra. Attribuirono questo caso i Bolognesi a miracolo, riputando
impossibile, che, senza l'ajutorio divino, fusse potuto riconguignersi
cosi appunto ne' medesimi fondamenti; onde fu dipoi ampliata quella
cappella, e frequentata con non piccola divotione del popolo._"
L'Istoria di Guicciardini, Libro Decimo.
Note VIII.
_Her safety rescued Ireland to him owes._--St. XVII. p. 11.
The gallant Ormond, who commanded for the king in Ireland, had reduced
the island almost entirely under the royal authority, excepting the
cities of Dublin and Londonderry, when the arrival of Cromwell,
appointed lord governor by the parliament, entirely changed the
scene. In less than ten months, that fated general over-ran the whole
kingdom. Tredagh he took by storm; and such terror was struck into the
minds of the Irish, by the bloody execution attending and following
that assault, that almost all the other garrisons surrendered without
resistance, or revolted to the parliament.
Note IX.
----_Treacherous Scotland, to no interest true,
Yet blest that fate which did his arms dispose
Her land to civilize, as to subdue._--St. XVII. p. 11.
Cromwell's wars in Scotland form a brilliant part of his history. After
narrowly escaping the snares of the veteran Lesley, whose admirable
manœuvres compelled him, with woeful anticipations of farther
misfortune, to retreat towards Dunbar, he was enabled, by the rashness
of the Scottish kirkmen, totally to defeat that fine army. Edinburgh
castle next surrendered; and the war being carried across the Forth,
the Scots were again routed with slaughter at Inverkeithing. Then
followed the irruption of the king into England, and the fatal defeat
at Worcester, which Cromwell used to call his "crowning mercy."
Scotland is here called treacherous, because, having been the first to
take up arms against King Charles I. she was the last to lay them down
in behalf of his son; or rather, because the Presbyterian party in that
country joined the young King against the Independants, as they had
joined the Parliament against the Prelatists: for, the war, which in
England related chiefly to dissentions concerning the Civil government,
was in Scotland entirely to be referred to religious controversy.
Cromwell certainly did much to civilize Scotland. Some of his benefits
were intentionally conferred, others flowed indirectly from the
measures he adopted for the consolidation of his own authority. The
English judges, whom he appointed, introduced into the administration
of justice a purity and vigour, with which Scotland had been hitherto
unacquainted.[30] By the impoverishment, exile, and annihilation of
the principal baronial families, the chains of feudal bondage were
lightened upon the peasantry; and the pay of 18,000 men, levied to
maintain the constituted authorities, enriched the lower orders,
amongst whom it was spent. The English soldiers also introduced into
Scotland some of the arts of a more civilized country. We may, however,
hesitate to believe, that they taught the citizens of Aberdeen to
make shoes and plant kail; because Dr Johnson, upon whose authority
the tradition is given, informs us, that the peasantry live upon that
vegetable alone, and that, when they had not kail, they probably had
nothing; in which case, the English military guests had better have
learned from their Aberdonian hosts the art of living upon nothing,
than taught them a branch of gardening which their habits of abstinence
rendered totally superfluous. But the garrisons established by Cromwell
upon the skirts, and in the passes of the Highlands, restrained the
predatory clans, and taught them, in no gentle manner, that respect
for the property of their Lowland neighbours, which their lawful
monarchs had vainly endeavoured to inculcate. An officer of engineers,
quartered at Inverness shortly after 1720, says, that the name of
Oliver still struck terror through the Highlands; and one very ancient
laird declared to him, the appearance of the Protector's colours were
so strongly impressed on his memory, that he still thought he saw them
before his eyes, spread out by the wind, and bearing, in great golden
characters, the word _Emanuel_.--_Letters from the North of Scotland_,
Vol. I. p. 274.
Note X.
_As wands of divination downward draw,
And point to beds where sovereign gold doth grow._--St. XIX. p. 11.
The rod of divination, an admirable implement for a mineralogist, was
a piece of forked hazel, which, being poised on the back of the hand,
and so carried with great caution, inclined itself sympathetically to
the earth, where mines or hidden treasures lay concealed beneath the
surface. Derrick refers readers for further information concerning
the properties of this marvellous rod, and the way of using it, to _La
Physique Occultee, ou Traité de la Baguette Divinatoire_, published at
Amsterdam, 1613.
Note XI.
_To suppliant Holland he vouchsafed a peace,
Our once bold rival of the British main;
Now tamely glad her unjust claim to cease,
And buy our friendship with her idol, gain._--St. XXI. p. 12.
The war betwixt the republics had been disastrous to the Dutch, and the
peace of 1654 was degrading to the States, though not proportionally
disadvantageous. They consented to desert the cause of the exiled
Stuarts, and to punish the authors of the massacre at Amboyna; they
yielded to the English the honour of the flag in the narrow seas; they
agreed to pay to the East India Company eighty-five thousand pounds, in
compensation of damage done to them; and they consented to the cession
of the island of Polerone in the East Indies: lastly, by a secret
article, the province of Holland guaranteed an assurance, that neither
the young Prince of Orange, whose connection with the exiled family
rendered him an object of the Protector's suspicion, nor any of his
family, should be invested with the office of Stadtholder.
Note XII.
_No sooner was the Frenchman's cause embraced,
Than the light Monsieur the grave Don outweighed._--St. XXIII. p. 12.
In 1655, Cromwell allied himself with the rising power of France
against the declining monarchy of Spain; less guided, probably, by any
general views of political expedience, than by the consideration, that
the American and West India settlements of the latter power lay open
to assault from the English fleet; while, had he embraced the other
side, his own dominions were exposed to an invasion from the exiled
king, with French auxiliaries. The splendid triumphs of Blake gave some
ground for the poetical flourishes in the text.
Note XIII.
_And, as the confident of Nature, saw
How she complexions did divide and brew._--St. XXV. p. 12.
It was still fashionable, in the seventeenth century, to impute
the distinguishing shades of human character to the influence of
complexion. The doctrine is concisely summed up in the following
lines, which occur in an old MS. in the British Museum:
With a red man rede thy rede,
With a brown man break thy bread,
On a pale man draw thy knife,
From a black man keep thy wife.
Note XIV.
_He made us freemen of the continent,
Whom nature did like captives treat before;
To nobler preys the English lion sent,
And taught him first in Belgian walks to roar._--St. XXIX. p. 13.
The poet alludes to the exertions of the six thousand British
auxiliaries, whom Cromwell sent to join Marshal Turenne in Flanders.
These veterans, seasoned to the desperate and close mode of fighting,
which the inveteracy of civil war had introduced, astonished the French
by their audacity, and their contempt of the usual military precautions
and calculations. There is a curious account, by Sir Thomas Morgan, of
their exploits at Dunkirk and Ypres, which occurs in the third volume
of the Harleian Miscellany, p. 326. The Duke of York was then with the
Spanish army; and Dryden, on the change of times, lived to celebrate
him for his gallant opposition to that body, which he here personifies
as the British Lion. See the Dedication of the "Conquest of Granada,"
Vol. IV. p. 11. The English were made "free-men of the continent" by
the cession of Dunkirk; and it is believed, that this was the first
step towards giving England a share in the partition of Flanders, when
that strange project was disconcerted by the death of Cromwell. There
was no avoiding allusion to the British Lion. Sprat has also sent him
forth, seeking whom he may devour:
----From his eyes
Made the same dreadful lightning rise,
Made him again affright the neighbouring floods,
His mighty thunder sound through all the woods.
Note XV.
_That old unquestioned pirate of the land,
Proud Rome, with dread the fate of Dunkirk heard;
And, trembling, wished behind more Alps to stand,
Although an Alexander were her guard._--St. XXX. p. 13.
The pope being called Alexander the Sixth, Dryden did not disdain to
turn this stanza upon an allusion to the Macedonian hero; although it
is obvious, that the pontiff was not a more effectual guardian to his
city by bearing that warlike name, than if he had been called Benedict
or Innocent. True it is, however, that the pope feared, and with great
reason, some hostile attack from the powerful English squadron which
swept the Mediterranean, under the command of Blake. Conscious that
his papal character rendered him the object of the most inveterate
enmity to the military saints of Cromwell's commonwealth, he had every
reason to believe that they would find pride, pleasure, and profit, in
attacking Antichrist, even in Babylon itself.
Note XVI.
_By his command we boldly crossed the line_, &c.--St. XXXI. p. 13.
A powerful army and squadron were sent by Cromwell, under the command
of Penn and Venables, to attack Hispaniola. The commanders quarrelled,
and the main design misgave: they took, however, the island of Jamaica,
whose importance long remained unknown; for, notwithstanding the
manner in which Dryden has glossed over these operations in the West
Indies, they were at the time universally considered as having been
unfortunate. See "The World's mistake in Oliver Cromwell."
Note XVII.
_Till he, pressed down by his own weighty name,
Did, like the vestal, under spoils decease._--St. XXXIV. p. 14.
Tarpeia, the virgin who betrayed a gate of Rome to the Sabines,
demanded, in recompense, what they wore on their left arms, meaning
their golden bracelets. But the Sabines, detesting her treachery, or
not disposed to gratify her avarice, chose to understand, that her
request related to their bucklers, and flung them upon her in such
numbers as to kill her.
Note XVIII.
_But first the ocean as a tribute sent
The giant prince of all her watery herd;
And the isle, when her protecting Genius went,
Upon his obsequies loud sighs conferred._--St. XXXV. p. 14.
The circumstance, of the dreadful storm which happened on the day of
Cromwell's death, is noticed by all writers. Many vessels were dashed
on the coast, and trees and houses were overthrown, upon the land. It
seemed as if that active spirit, which had rode in the whirlwind while
he lived, could not depart without an universal convulsion of nature.
Waller has touched upon this remarkable incident with great felicity:
We must resign; heaven his great soul does claim,
In storms as loud as his immortal fame;
His dying groans, his last breath, shakes our isle,
And trees uncut fall for his funeral pile;
About his palace their broad roots were tost
Into the air:--so Romulus was lost;
New Rome in such a tempest missed her king,
And from obeying fell to worshipping.
But, while the authors of these threnodies explained this prodigious
storm as attendant on the deification of the Protector, or at least the
effects of the Genius of Britain's unbounded lamentation, the cavaliers
unanimously agreed, that the tempest accompanied the transportation of
his spirit to the infernal regions.
Note XIX.
_His ashes in a peaceful urn shall rest._--St. XXXVII. p. 14.
This prophecy, like that announcing the final close of civil broils, in
the preceding stanza, was not doomed to be accomplished. The contending
factions resumed their struggles in a month after the Protector's
death; his body was dragged from the burial place of princes, to be
exposed on the gibbet; and his head placed on the end of Westminster
Hall. There is, however, an unauthenticated story, that Cromwell,
foreseeing the Restoration, had commanded his remains to be interred
secretly, and by night, in the field of Naseby, as near as possible to
the spot where his prowess had gained that bloody day; and that, by a
piece of refined and ingenious malice, his friends caused the body of
Charles to be deposited in the empty coffin, which had received the
funeral honours rendered to the Protector; thus turning the disgrace,
which the royalists intended for the body of Cromwell, upon that of
the royal martyr. The story may be found in the Harleian Miscellany,
Vol. II. p. 269. But it is unworthy of credit, and seems to have been
grounded upon the circumstance, that Cromwell's body, being in a very
corrupted state, was buried privately before the grand procession. The
restoration of the house of Stuart seemed then to be an event much
out of the reach of calculation, even to persons less sanguine than
Cromwell.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 30: A principal evil, amongst the native Scottish judges, was
a predilection for their own allies and kinsmen. A judge, who lived
within the eighteenth century, justified this partiality for "kith,
kin, and ally," by saying, "that, upon his conscience, he could never
see any of his friends were in the _wrong_;" and the upright conduct
of Cromwell's English judges being objected to him, he answered, "it
was not wonderful, since they were a set of _kinless louns_ who had no
family connections to bias them."]
ASTRÆA REDUX.
A POEM.
ASTRÆA REDUX.
A POEM.
After so many years of civil war and domestic tyranny, the Restoration,
an almost hopeless event, established the crown upon the head of
the lawful successor, and the government upon its original footing.
Dryden, among the numerous, I had almost said innumerable, bards,[31]
who celebrated, or attempted to celebrate, this surprising event,
distinguished himself by the following poem, to which he has given
the apt name of _Astræa Redux_, from the hopes of justice and liberty
returning with the lawful king.
The tone of praise, which Dryden has adopted, exhibits his usual
felicity. There do not here occur any of these rants about the
antiquity of the royal line,[32] and the indefeasible right of the
lawful successor, which are the common topics of the herd, who offered
poetical congratulation to the restored monarch. Dryden rejoices with
the chastised triumph of one, that had not forgot what it was to mourn.
He looks back, as well as forwards; and it is upon the past sufferings
of the people, and of the monarch, that he grounds the hope and
expectation of their future happiness. The poet was perhaps sensible,
that the claim of loyal merit was rather new in his family and
person, and ought not therefore to be expressed with the extravagant
colouring of the cavaliers. He ventures indeed upon prophecy, although
past experience might have taught him it was dangerous ground. One
prediction, however, has been (_magno licet intervallo_) accomplished
to its fullest extent in our own age:
Your much-loved fleet shall, with a wide command,
Besiege the petty monarchs of the land.
The poem exhibits the taste which belongs to the earlier class of
Dryden's compositions, bearing the same marks of attachment to the
stile of Waller and Davenant. Some of the similes are brought out with
singular ingenuity. Nothing can be more elegant than the turn he gives
to the slow, gentle, and almost imperceptible manner, in which the
great change which he celebrates was accomplished:
---- ---- While we
The effect did feel, but scarce the manner see.
Frosts, that constrain the ground, and birth deny
To flowers that in its womb expecting lie,
Do seldom their usurping power withdraw,
But raging floods pursue their hasty thaw;
Our thaw was mild, the frost not chased away,
But kindly lost in heat of lengthened day.
On the other hand, it is surely unnecessary to point out to the reader
the confusion of metaphor, where Virtue is said to dress the wounds of
Charles with laurels;[33] the impertinent antithesis of finding "light
alone in dark afflictions;" and the extravagance of representing the
winds, that wafted Charles, as out of breath with joy. These, and other
outrageous flights of wit, have been noticed and blamed by Johnson. I
am not certain whether that great critic is equally just, in severely
censuring the passage in which there is a short allusion to Heathen
mythology.[34] Where the tender, the passionate, or the sublime, ought
to prevail, an allusion to classical fiction seldom fails to interrupt
the tone of feeling which the author should seek to preserve; but in
a poem, of which elegance of expression and ingenuity of device are
the principal attributes, an allusion to the customs of Greece, or of
Rome, while it gives a classic air to the composition, seems as little
misplaced, as an apt quotation from the authors in which they are
recorded.
The first edition of this poem is printed in folio by J. M. for Henry
Herringman, 1660. It affords few and trifling corrections.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 31: There are all shapes and forms of poetical addresses
upon this occasion, by clergymen, and scholars, and persons of honour.
Among them, the verses by Waller are most celebrated; though inferior
to those which he composed on the Protector's death. When Charles made
this remark, the bard, with great felicity, reminded his Majesty, that
poets always excel in fiction. Among other topics, he enlarges on
the "tried virtue, and the sacred word," of the witty monarch. It is
singular, that, of the three distinguished poets, who solemnized by
elegy the death of the Protector, Dryden and Waller should have hailed
the restoration of the Stuart line, and Sprat have favoured their most
arbitrary aggressions upon liberty.]
[Footnote 32: In "A Poem to His Most Excellent Majesty, Charles the
Second, _Ego beneficio tuo (Cæsar) quas ante audiebam hodie vidi Deos:
Nec feliciorem ullum vitæ meæ aut optavi aut sensi Diem_, by H. Buston,
_Winton_; together with another, by Hen. Bold, olim Winton," the royal
genealogy is thus deduced from the primitive father of mankind:
On which side shall we trace your stock? beyond
The loins of Egbert, or of Pharamond;
Now sunk in Adam's entrails it is found,
And thence shoots through the world to you all crowned.
Vain boldness of the age (age of deceits),
Knew this, and therefore coined Præ-Adamites.
]
[Footnote 33:
His wounds he took like laurels on his breast,
Which by his virtue were with laurels dressed.
]
[Footnote 34:
With alga, who the sacred altar strews?
To all the sea-gods Charles an offering owes;
A bull to thee, Portunus, shall be slain;
A lamb to you, ye tempests of the main.
]
ASTRÆA REDUX.
A POEM,
ON THE HAPPY RESTORATION AND RETURN OF HIS SACRED MAJESTY, CHARLES THE
SECOND, 1660.
_Jam redit et virgo, redeunt Saturnia regna._ VIRG.
The last great age, foretold by sacred rhimes,
Renews its finished course; Saturnian times
Roll round again.
Now with a general peace the world was blest,
While ours, a world divided from the rest,
A dreadful quiet fell, and worser far
Than arms, a sullen interval of war.
Thus when black clouds draw down the lab'ring skies,
Ere yet abroad the winged thunder flies,
An horrid stillness first invades the ear,
And in that silence we the tempest fear.[35]
The ambitious Swede, like restless billows tost,
On this hand gaining what on that he lost,
Though in his life he blood and ruin breathed,
To his now guideless kingdom peace bequeathed;[36]
And heaven, that seemed regardless of our fate,
For France and Spain did miracles create;
Such mortal quarrels to compose in peace,
As nature bred, and interest did increase.
We sighed to hear the fair Iberian bride
Must grow a lily to the lily's side;[37]
While our cross stars denied us Charles' bed,
Whom our first flames and virgin love did wed.
For his long absence church and state did groan;
Madness the pulpit, faction seized the throne:
Experienced age in deep despair was lost,
To see the rebel thrive, the loyal crost:
Youth, that with joys had unacquainted been,
Envied gray hairs, that once good days had seen:
We thought our sires, not with their own content,
Had, ere we came to age, our portion spent.
Nor could our nobles hope their bold attempt,
Who ruined crowns, would coronets exempt:
For when, by their designing leaders taught
To strike at power, which for themselves they sought,
The vulgar, gulled into rebellion, armed,
Their blood to action by the prize was warmed.
The sacred purple, then, and scarlet gown,
Like sanguine dye to elephants, was shewn.[38]
Thus, when the bold Typhœus scaled the sky,
And forced great Jove from his own heaven to fly,
(What king, what crown, from treason's reach is free,
If Jove and Heaven can violated be?)
The lesser gods, that shared his prosperous state,
All suffered in the exiled Thunderer's fate.
The rabble now such freedom did enjoy,
As winds at sea, that use it to destroy:
Blind as the Cyclop, and as wild as he,
They owned a lawless savage liberty,
Like that our painted ancestors so prized,
Ere empire's arts their breasts had civilized.
How great were then our Charles' woes, who thus
Was forced to suffer for himself and us!
He, tossed by fate, and hurried up and down,
Heir to his father's sorrows, with his crown,
Could taste no sweets of youth's desired age,
But found his life too true a pilgrimage.
Unconquered yet in that forlorn estate,
His manly courage overcame his fate:
His wounds he took, like Romans, on his breast,
Which by his virtue were with laurels drest.
As souls reach heaven, while yet in bodies pent,
So did he live above his banishment.
That sun, which we beheld with cozened eyes
Within the water, moved along the skies.
How easy 'tis, when destiny proves kind,
With full-spread sails to run before the wind!
But those, that 'gainst stiff gales laveering go,
Must be at once resolved, and skilful too.
He would not, like soft Otho, hope prevent,
But stayed, and suffered fortune to repent.[39]
These virtues Galba in a stranger sought,
And Piso to adopted empire brought,[40]
How shall I then my doubtful thoughts express,
That must his sufferings both regret and bless!
For, when his early valour heaven had crost,
And all at Worc'ster but the honour lost;[41]
Forced into exile from his rightful throne,
He made all countries where he came his own;
And, viewing monarchs' secret arts of sway,
A royal factor for his kingdoms lay.
Thus, banished David spent abroad his time,
When to be God's anointed was his crime;
And, when restored, made his proud neighbours rue
Those choice remarks he from his travels drew.
Nor is he only by afflictions shown
To conquer others' realms, but rule his own;
Recovering hardly what he lost before,
His right endears it much, his purchase more.
Inured to suffer ere he came to reign,
No rash procedure will his actions stain:
To business ripened by digestive thought,
His future rule is into method brought;
As they, who, first, proportion understand,
With easy practice reach a master's hand.
Well might the ancient poets then confer
On Night the honoured name of Counsellor;
Since, struck with rays of prosperous fortune blind,
We light alone in dark afflictions find.
In such adversities to sceptres trained,
The name of Great his famous grandsire gained;[42]
Who yet, a king alone in name and right,
With hunger, cold, and angry Jove did fight;
Shocked by a covenanting League's vast powers,
As holy and as catholic as ours:[43]
'Till Fortune's fruitless spite had made it known,
Her blows not shook, but riveted, his throne.
Some lazy ages, lost in sleep and ease,
No action leave to busy chronicles:
Such, whose supine felicity but makes
In story chasms, in epocha[44] mistakes;
O'er whom Time gently shakes his wings of down,
Till with his silent sickle they are mown.
Such is not Charles[45] his too too active age,
Which, governed by the wild distempered rage
Of some black star, infecting all the skies,
Made him at his own cost, like Adam, wise.
Tremble, ye nations, which, secure before,
Laughed at those arms that 'gainst ourselves we bore;
Rouzed by the lash of his own stubborn tail,
Our Lion now will foreign foes assail.
With alga, who the sacred altar strews?
To all the sea-gods Charles an offering owes:
A bull to thee, Portunus, shall be slain,
A lamb to you, ye tempests of the main:[46]
For those loud storms, that did against him roar,
Have cast his shipwrecked vessel on the shore.
Yet, as wise artists mix their colours so,
That by degrees they from each other go;
Black steals unheeded from the neighbouring white,
Without offending the well-cozened sight:
So on us stole our blessed change; while we
The effect did feel, but scarce the manner see.
Frosts, that constrain the ground, and birth deny
To flowers that in its womb expecting lie,
Do seldom their usurping power withdraw,
But raging floods pursue their hasty thaw;
Our thaw was mild, the cold not chased away,
But lost in kindly heat of lengthened day.
Heaven would no bargain for its blessings drive,
But what we could not pay for, freely give.
The Prince of Peace would, like himself, confer
A gift unhoped, without the price of war:
Yet, as he knew his blessing's worth, took care,
That we should know it by repeated prayer;
Which stormed the skies, and ravished Charles from thence,
As heaven itself is took by violence.
Booth's forward valour only served to show,
He durst that duty pay, we all did owe:[47]
The attempt was fair; but heaven's prefixed hour
Not come: so, like the watchful traveller,
That by the moon's mistaken light did rise,
Lay down again, and closed his weary eyes.
'Twas Monk, whom Providence designed to loose
Those real bonds false freedom did impose.
The blessed saints, that watched this turning scene,
Did from their stars with joyful wonder lean,
To see small clues draw vastest weights along,
Not in their bulk, but in their order strong.
Thus, pencils can, by one slight touch, restore
Smiles to that changed face that wept before.
With ease such fond chimeras we pursue,
As fancy frames for fancy to subdue:
But when ourselves to action we betake,
It shuns the mint, like gold that chemists make.[48]
How hard was then his task, at once to be
What in the body natural we see!
Man's architect distinctly did ordain
The charge of muscles, nerves, and of the brain,
Through viewless conduits spirits to dispense;
The springs of motion from the seat of sense.
'Twas not the hasty product of a day,
But the well-ripened fruit of wise delay.
He, like a patient angler, ere he strook,
Would let them play a while upon the hook.
Our healthful food the stomach labours thus,
At first embracing what it straight doth crush.
Wise leaches will not vain receipts obtrude,
While growing pains pronounce the humours crude:
Deaf to complaints, they wait upon the ill,
Till some safe crisis authorize their skill.
Nor could his acts too close a vizard wear,
To 'scape their eyes whom guilt had taught to fear,
And guard with caution that polluted nest,
Whence Legion twice before was dispossest:[49]
Once sacred house, which when they entered in,
They thought the place could sanctify a sin;
Like those, that vainly hoped kind heaven would wink,
While to excess on martyrs' tombs they drink.
And, as devouter Turks first warn their souls
To part, before they taste forbidden bowls,[50]
So these, when their black crimes they went about,
First timely charmed their useless conscience out.
Religion's name against itself was made;
The shadow served the substance to invade:
Like zealous missions, they did care pretend
Of souls, in shew, but made the gold their end.
The incensed powers beheld with scorn, from high,
An heaven so far distant from the sky,
Which durst, with horses' hoofs that beat the ground,
And martial brass, bely the thunder's sound[51].
'Twas hence, at length, just vengeance thought it fit
To speed their ruin by their impious wit:
Thus Sforza, cursed with a too fertile brain,
Lost by his wiles the power has wit did gain.[52]
Henceforth their fougue must spend at lesser rate,
Than in its flames to wrap a nation's fate.
Suffered to live, they are like Helots set,
A virtuous shame within us to beget;[53]
For, by example most we sinned before,
And, glass-like,[54] clearness mixed with frailty bore.
But since, reformed by what we did amiss,
We by our sufferings learn to prize our bliss:
Like early lovers, whose unpractised hearts
Were long the may-game of malicious arts,
When once they find their jealousies were vain,
With double heat renew their fires again.
'Twas this produced the joy, that hurried o'er
Such swarms of English to the neighbouring shore,[55]
To fetch that prize, by which Batavia made
So rich amends for our impoverished trade.
Oh, had you seen from Scheveline's barren shore,[56]
(Crowded with troops, and barren now no more,)
Afflicted Holland to his farewell bring
True sorrow, Holland to regret a king![57]
While waiting him his royal fleet did ride,
And willing winds to their lower'd sails denied.
The wavering streamers, flags, and standart[58] out,
The merry seamen's rude but chearful shout;
And last the cannons' voice that shook the skies, }
And, as it fares in sudden ecstasies, }
At once bereft us both of ears and eyes. }
The Naseby, now no longer England's shame,
But better to be lost in Charles his name,[59]
(Like some unequal bride in nobler sheets)
Receives her lord; the joyful London meets
The princely York, himself alone a freight;
The Swiftsure groans beneath great Gloster's weight:[60]
Secure as when the halcyon breeds, with these,
He, that was born to drown, might cross the seas.
Heaven could not own a Providence, and take
The wealth three nations ventured at a stake.
The same indulgence Charles his voyage blessed,
Which in his right had miracles confessed.
The winds, that never moderation knew,
Afraid to blow too much, too faintly blew;
Or, out of breath with joy, could not enlarge
Their straightened lungs, or conscious of their charge.
The British Amphytrite, smooth and clear,
In richer azure never did appear;
Proud her returning prince to entertain
With the submitted fasces of the main.
And welcome now, great monarch, to your own!
Behold the approaching clifts of Albion.
It is no longer motion cheats your view;
As you meet it, the land approacheth you.
The land returns, and, in the white it wears,
The marks of penitence and sorrow bears.[61]
But you, whose goodness your descent doth shew,
Your heavenly parentage and earthly too,
By that same mildness, which your father's crown
Before did ravish, shall secure your own.
Not tied to rules of policy, you find
Revenge less sweet than a forgiving mind.
Thus, when the Almighty would to Moses give
A sight of all he could behold and live;
A voice before his entry did proclaim,
Long-suffering, goodness, mercy, in his name.[62]
Your power to justice doth submit your cause,
Your goodness only is above the laws;[63]
Whose rigid letter, while pronounced by you,
Is softer made. So winds, that tempests brew,
When through Arabian groves they take their flight,
Made wanton with rich odours, lose their spite.
And as those lees, that trouble it, refine
The agitated soul of generous wine;
So tears of joy, for your returning spilt,
Work out, and expiate our former guilt.
Methinks I see those crowds on Dover's strand,
Who, in their haste to welcome you to land,
Choked up the beach with their still growing store,
And made a wilder torrent on the shore:
While, spurred with eager thoughts of past delight,
Those, who had seen you, court a second sight;
Preventing still your steps, and making haste
To meet you often wheresoe'er you past.
How shall I speak of that triumphant day,
When you renewed the expiring pomp of May!
A month that owns an interest in your name:
You and the flowers are its peculiar claim.[64]
That star, that at your birth shone out so bright,
It stained the duller sun's meridian light,
Did once again its potent fires renew,[65]
Guiding our eyes to find and worship you.
And now Time's whiter series is begun,
Which in soft centuries shall smoothly run:
Those clouds, that overcast your morn, shall fly,
Dispelled, to farthest corners of the sky.
Our nation, with united interest blest,
Not now content to poize, shall sway the rest.
Abroad your empire shall no limits know,
But, like the sea, in boundless circles flow;
Your much-loved fleet shall, with a wide command,
Besiege the petty monarchs of the land;
And, as old Time his offspring swallowed down,[66]
Our ocean in its depths all seas shall drown.
Their wealthy trade from pirates' rapine free,
Our merchants shall no more adventurers be;
Nor in the farthest east those dangers fear,
Which humble Holland must dissemble here.
Spain to your gift alone her Indies owes;
For, what the powerful takes not, he bestows:
And France, that did an exile's presence fear,[67]
May justly apprehend you still too near.
At home the hateful names of parties cease,
And factious souls are wearied into peace.
The discontented now are only they,
Whose crimes before did your just cause betray;
Of those your edicts some reclaim from sin,
But most your life and blest example win.
Oh happy prince, whom heaven hath taught the way
By paying vows to have more vows to pay!
Oh happy age! Oh times like those alone,
By fate reserved for great Augustus' throne!
When the joint growth of arms and arts foreshew
The world a monarch, and that monarch you.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 35: Note I.]
[Footnote 36: Note II.]
[Footnote 37: Note III.]
[Footnote 38: Note IV.]
[Footnote 39: Note V.]
[Footnote 40: Note VI.]
[Footnote 41: Note VII.]
[Footnote 42: Henry IV. of France, maternal grandfather of Charles II.]
[Footnote 43: Note VIII.]
[Footnote 44: First edition, _epoches_.]
[Footnote 45: This mode of forming the genitive is adopted from the
first edition, as smoother than "Charles's."]
[Footnote 46: Note IX.]
[Footnote 47: Note X.]
[Footnote 48: Note XI.]
[Footnote 49: Note XII.]
[Footnote 50: Note XIII.]
[Footnote 51: Salmoneus, tyrant of Elis made such a contrivance to
imitate thunder, for which he was destroyed with lightning by Jupiter;
which is here fancifully compared to the military terrors, by which the
fanatics supported their religious tenets.]
[Footnote 52: Note XIV.]
[Footnote 53: Note XV.]
[Footnote 54: First edition has, "like glass."]
[Footnote 55: Note XVI.]
[Footnote 56: Note XVII.]
[Footnote 57: Note XVIII.]
[Footnote 58: So the first edition; the others read standards. The
royal standard is meant.]
[Footnote 59: Note XIX.]
[Footnote 60: Note XX.]
[Footnote 61: Note XXI.]
[Footnote 62: Note XXII.]
[Footnote 63: Note XXIII.]
[Footnote 64: Note XXIV.]
[Footnote 65: Note XXV.]
[Footnote 66: Note XXVI.]
[Footnote 67: Note XXVII.]
NOTES
ON
ASTRÆA REDUX.
Note I.
_An horrid stillness first invades the ear,
And in that silence we the tempest fear._--P. 30.
The small wits of the time made themselves very merry with this
couplet; because stillness, being a mere absence of sound, could not,
it was said, be personified, as an active agent, or invader. Captain
Ratcliff thus states the objection in his "News from Hell:"
Laureat, who was both learned and florid,
Was damned, long since, for "silence horrid;"
Nor had there been such clatter made,
But that this Silence did "invade."
Invade! and so't might well, 'tis clear;
But what did it invade?--an ear.
And for some other things, 'tis true,
"We follow Fate, that does pursue."
In the "Dialogue in Bedlam," between Oliver's porter, fiddler, and
poet, the first of these persons thus addresses L'Estrange and Dryden,
"the scene being adorned with several of the poet's own flowers:"
O glory, glory! who are these appear?
My fellow-servants, poet, fiddler, here?
Old Hodge the constant, Johny the sincere!
Who sent you hither? and, pray tell me, why?
A horrid silence does invade my eye,
While not one sound of voice from you I spy.
But, as Dr Johnson justly remarks, we hesitate not to say, the world
is invaded by darkness, which is a privation of light; and why not by
silence, which is a privation of sound?
Note II.
_The ambitious Swede, like restless billows tost,
On this hand gaining what on that he lost,
Though in his life he blood and ruin breathed,
To his now guideless kingdom peace bequeathed._--P. 30.
The royal line of Sweden has produced more heroic and chivalrous
monarchs, than any dynasty of Europe. The gallant Charles X. who is
here mentioned, did not degenerate from this warlike stem. He was a
nephew of the great Gustavus Adolphus; and, like him, was continually
engaged in war, particularly against Poland and Austria. He died at
Gottenburgh in 1660, and the peace of Sweden was soon afterwards
restored by the treaty of Copenhagen.
Note III.
_We sighed to hear the fair Iberian bride
Must grow a lily to the lily's side._--P. 31.
The death of Cromwell, and the unsettled state of England, prevented
the execution of those ambitious schemes, which Cardinal Mazarine, then
prime minister of France, had hoped to accomplish by the assistance
of Britain. The Cardinal was therefore, in 1659, induced to accede to
the treaty of the Pyrenees, by which peace was restored betwixt France
and Spain; the union being cemented by the marriage of the Infanta to
Louis XIV.--Charles II., then a needy fugitive, was in attendance upon
the ministers of France and Spain, when they met on the frontiers for
this great object; but he, who was soon to be so powerful a monarch,
experienced on that occasion nothing but slights from Mazarine, and
cold civility from Don Lewis de Haro.
Note IV.
_The sacred purple, then, and scarlet gown,
Like sanguine dye to elephants, was shown._--P. 31.
This does not mean, as Derrick conceived, that these emblems of
authority had as little effect upon the mob as if they had been shown
to an elephant; but that the sight of them animated the people to such
senseless fury, as elephants, and many other animals, are said to shew,
upon seeing any object of a red colour.
Note V.
_He would not, like soft Otho, fate prevent,
But stayed, and suffered fortune to repent._--P. 32.
The emperor Otho, whose mind and manners exhibited so many
contradictions, is described as one of the most effeminate of men in
his outward habits; his mind, however, was active and energetic. "_Non
erat Othonis, mollis et corpori similis, animus._" TACITI, Lib. i.
_Historiarum_.--He slew himself after the battle of Brixellum, in which
he was vanquished by Vitellius. The prætorian guards, and his other
followers, in vain urged him to try his fortune again in the field.
Whether from that impatience of sustaining adversity, which luxurious
habits seldom fail to produce, or from the generous desire of ending a
disastrous civil war, he retained and executed his resolution. It is,
however, no extraordinary compliment to Charles, that he did not, after
his defeat at Worcester, follow an example more classical than inviting.
Note VI.
_These virtues Galba in a stranger sought,
And Piso to adopted empire brought._--P. 32.
Galba adopted Piso Frugi Licinianus as his successor in the empire.
He was a stranger to his blood, and only endeared to him by his good
qualities. Tacitus puts these words in the mouth of Galba upon this
occasion: "_Nunc me, deorum hominumque consensu, ad imperium vocatum,
preclara indoles tua, et amor patriæ impulit, ut principatum, de quo
majores nostri armis certabant, bello adeptus, quiescenti offeram;
exemplo divi Augusti, qui sororis filium Marcellum, dein generum
Agrippam, mox nepotes suos, postremo Tiberium Neronem privignum, in
proximo sibi fastigio, collocavit. Sed Augustus in domo successorem
quæsivit, ego in republica: non quia propinquos aut socios belli non
habeam; sed neque ipse imperium ambitione accessi, et judicii mei
documentum sit non meæ tantum necessitudines quas tibi postposui sed et
tuæ._"--Lib. I. _Historiarum_, cap. xv.
Note VII.
_All at Worc'ster but the honour lost._--P. 32.
This is in imitation of the famous letter which Francis the First of
France wrote to his mother after the battle of Pavia: "Madam, all is
lost except our honour." That of Charles II. certainly was not lost at
Worcester. He gave many marks of personal courage, and was only hurried
off the field by the torrent of fugitives. He halted a large body of
horse, and implored them to return, and but look upon the enemy; yet,
though he advanced at their head, they all deserted him but a few of
his immediate attendants.
Note VIII.
_Shocked by a covenanting League's vast powers,
As holy and as catholic as ours._--P. 33.
The parallel between the French League and the Covenant had already
occurred to Dryden as a proper subject for the stage; for, in the first
year after the Restoration, he wrote several scenes of "The Duke of
Guise," though it was not finished or acted till long afterwards. See
Vol. VII. p. 137.
Note IX.
_With alga, who the sacred altar strews?
To all the sea-gods Charles an offering owes:
A bull to thee, Portunus, shall be slain;
A lamb to you, ye tempests of the main._--P. 34.
The ceremonies of classical antiquity, observed by those who escaped
from shipwreck, are here detailed. The _alga_, or sea-weed, sprinkled
on the altar, alluded to the cause of their sacrifice. Portunus,
otherwise called Portumnus, was a sea-god of some reputation. The
Greeks called him Palæmon, which was formerly his earthly name. He is
mentioned by Virgil:
_Et Pater ipse, manu magnâ, Portunus euntem
Impulit._
Æneidos, lib. v.
Note X.
_Booth's forward valour only served to show,
He durst that duty pay, we all did owe._--P. 34.
Upon the death of Cromwell, in 1659, the cavaliers resolved upon a
general rising; but their intentions being betrayed by Sir Richard
Willis, the insurrection only took place at Chester, which was
seized by Sir George Booth and Sir William Middleton. They ventured
imprudently into the open field to face Lambert, by whom they were
totally routed; so that the royal party in England never seemed to lie
under such total depression, as when it was about to triumph over all
opposition.
Note XI.
_It shuns the mint, like gold that chemists make._--P. 35.
It is said, believe who list, that the ingenious Mr Robert Boyle
invented a metal, which had all the properties of gold, except
malleability.
Note XII.
----_That polluted nest,
Whence Legion twice before was dispossest._--P. 35.
Alluding to Cromwell's dissolution of the Long Parliament, with the
memorable words, "Ye are no longer a parliament; I tell you, ye are
no longer a parliament; the Lord has done with you." General Harrison
then pulled the speaker from the chair; and Worsley, with two file of
musketeers, expelled the refractory members, Cromwell loading each of
them with personal revilings. When the house was cleared, he, with
great composure, locked the doors, and took the key home in his pocket.
Legion was a second time dispossessed by the same kind of exorcism,
when the House of Commons was occupied by that extraordinary assembly,
usually called, from the name of a distinguished member, "Praise God
Barebone's Parliament." This motley assembly of crazy fanatics, having
shewn some disposition to extend the reign of the saints, in a manner
rather inconsistent with Cromwell's views of exclusive domination, were
suddenly dissolved by him. A remnant, headed by the frantic enthusiast
Harrison, continued to sit till their deliberations were interrupted by
White with a party of soldiers, who demanded, "what they did there?"
"We are seeking the Lord," answered they. "Then go seek him elsewhere,"
rejoined the commander; "for to my knowledge he has not been here
these many years." Or Dryden may have referred to the terms upon which
Cromwell parted with his last parliament; to whom he swore, by the
living God, they should not sit an hour longer; and calling upon the
Lord to be judge between them, (to which many members answered, Amen,)
turned them about their business. Indeed, when we consider, that the
Long Parliament was, after Cromwell's death, restored and cashiered
more than once, the line might have more properly run,
Whence Legion _oft_ before was dispossessed.
Note XIII.
_And, as devouter Turks first warn their souls
To part, before they taste forbidden bowls._--P. 36.
When a Turk is disposed to transgress the precept of the Koran, by
drinking wine, he requests the favour of his soul to go into some
retired corner of his body, in order to avoid contamination from the
horrible potion.
Note XIV.
_Thus Sforza, cursed with a too fertile brain,
Lost by his wiles the power his wit did gain._--P. 36.
This subtle politician was Lodovico, son of Francisco Sforza. He was
one of the most restless and intriguing spirits, that Italy, the
mother of political genius, has ever produced. His natural brother,
Francisco Sforza, had acquired, by marriage, the duchy of Milan, which
he left to his son Giovanni Galeazzo Sforza. Lodovico, under pretence
of acting as his nephew's tutor, took into his own hands the supreme
power; and, tired of governing under the name of another, at length
deposed and murdered the young duke. In order to secure himself in
his usurped domination, he invited the French into Italy, which they
over-ran and conquered under Charles VIII. He became soon suspicious
of these too powerful allies, and leagued with the Venetians to
cut off the retreat of the French from Naples. In 1594, he made a
pretended peace with Charles; and, in the year following, invited
into Italy the Emperor Maximilian, by whose assistance he hoped to
secure himself in Pisa, of which he had taken possession, and to
conquer the Florentines, with whom he was at war. In all these, and
many other ambiguous and versatile transactions, Sforza was so happy,
that he used to call himself the Son of Fortune, as he was termed by
others the Moor, from his dark complection, acute genius, and cruel
disposition. But, in 1599, Lewis XII., who had pretensions upon the
dukedom of Milan, as the grandson of Valentine Visconti, daughter of
Giovanni Galeazzo, Duke of Milan, invaded the Milanese territory with a
force which Sforza was unable to resist, and compelled him to fly into
Germany with his treasures. In 1600, Sforza again returned to Italy
at the head of an army of Swiss mercenaries, and repossessed himself
of Milan, Como, and other places of importance. The Swiss, however,
mutinied at Novara, and not only refused to fight in his behalf, but
even to guard him to a place of security. As these unworthy Helvetians
had made a private convention with the French, they permitted them to
seize the person of Sforza, who was discovered among the ranks of his
faithless mercenaries, dressed and armed like a private Swiss soldier;
a lamentable instance of the inconstancy of fortune. He was carried
prisoner to France, where he ended his days in prison, A. D. 1608.
Note XV.
_Henceforth their_ fougue _must spend at lesser rate,
Than in its flames to wrap a nation's fate;
Suffered to live, they are like Helots set,
A virtuous shame within us to beget._--P. 36.
Those persons, who had sat in any illegal high court of justice, with
a few others, were, at the Restoration, declared incapable of bearing
any public office. In expressing their violent spirit, our author
uses the unnecessary Gallicism _fougue_, although it might have been
as well described by the English _fire_. Thus disqualified, the poet
compares these republicans to the Spartan slaves, made drunk to excite
the contempt of the youth for that degrading vice. By the bye, Dryden's
kinsman, Sir Gilbert Pickering, was among the persons so incapacitated.
Note XVI.
_'Twas this produced the joy, that hurried o'er
Such swarms of English to the neighbouring shore._--P. 37.
"Several persons now came to Breda, not as heretofore to Cologne and
to Brussells, under disguises, and in fear of being discovered, but
with bare faces, and the pride and vanity to be taken notice of, to
present their duty to the king; some being employed to procure pardons
for those who thought themselves in danger, and to stand in need of
them; others brought good presents in English gold to the king, that
their names, and the names of their friends who sent them, might be
remembered among the first, who made demonstrations of their affections
that way to his majesty, by supplying his necessities; which had been
discontinued for many years, to a degree that cannot be believed, and
ought not to be remembered." CLARENDON, Vol. III. Part. II. p. 766.
"In the mean time, Breda swarmed with English; a multitude repairing
thither from all other places, as well as London, with presents, and
protestations, how much they had longed and prayed for this blessed
change, and magnifying their sufferings under the late tyrannical
government, when some of them had been zealous instruments and
promoters of it." _Ibidem_, p. 767.
Note XVII.
_Scheveline's barren shore._--P. 37.
A small village near the Hague, at which Charles embarked on his joyful
voyage.
Note XVIII.
----_Holland to regret a king._--P. 37.
The States not only maintained Charles in royal splendour during his
residence at Breda, and at the Hague, but loaded him with valuable
gifts at his departure, particularly a bed worth L. 1000, and linen
valued at L. 1000; both which articles his hardships had taught him to
value, by sad experience of the want of them.
Note XIX.
_The Naseby, now no longer England's shame,
But better to be lost in Charles his name._--P. 37.
When the English fleet came on the coast of Holland, the Duke of York
took possession of it, as Lord High Admiral. "After he had spent the
day there in receiving information of the state of the fleet, and a
catalogue of the names of the several ships, his Highness returned with
it that night to the king, that his majesty might make alterations, and
new christen these ships, which too much preserved the memory of the
late governors, and of the republic."--CLARENDON. The Naseby was too
odious a name to be preserved, and it was changed to the Royal Charles,
and the Swiftsure to the James. The Royal Charles fell into the hands
of the Dutch at the surprize of Chatham.
Note XX.
----_Great Gloster's weight._--P. 37.
Henry of Oatlands, Duke of Glocester, third son of Charles I. He
embarked on this occasion with his brother, by whom he was dearly
beloved. He died of the small-pox on the 13th September following,
deeply and generally lamented.
Note XXI.
_It is no longer motion cheats your view;
As you meet it, the land approacheth you:
The land returns, and, in the white it wears,
The marks of penitence and sorrow bears._--P. 38.
Johnson remarks, that this extraordinary piece of complaisance in the
land is not without a precedent. A French poet read to Malherbe some
verses, in which he mentioned the kingdom of France as advancing to
meet the king. "Though this happened in my time," observed the critic,
"it is strange I should not remember it." In the next couplet, Albion
does penance in a sheet, because her cliffs are chalky; had they been
black, she would have been in mourning of course. But the civility
of such inanimate objects, according to the poets of this reign, was
truly wonderful, considering their present insensibility. In a poem,
"On the Arrival of her Royal Highness, and Happy Marriage to the Most
Illustrious Prince James Duke of York, &c. 1673," not only do dolphins
dance about the vessel, but, yet more surprising,
When first she launched, the ambitious waves no more
Would kiss the lips of the forsaken shore;
But, proud of such rich freight, began t' aspire,
As if they'd quench the elemental fire:
So that philosophers since scarce agree,
Whether the earth or ocean highest be.
The trembling compass had forgot to stir,
Instead o'the north pole, pointing still at her;
At which the pilot wonders, till he spies
Two north poles culminant at once,--her eyes.
Note XXII.
_Thus, when the Almighty would to Moses give
A sight of all he could behold and live;
A voice before his entry did proclaim,
Long suffering, goodness, mercy, in His name._--P. 36.
"And he said, Thou shall not see my face: for there shall no man see me
and live.
"And the Lord said, Behold there is a place by me, and thou shalt stand
upon a rock;
"And it shall come to pass, when my glory cometh by, that I will put
thee into a clift of the rock, and will cover thee with my hand while
I pass by;
"And I will take away mine hand, and thou shalt see my back parts, but
my face shall not be seen." _Exodus_, Chap. XXXIII. verses 20, 21, 22,
23.
"And the Lord descended in the cloud, and stood with him there, and
proclaimed the name of the Lord.
"And the Lord passed before him, and proclaimed, The Lord, the Lord God
merciful and gracious, long suffering, and abundant in goodness and
truth." _Exodus_, Chap. XXXIV. verses 5, 6.
Note XXIII.
_Your power to justice doth submit your cause,
Your goodness only is above the laws._--P. 36.
By the declaration of King Charles II., dated at Breda, 14th April,
1660, a free pardon was promised to all subjects, of what degree or
quality soever, for their share in the late civil war, excepting only
such as should hereafter be excepted by Parliament. The House of
Peers, irritated by their sufferings during the late troubles, were
disposed to make very general exceptions from the proposed indemnity.
But the king came in person to the house, and beseeched them, in the
most affecting terms, to extend the benefit of the bill to all who
had not been the immediate instruments of his father's death. Upon
which principle, the "Act of Oblivion" was constructed accordingly.
Even among the judges of his father, the King distinguished Ingoldsby,
and others, as fit objects of mercy. Thus the law's rigid letter, as
pronounced by him, was "softer made."
Note XXIV.
_How shall I speak of that triumphant day,
When you renewed the expiring pomp of May!
A month that owns an interest in your name;
You and the flowers are its peculiar claim._--P. 37.
Charles II. was born on the 29th of May, 1630, and upon the same
day of the same month, 1660, he "renewed the expiring pomp of May,"
by making his triumphal entry into his metropolis, for the purpose
of resuming the throne of his forefathers. The immense crowds which
assembled to witness an event, which was to close the wounds of civil
discord, seemed, says Clarendon, as if the whole kingdom had been
gathered together. For a full account of his triumphant procession,
with the cloth of gold, and cloth of silver, velvet cloaks, gold
chains, kettle-drums, trumpets, and common council-men, see _Baker's
Chronicle_. One part of the show was particularly striking to the
actors in the late commotions: "I must confess," says the republican
Ludlow, "it was a strange sight to me, to see the horse that had
formerly belonged to our army, now put upon an employment, so different
from that which they had at first undertaken; especially when I
considered, that, for the most part, they had not been raised out of
the meanest of the people, and without distinction, as other armies had
been; but that they consisted of such as had engaged themselves from a
spirit of liberty, in defence of their rights and religion." LUDLOW'S
_Memoirs_, Vol. III. p. 16.
Note XXV.
_That star, that at your birth shone out so bright,
It stained the duller sun's meridian light,
Did once again its potent fires renew._--P. 37.
There was a star visible on Charles' birth-day, 29th May, 1630; a
circumstance much dwelt upon, by his party, during the civil wars.
Lilly, the astrologer, who embraced the cause of the Commonwealth,
assures us, it was nothing more than the planet Venus, which is
sometimes visible in the day-time; and truly, if we judge of the matter
by its influence on the merry monarch, Venus has the best title to
be held the dominant power at his nativity. Lilly also repeats the
following lines, presented to Charles I. (by the astrologer himself, I
suppose,) when he went to St Paul's, to return thanks for the birth of
his son:
_Rex ubi Paulinias accessit gratus ad aras,
Immicuit medio lucida stella polo:
Dic divina mihi tractans ænigmata cœli,
Hæc oriens nobis quid sibi stella velit?
Magnus in occiduo princeps modo nascitur orbe,
Moxque sub eclipsi regna orientis erunt._
LILLY'S Monarchy, or no Monarchy.
Our author seems to allude to this star in the "Duke of Guise," where,
speaking literally of Henry III., but covertly of Charles II., he makes
Melanax say,
----He cannot be deposed,
He may be killed; a violent fate attends him,
But at his birth there shone a regal star.
Vol. VII. p. 74.
A poetical follower of Monmouth introduces the Duke of York murmuring
against the good fortune of his brother, and exclaiming,
Curse on that planet, whose benign ray
Gilds the bright pavement of the Milky Way;
And is so good, so influential
To the great master of the Milky Hall.
The same star, it would seem, was again visible in 1660.
Note XXVI.
_And as old Time his offspring swallowed down._--P. 37.
The minutes, hours, days, and other subdivisions of time, may be
accounted his children, which he is fancifully said to devour, as he
passes over them.
Note XXVII.
_And France, that did an exile's presence fear._--P. 37.
Charles was obliged to leave France, less because his presence was
feared in itself, than the displeasure of Cromwell, for affording him
shelter.
TO
HIS SACRED MAJESTY,
A
PANEGYRIC ON HIS CORONATION.
The ceremony of Charles the Second's coronation was deferred until the
year succeeding his Restoration, when it was solemnized with extreme
magnificence, on the 22d April, 1661, being St George's day. Charles
moved from the Tower to Whitehall, through a series of triumphal
arches, stages, and pageants, all of which presented, at once, the joy
and wealth of his people before the eyes of the monarch. The poets, it
may readily be believed, joined in the general gratulation; but, from
the rudeness of their style, and puerility of their conceits, Charles,
whose taste was undoubted, must have soon distinguished our author's
superior energy of diction, and harmony of language. In most respects
we may consider this piece as written in the style of the preceding,
yet with less affectation of witty and far-fetched allusion. The
description of the spring, beginning, "Now our sad ruins are removed
from sight," is elegantly fancied, and so smoothly expressed, that
even the flow of the language seems to mark the mild and delightful
influence of the season it describes. Much quaintness remains to be
weeded out. The name of the king is sent on high, wrapped soft and warm
in music, like flames on the wings of incense; and, anon, music has
found a tomb in Charles, and lies drowned in her own sweetness; while
the fragrant scent, begun from the royal person, and confined within
the hallowed dome, flies round and descends on him in richer dew. Above
all, we are startled to hear of
A queen, near whose chaste womb, ordained by fate,
The souls of kings unborn for bodies wait.
Neither, if we read (with the first edition) _from_ instead of _near_,
is the intelligibility, or decorum of the passage much improved. If
any of the souls of these unborn monarchs waited for bodies from Queen
Catharine, they waited long in vain. But with all these defects, there
is in this little piece that animation of language and idea, which
always affords the most secure promise of genius.
The first edition is printed for Henry Herringman, 1661.
TO HIS
SACRED MAJESTY,
A
PANEGYRIC
ON
HIS CORONATION.
In that wild deluge where the world was drowned,
When life and sin one common tomb had found,
The first small prospect of a rising hill
With various notes of joy the ark did fill:
Yet when that flood in its own depths was drowned,
It left behind it false and slippery ground;
And the more solemn pomp was still deferred,
'Till new-born nature in fresh looks appeared.
Thus, Royal Sir, to see you landed here,
Was cause enough of triumph for a year:
Nor would your care those glorious joys repeat,
'Till they at once might be secure and great;
'Till your kind beams, by their continued stay,
Had warmed the ground, and called the damps away.
Such vapours, while your powerful influence dries,
Then soonest vanish when they highest rise.
Had greater haste these sacred rites prepared,
Some guilty months had in your triumphs shared;[68]
But this untainted year is all your own,
Your glories may without our crimes be shown.
We had not yet exhausted all our store,
When you refreshed our joys by adding more:
As heaven, of old, dispensed celestial dew,
You gave us manna, and still gave us new.
Now our sad ruins are removed from sight,
The season too comes fraught with new delight:
Time seems not now beneath his years to stoop,
Nor do his wings with sickly feathers droop:
Soft western winds waft o'er the gaudy spring,
And opened scenes of flowers and blossoms bring,
To grace this happy day, while you appear,
Not king of us alone, but of the year.
All eyes you draw, and with the eyes the heart;
Of your own pomp yourself the greatest part:
Loud shouts the nation's happiness proclaim,
And heaven this day is feasted with your name.
Your cavalcade the fair spectators view,
From their high standings, yet look up to you.
From your brave train each singles out a prey,
And longs to date a conquest from your day.
Now charged with blessings while you seek repose,
Officious slumbers haste your eyes to close;
And glorious dreams stand ready to restore
The pleasing shapes of all you saw before.
Next to the sacred temple you are led,
Where waits a crown for your more sacred head.
How justly from the church that crown is due,
Preserved from ruin, and restored by you!
The grateful choir their harmony employ,
Not to make greater, but more solemn joy.
Wrapt soft and warm your name is sent on high,
As flames do on the wings of incense fly.
Music herself is lost; in vain she brings
Her choicest notes to praise the best of kings:
Her melting strains in you a tomb have found,
And lie like bees in their own sweetness drowned.
He, that brought peace, all[69] discord could atone,
His name is music of itself alone.
Now while the sacred oil anoints your head,
And fragrant scents, begun from you, are spread
Through the large dome, the people's joyful sound,
Sent back, is still preserved in hallowed ground;
Which in one blessing mixed descends on you,
As heightened spirits fall in richer dew.
Not that our wishes do increase your store;
Full of yourself you can admit no more.
We add not to your glory, but employ
Our time, like angels, in expressing joy.
Nor is it duty, or our hopes alone,
Create that joy, but full fruition:
We know those blessings, which we must possess,
And judge of future by past happiness.
No promise can oblige a prince so much
Still to be good, as long to have been such.
A noble emulation heats your breast,
And your own fame now robs you of your rest.
Good actions still must be maintained with good,
As bodies nourished with resembling food.
You have already quenched sedition's brand;
And zeal, which burnt it, only warms the land.
The jealous sects, that dare not trust their cause
So far from their own will as to the laws,
You for their umpire and their synod take,
And their appeal alone to Cæsar make.[70]
Kind heaven so rare a temper did provide,
That guilt repenting might in it confide.
Among our crimes oblivion may be set;
But 'tis our king's perfection to forget.
Virtues unknown to these rough northern climes,
From milder heavens you bring, without their crimes.
Your calmness does no after-storms provide,
Nor seeming patience mortal anger hide.
When empire first from families did spring,
Then every father governed as a king;
But you, that are a sovereign prince, allay
Imperial power with your paternal sway.
From those great cares when ease your soul unbends,
Your pleasures are designed to noble ends;
Born to command the mistress of the seas,
Your thoughts themselves in that blue empire please.
Hither in summer evenings you repair,
To taste the fraischeur of the purer air:
Undaunted here you ride, when winter raves,
With Cæsar's heart that rose above the waves.
More I could sing, but fear my numbers stays;
No loyal subject dares that courage praise.
In stately frigates most delight you find,[71]
Where well-drawn battles fire your martial mind.
What to your cares we owe, is learnt from hence,
When even your pleasures serve for our defence.
Beyond your court flows in the admitted tide,[72]
Where in new depths the wondering fishes glide:
Here in a royal bed the waters sleep;
When tired at sea, within this bay they creep.
Here the mistrustful fowl no harm suspects,[73]
So safe are all things which our king protects.
From your loved Thames a blessing yet is due,
Second alone to that it brought in you;
A queen, near whose chaste womb, ordained by fate,
The souls of kings unborn for bodies wait.
It was your love before made discord cease:
Your love is destined to your country's peace.
Both Indies,[74] rivals in your bed, provide
With gold or jewels to adorn your bride;
This to a mighty king presents rich ore,
While that with incense does a god implore.
Two kingdoms wait your doom; and, as you choose,
This must receive a crown, or that must lose.
Thus from your Royal Oak, like Jove's of old,
Are answers sought, and destinies foretold:
Propitious oracles are begged with vows,
And crowns that grow upon the sacred boughs[75].
Your subjects, while you weigh the nation's fate,
Suspend to both their doubtful love or hate.
Choose only, sir, that so they may possess
With their own peace their children's happiness.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 68: Note I.]
[Footnote 69: The first edition reads _and_ for _all_.]
[Footnote 70: Note II.]
[Footnote 71: Note III.]
[Footnote 72: Note IV.]
[Footnote 73: Note V.]
[Footnote 74: Spain and Portugal, both desirous to ally themselves with
Charles by marriage.]
[Footnote 75: Note VI.]
NOTES
ON
THE PANEGYRIC ON THE CORONATION.
Note I.
_Some guilty months had in your triumphs shared._
After the Restoration, several of the regicides were condemned to
death; but the king, with unexampled lenity, remitted the capital
punishment of many of these deep offenders. Only six of the king's
judges were executed; and, when to that number are added, the fanatic
Peters, who compared the suffering monarch to Barabbas, Coke, the
solicitor, who pleaded against Charles on his mock trial, and Hacker,
who commanded the guard, and brutally instigated, and even compelled
them to cry for execution, we have the number of nine, who suffered
for a fact, the most enormous in civilized history, till our age
produced a parallel. There was also an insurrection of the fierce and
hot-brained sect of fanatics, who called themselves fifth-monarchy
men, and devoutly believed, that the Millennium, and the reign of the
saints, was about to begin. Willing to contribute their share to this
happy consummation, these enthusiasts, headed by the fanatic Venner,
rushed into the streets of London; and, though but sixty in number,
were not overpowered without long resistance, and much bloodshed. These
incidents, Dryden, always happy in his allusion to the events of the
day, assigns as a reason for deferring the coronation to an untainted
year. Perhaps, however, he only meant to say, that, as Charles was
not restored till May, 1660, the preceding months of that year were
unworthy to share in the honour, which the coronation would have
conferred upon it.
Note II.
_The jealous sects----
You for their umpire, and their synod take,
And their appeal alone to Cæsar make._
The conferences held at Savoy House, betwixt the presbyterians and the
bishops, excited hopes among those who did not understand the temper
of theological controversy, that these two powerful divisions of the
protestant church might be reconciled to each other. The quakers,
anabaptists, and other inferior sects, applied, by petitions and humble
addresses, to the king, to be permitted to worship God, according to
their consciences. Thus, the whole modelling of ecclesiastical matters
seemed to be in the hands of the king.
Note III.
_In stately frigates most delight you find._
Charles the Second had a strong mechanical genius, and understood
ship-building, in particular, more completely than became a monarch,
if it were possible that a king of England could be too intimately
acquainted with what concerns the bulwark of his empire. The king's
skill in matters of navigation is thus celebrated by the author of
a Poem upon his Majesty's Coronation, the 22d April, 1661, being St
George's day.
The seaman's art, and his great end commerce,
Through all the corners of the universe,
Are not alone the subject of your care,
But your delight, and you their polar-star;
And even mechanic arts do find from you,
Both entertainment and improvement too.
Note IV.
_Beyond your court flows in the admitted tide._
By the improvements made by Charles the Second on St James's Park,
there was a connection made with the river, which Waller has celebrated
in these lines, as a work of superior merit to founding a city.
Instead of rivers rolling by the side
Of Eden's garden, here flows in the tide.
The sea, which always served his empire, now
Pays tribute to our prince's pleasure too.
Of famous cities we the founders know;
But rivers old as seas, to which they go,
Are nature's bounty: 'tis of more renown,
To make a river, than to build a town.
_On St James's Park, as lately improved by His Majesty._
Note V.
_Here the mistrustful fowl no harm suspects._
The canal in St James's park formed a decoy for water-fowl, with which
it was stocked. This circumstance, like the former, is noticed by
Waller:
Whilst over head a flock of new-sprung fowl
Hangs in the air and does the sun controul.
Darkening the air, they hover o'er, and shrowd
The wanton sailors with a feathered cloud.
The water-fowl, thus celebrated, were particular favourites of the
king, who fed them with his own hand. His affection for his dogs and
ducks is noticed in many a libel.
Note VI.
_Thus from your Royal Oak, like Jove's of old,
Are answers sought, and destinies foretold;
Propitious oracles are begged with vows,
And crowns that grow upon the sacred boughs._
This is in allusion to a device exhibited over the triumphal arch, in
Leadenhall street, through which the king passed in his way from the
Tower to Whitehall, on the day of his coronation. Behind a picture of
the king appeared, deciphered in a large table, "the Royal Oak, bearing
crowns and sceptres, instead of acorns; amongst the leaves in a label
_Miraturque novas frondes et non suà poma._
As designing its reward, for the shelter it afforded his majesty,
after the fight at Worcester."[76] These devices were invented by
John Ogilby, gent., to the conduct of whom the poetical part of the
coronation, as it is termed in his writ of privilege, was solely
entrusted. The same fancy is commemorated, by the author of "Loyal
Reflections on his Majesty's Restoration, Procession, and Coronation,"
who thus apostrophises the Royal Oak:
Thou vegetive soul, whose glory 'tis and pride
To suffer wounds, or sink, not to divide;
Whose branches Ogilby's rich fancy made
Bear crowns for nuts, but thy best fruit was shade.
When Charles lodged in thy boughs, thou couldst not want
Many degrees to be a sensitive plant.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 76: Ogilby's relation of his Majesty's entertainment passing
through the city of London to his coronation.]
TO
LORD CHANCELLOR HYDE.
&c.
The great statesman, to whom Dryden made this new-year's offering, was
the well known Earl of Clarendon, of whose administration Hume gives
the following striking account:
"Clarendon not only behaved with wisdom and justice in the office of
chancellor: all the counsels, which he gave the king, tended equally
to promote the interest of prince and people. Charles, accustomed, in
his exile, to pay entire deference to the judgment of this faithful
servant, continued still to submit to his direction; and for some time
no minister was ever possessed of more absolute authority. He moderated
the forward zeal of the royalists, and tempered their appetite
for revenge. With the opposite party, he endeavoured to preserve,
inviolate, all the king's engagements. He kept an exact register of the
promises which had been made, for any service; and he employed all his
industry to fulfil them."
Notwithstanding the merits of Clarendon, and our author's prophecy in
the following verses, that
He had already wearied fortune so,
She could no longer be his friend or foe;
this great statesman was doomed to be one of the numberless victims to
the uncertainty of court favour. His fall took place in 1667, when he
was attainted and banished. The popular discontent was chiefly excited
against him, by a groundless charge of corruption; an accusation to
which the vulgar lend a greedy and implicit faith, because ignorance is
always suspicious, and low minds, not knowing how seldom avarice is the
companion of ambition, conceive the opportunities of peculation to be
not only numerous, but irresistibly tempting. Accordingly, the heroes
of Athens, as well as the patriots of Rome, were usually stigmatized
with this crime; bare suspicion of which, it would seem, is usually
held adequate to the fullest proof. Nor have instances been wanting
in our own days, of a party adopting the same mode, to blacken the
character of those, whose firmness and talents impeded their access to
power, and public confidence.
In the address to the Chancellor, Dryden has indulged his ingenuity
in all the varied and prolonged comparisons and conceits, which were
the taste of his age. Johnson has exemplified Dryden's capacity of
producing these elaborate trifles, by referring to the passage, which
compares the connection between the king and his minister, to the
visible horizon. "It is," says he, "so successfully laboured, that
though at last it gives the mind more perplexity than pleasure, and
seems hardly worth the study that it costs; yet it must be valued, as
the proof of a mind at once subtle and comprehensive." The following
couplet, referring to the friendship of Charles I, when in his
distresses, for Clarendon, contains a comparison, which is eminently
happy:
Our setting sun, from his declining seat,
Shot beams of kindness on you, not of heat.
In general, this poem displays more uniform adherence to the
metaphysical style of Cowley, and his contemporaries, than occurs
in any of Dryden's other compositions. May we not suppose, that, in
addressing Clarendon, he adopted the style of those muses, with whom
the Chancellor had conversed in his earlier days, in preference to the
plainer and more correct taste, which Waller, and Denham, had begun
to introduce; but which, to the aged statesman, could have brought
no recollection of what he used to consider as poetry? Certain, at
least, it is, that, to use the strong language of Johnson, Dryden never
after ventured "to bring on the anvil such stubborn and unmanageable
thoughts;" and these lines afford striking evidence, how the lever of
genius, like that of machinery applied to material substances, can
drag together, and compel the approximation of the most unsociable
ideas. Our admiration of both, however, is much qualified, when they
are applied rather to make exhibition of their own powers, than for any
better purpose.
TO
THE LORD-CHANCELLOR HYDE.
PRESENTED ON NEW-YEAR'S-DAY, 1662.
MY LORD,
While flattering crouds officiously appear
To give themselves, not you, an happy year,
And by the greatness of their presents prove
How much they hope, but not how well they love,--
The Muses, who your early courtship boast,
Though now your flames are with their beauty lost,
Yet watch their time, that, if you have forgot
They were your mistresses, the world may not.
Decayed by time and wars, they only prove
Their former beauty by their former love;
And now present, as ancient ladies do,
That, courted long, at length are forced to woo:
For still they look on you with such kind eyes,
As those, that see the Church's sovereign rise,
From their own order chose, in whose high state
They think themselves the second choice of fate.
When our great monarch into exile went,
Wit and religion suffered banishment.
Thus once, when Troy was wrapped in fire and smoke,
The helpless gods their burning shrines forsook;
They with the vanquished prince and party go,
And leave their temples empty to the foe.
At length the Muses stand, restored again
To that great charge which nature did ordain;
And their loved druids seem revived by fate,
While you dispense the laws, and guide the state.
The nation's soul, our monarch, does dispense,
Through you, to us his vital influence:
You are the channel, where those spirits flow,
And work them higher, as to us they go.
In open prospect nothing bounds our eye,
Until the earth seems joined unto the sky:
So in this hemisphere, our utmost view
Is only bounded by our king and you;
Our sight is limited where you are joined,
And beyond that no farther heaven can find.
So well your virtues do with his agree,
That, though your orbs of different greatness be,
Yet both are for each other's use disposed,
His to inclose, and yours to be inclosed:
Nor could another in your room have been,
Except an emptiness had come between.
Well may he, then, to you his cares impart,
And share his burden where he shares his heart.
In you his sleep still wakes; his pleasures find
Their share of business in your labouring mind.
So, when the weary sun his place resigns,
He leaves his light, and by reflection shines.
Justice, that sits and frowns where public laws
Exclude soft mercy from a private cause,
In your tribunal most herself does please;
There only smiles because she lives at ease;
And, like young David, finds her strength the more,
When disincumbered from those arms she wore.
Heaven would your royal master should exceed
Most in that virtue, which we most did need;
And his mild father (who too late did find
All mercy vain but what with power was joined)
His fatal goodness left to fitter times,
Not to increase, but to absolve our crimes:
But when the heir of this vast treasure knew
How large a legacy was left to you,
(Too great for any subject to retain)
He wisely tied it to the crown again;
Yet, passing through your hands, it gathers more,
As streams, through mines, bear tincture of their ore.
While emp'ric politicians use deceit,
Hide what they give, and cure but by a cheat;
You boldly shew that skill which they pretend,
And work by means as noble as your end;
Which should you veil, we might unwind the clue,
As men do nature, till we came to you.
And, as the Indies were not found before
Those rich perfumes, which, from the happy shore,
The winds upon their balmy wings conveyed,
Whose guilty sweetness first their world betrayed;
So, by your counsels, we are brought to view
A rich and undiscovered world in you.
By you our monarch does that fame assure,
Which kings must have, or cannot live secure:
For prosperous princes gain their subjects' heart,
Who love that praise in which themselves have part.
By you he fits those subjects to obey,
As heaven's eternal monarch does convey
His power unseen, and man, to his designs,
By his bright ministers, the stars, inclines.
Our setting sun, from his declining seat,
Shot beams of kindness on you, not of heat;
And, when his love was bounded in a few
That were unhappy, that they might be true,
Made you the favourite of his last sad times,
That is a sufferer in his subjects' crimes:
Thus, those first favours you received, were sent,
Like heaven's rewards, in earthly punishment:
Yet fortune, conscious of your destiny,
E'en then took care to lay you softly by,
And wrapped your fate among her precious things,
Kept fresh to be unfolded with your king's.
Shewn all at once, you dazzled so our eyes,
As new-born Pallas did the gods surprise,
When, springing forth from Jove's new-closing wound,
She struck the warlike spear into the ground;
Which sprouting leaves did suddenly inclose,
And peaceful olives shaded as they rose.
How strangely active are the arts of peace,
Whose restless motions less than war's do cease!
Peace is not freed from labour, but from noise;
And war more force, but not more pains employs.
Such is the mighty swiftness of your mind,
That, like the earth, it leaves our sense behind,
While you so smoothly turn and roll our sphere,
That rapid motion does but rest appear.
For, as in nature's swiftness, with the throng
Of flying orbs while ours is borne along,
All seems at rest to the deluded eye,
Moved by the soul of the same harmony;
So, carried on by your unwearied care,
We rest in peace, and yet in motion share.
Let envy, then, those crimes within you see,
From which the happy never must be free;
(Envy, that does with misery reside,
The joy and the revenge of ruined pride.)
Think it not hard, if, at so cheap a rate,
You can secure the constancy of fate,
Whose kindness sent what does their malice seem,
By lesser ills the greater to redeem;
Nor can we this weak shower a tempest call,
But drops of heat that in the sun-shine fall.
You have already wearied Fortune so,
She cannot farther be your friend or foe;
But sits all breathless, and admires to feel
A fate so weighty, that it stops our wheel.
In all things else above our humble fate,
Your equal mind yet swells not into state,
But, like some mountain in those happy isles,
Where in perpetual spring young nature smiles,
Your greatness shews; no horror to affright,
But trees for shade, and flowers to court the sight:
Sometimes the hill submits itself a while
In small descents, which do its height beguile;
And sometimes mounts, but so as billows play,
Whose rise not hinders, but makes short, our way.
Your brow, which does no fear of thunder know,
Sees rolling tempests vainly beat below;
And, like Olympus' top, the impression wears
Of love and friendship writ in former years.
Yet unimpaired with labours, or with time,
Your age but seems to a new youth to climb.
Thus heavenly bodies do our time beget,
And measure change, but share no part of it.
And still it shall without a weight increase,
Like this new-year, whose motions never cease:
For, since the glorious course you have begun
Is led by Charles, as that is by the sun,
It must both weightless and immortal prove,
Because the centre of it is above.
SATIRE ON THE DUTCH.
This Satire was, as the title informs us, written in 1662: probably
towards the latter end of the year, when Charles, having quarrelled
with De Wit, then at the head of the public affairs of Holland, was
endeavouring to patch up an union with France, to which kingdom he
was naturally partial, against the States, whom he hated, both as
a republic, and an association of vulgar merchants. This impolitic
alliance did not then take place, notwithstanding the sale of Dunkirk,
(conquered by the arms of Cromwell,) to France, for L.400,000. On the
contrary, in 1665 France armed in defence of Holland. But this was
contrary to the expectations and wishes of Charles; and accordingly
Dryden, in 1662, alludes to the union of the two crowns against the
States as a probable event.
The verses are adapted to the comprehension of the vulgar, whom they
were intended to inflame. Bold invective, and coarse raillery, supply
the place of the wit and argument, with which Dryden, when the time
fitted, knew so well how to arm his satire.
The verses, such as they are, appeared to the author well qualified
for the purpose intended; for, when, in 1672, his tragedy of "Amboyna"
was brought forward, to exasperate the nation against Holland, the
following verses were almost literally woven into the prologue and
epilogue of that piece. See Vol. V. pp. 10. 87. Nevertheless, as
forming a link in our author's poetical progress, the present Editor
has imitated his predecessors, in reprinting them among his satires and
political pieces.
SATIRE ON THE DUTCH.
WRITTEN IN THE YEAR 1662.
As needy gallants, in the scrivener's hands,
Court the rich knaves that gripe their mortgaged lands;
The first fat buck of all the season's sent,
And keeper takes no fee in compliment;
The dotage of some Englishmen is such,
To fawn on those who ruin them,--the Dutch.
They shall have all, rather than make a war
With those who of the same religion are.
The Straits, the Guinea-trade, the herrings too;
Nay, to keep friendship, they shall pickle you.
Some are resolved not to find out the cheat,
But, cuckold-like, love them that do the feat.
What injuries soe'er upon us fall,
Yet still the same religion answers all:--
Religion wheedled us to civil war,
Drew English blood, and Dutchmen's now would spare.
Be gulled no longer, for you'll find it true,
They have no more religion, faith! than you.
Interest's the god they worship in their state;
And we, I take it, have not much of that.
Well monarchies may own religion's name;
But states are atheists in their very frame.
They share a sin: and such proportions fall,
That, like a stink, 'tis nothing to them all.
Think on their rapine, falsehood, cruelty,
And that, what once they were they still would be.
To one well-born the affront is worse and more,
When he's abused and baffled by a boor.
With an ill grace the Dutch their mischiefs do;
They've both ill nature and ill manners too.
Well may they boast themselves an ancient nation;
For they were bred ere manners were in fashion:
And their new commonwealth hath set them free
Only from honour and civility.
Venetians do not more uncouthly ride,
Than did their lubber state mankind bestride;
Their sway became them with as ill a main,
As their own paunches swell above their chin.
Yet is their empire no true growth, but humour,
And only two kings' touch can cure the tumour.[77]
As Cato fruits of Afric did display,
Let us before our eyes their Indies lay:
All loyal English will like him conclude,--
Let Cæsar live, and Carthage be subdued.[78]
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 77: Alluding to the hoped for union between France and
England, and to the cure, by touching, for the Evil.]
[Footnote 78: Cato is said to have laid before the Senate the fine figs
of Africa, and to have reminded them, that the country which produced
these choice fruits was but three days sail from Rome. He used also
to conclude every speech with the famous expression, _Delenda est
Carthago_.]
TO
HER ROYAL HIGHNESS
THE DUCHESS OF YORK,
ON THE VICTORY GAINED BY THE DUKE OVER THE DUTCH, &c.
The Duchess, here addressed, was Anne Hyde, daughter of the Earl of
Clarendon, and first wife of James, Duke of York, afterwards James
II. She appears to have been a woman of first-rate talents, as well
as exemplary prudence. Of the last qualification she gave a singular
proof, when her marriage with the Duke was declared. She had admitted
James to her bed while abroad, under a solemn promise of marriage. Many
endeavoured to dissuade him from completing this unequal alliance; and
that a motive, at least an apology, might be supplied for a retreat
from his engagements, Lord Falmouth, Killigrew, and other courtiers,
did not hesitate to boast of favours received from the lady. When
the king's regard for his minister, and James's attachment to his
betrothed wife, occasioned the confirmation of the marriage, these
zealous witnesses found themselves in an unpleasing predicament, till
the Duchess took an opportunity of assuring them, that she was far
from harbouring the least resentment at the reports they had raised,
since they believed them calculated to promote the interest of their
master and her husband.[79] It may be presumed, that Dryden had already
attached himself to the fortunes of the Duke of York, since he so early
addressed the princess, whose posthumous avowal of the Catholic faith
he afterwards attempted to vindicate.
The victory of the 23d June, 1665, was gained by the British fleet,
commanded by the Duke of York, over the Dutch, under the famous Opdam.
It was, like all naval actions between the English and the Dutch, a
fierce, obstinate, and bloody conflict. The fleets met near Harwich
on the 2d June; but the Dutch declined action upon that day, from a
superstitious recollection that it was the anniversary of a dreadful
defeat, received from Blake and Monk in 1653, in which they lost their
famous Admiral, Von Tromp. But on the morning of the third, the fleets
joined battle so near the shore, that the thunder of the combat was
heard all along the English coast. York and Opdam singled each other
out, and lay alongside in close action, till the Dutch vessel (a second
rate) was blown up, and all on board perished. The Dutch fleet then
dispersed and fled, losing nineteen ships sunk and taken, while the
English lost only one. During this dreadful battle the Duke of York
displayed the greatest personal courage. He was in the thickest of the
fire, when one cannon-shot killed Lord Falmouth, Lord Muskerry, and Mr
Boyle, by his side, and covered him with the gore of the most faithful
and attached companions of his fortune. Yet this day, the brightest
which ever shone on him, was not without a cloud. When the Dutch fleet
were scattered, and an active pursuit was all that remained to the
victors, Brounker, a gentleman of the Duke's bed-chamber, commanded
Sir John Harman, in the Duke's name, to slacken sail. James was then
asleep, and the flimsy pretext of not disturbing his repose was set
up as a reason for this most untimely interference. The affair was
never well explained. The Duke dismissed Brounker from his service,
and a parliamentary investigation of his conduct took place.[80]
But no adequate punishment was inflicted, and the nation saw, with
displeasure, the fruits of a dear-bought and splendid victory lost by
the unauthorized interference of an officious minion.
The Duchess, as we learn, amongst other authorities, from an old libel,
came down to Harwich to see her husband embark, and afterwards made
the triumphant progress to the north, which is here commemorated. The
splendour of her reception at Harwich is thus censured by the Satirist:
One thrifty ferry-boat, of mother-pearl,
Sufficed of old the Citherean girl;
Yet navies are but fopperies, when here
A small sea mask, and built to court your dear:
Three goddesses in one, Pallas for art,
Venus for sport, but Juno in your heart.
O Duchess, if thy nuptial pomp was mean,
'Tis paid with interest in thy naval scene.
Never did Roman Mark, within the Nile,
So feast the fair Egyptian crocodile;
Nor the Venetian Duke, with such a state,
The Adriatic marry at that rate.
The poem itself is adapted to the capacity and taste of a lady; and, if
we compare it with that which Dryden had two years before addressed to
the Chancellor, it strengthens, I think, very strongly the supposition,
that the old taste of extravagant and over-laboured conceits, with
which the latter abounds, was a stile purposely adapted to gratify the
great Statesman to whom it was addressed, whose taste must necessarily
have been formed upon the ancient standard. The address, which follows,
is throughout easy and complimentary, much in the stile of Waller, as
appears from comparing it with that veteran bard's poem on the same
subject. Although upon a sublime subject, Dryden treats it in the light
most capable of giving pleasure to a fair lady; and the journey of the
duchess to the north is proposed as a theme, nearly as important as the
celebrated victory of her husband.
Accordingly Dryden himself tells us, in the introductory letter to the
"Annus Mirabilis," that, in these lines, he only affected smoothness
of measure and softness of expression; and the verses themselves were
originally introduced in that letter, to vindicate the character there
given of them.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 79: See Memoires de Grammont, Chapitre VIII. for the
Duchess's conduct towards these _temoins a bonne fortune_, as Hamilton
happily calls them.]
[Footnote 80: Even Harman did not escape suspicion on this occasion.
Marvell gives the following account of his examination before
Parliament:
"Yesterday Harman was brought to the house, to give an account of
slackening sail in the first victory. He had a very good reputation at
his coming in; but when he said, that Mr Bronkard only used arguments,
and justified the thing himself, saying, 'That he had been a madman
had he not done it;' and other witnesses clearly contradicting this,
and proving, that Bronkard brought him orders in the Duke's name, he
lost all credit with us; and yet more, when, upon recollection, he
confessed that Mr Bronkard did bring orders as from the Duke: so he is
committed to the sergeant, and will doubtless be impeached. Both he and
Mr Bronkard, who was also heard, will probably, on Tuesday next, taste
the utmost severity of the house." ANDREW MARVELL _to the_ MAYOR OF
HULL. _See his Works_, Vol. I. p. 104.]
TO
HER ROYAL HIGHNESS
THE DUCHESS,
ON THE
MEMORABLE VICTORY GAINED BY THE DUKE OVER
THE HOLLANDERS, JUNE THE 3. 1665.
AND ON
HER JOURNEY AFTERWARDS INTO THE NORTH.
MADAM,
When, for our sakes, your hero you resigned
To swelling seas, and every faithless wind;
When you released his courage, and set free
A valour fatal to the enemy;
You lodged your country's cares within your breast,
(The mansion where soft love should only rest,)
And, ere our foes abroad were overcome,
The noblest conquest you had gained at home.
Ah, what concerns did both your souls divide!
Your honour gave us what your love denied;
And 'twas for him much easier to subdue
Those foes he fought with, than to part from you.
That glorious day, which two such navies saw,
As each unmatched might to the world give law,
Neptune, yet doubtful whom he should obey,
Held to them both the trident of the sea:
The winds were hushed, the waves in ranks were cast,
As awfully as when God's people past:
Those, yet uncertain on whose sails to blow,
These, where the wealth of nations ought to flow.
Then with the duke your Highness ruled the day: }
While all the brave did his command obey, }
The fair and pious under you did pray. }
How powerful are chaste vows! the wind and tide
You bribed to combat on the English side.
Thus to your much-loved lord you did convey
An unknown succour, sent the nearest way.
New vigour to his wearied arms you brought,
(So Moses was upheld while Israel fought)[81]
While, from afar, we heard the cannon play,
Like distant thunder on a shiny day.[82]
For absent friends we were ashamed to fear,
When we considered what you ventured there.
Ships, men, and arms, our country might restore,
But such a leader could supply no more.
With generous thoughts of conquest he did burn,
Yet fought not more to vanquish than return.
Fortune and victory he did pursue,
To bring them, as his slaves, to wait on you:
Thus beauty ravished the rewards of fame,
And the fair triumphed, when the brave o'ercame.
Then, as you meant to spread another way
By land your conquests, far as his by sea,
Leaving our southern clime, you marched along
The stubborn north, ten thousand Cupids strong.
Like commons the nobility resort,
In crowding heaps, to fill your moving court:
To welcome your approach the vulgar run,
Like some new envoy from the distant sun;
And country beauties by their lovers go,
Blessing themselves, and wondering at the show.
So, when the new-born Phœnix first is seen,
Her feathered subjects all adore their queen,
And, while she makes her progress through the east,
From every grove her numerous train's increased:
Each poet of the air her glory sings,
And round him the pleased audience clap their wings.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 81: Note I.]
[Footnote 82: Note II.]
NOTES
ON
THE PRECEDING POEM.
Note I.
_So Moses was upheld while Israel fought._
"And it came to pass, when Moses held up his hand, that Israel
prevailed; and when he let down his hand, Amalek prevailed.
"But Moses' hands were heavy, and they took a stone, and put it under
him, and he sat thereon: and Aaron and Hur stayed up his hands, the one
on the one side, and the other on the other side, and his hands were
steady until the going down of the sun.
"And Joshua discomfited Amalek and his people with the edge of the
sword." Exodus, chap. xvii. 11, 12, 13th verses.
Note II.
_While, from afar, we heard the cannon play,
Like distant thunder on a shiny day._
The noise of the battle was distinctly heard at London, as appears from
the Introduction to our author's "Essay on Dramatic Poetry," where the
dialogue is supposed to pass in a barge, in which the speakers had
embarked to hear more distinctly, "those undulations of sound, which,
though almost vanishing before they reached them, seemed yet to retain
somewhat of their first horror which they had betwixt the fleets." And,
by the sound seeming to retire from them, Eugenius draws an omen of the
enemy's defeat. This whole scene is imagined with so much liveliness,
that we can hardly doubt Dryden was actually an ear-witness of the
combat.
ANNUS MIRABILIS;
THE
YEAR OF WONDERS,
1666,
AN HISTORICAL POEM.
ANNUS MIRABILIS.
This is the first poem of any length which Dryden gave to the public.
Formerly he had only launched out in occasional verses, and, in some
instances, on subjects of no prominent importance. He now spread a
broader canvas, and prepared to depict a more extensive and magnificent
scene. The various incidents of an eventful war between two powerful
nations, who disputed the trident of the ocean, and the tremendous
fire, which had laid London in ashes, were subjects which still
continued to agitate the bosoms of his countrymen. These, therefore,
he ventured to assume as the theme of his poem; and his choice is
justified by the effects which it yet produces upon the reader.
There would have been no doubt, even had the author himself been
silent, that he followed D'Avenant in the choice of the elegiac
stanza, in which the _Annus Mirabilis_ is composed. It is sounding and
harmonious to the ear; and perhaps Dryden still annexed to the couplet
the idea of that harshness, which was so long its characteristick in
the hands of our early English writers. But the four-lined stanza has
also its peculiar disadvantages; and they are admirably stated by the
judicious critic, who first turned the Editor's eyes, and probably
those of many others, on the neglected poem of "Gondibert."--"The
necessity of comprising a sentence within the limits of the measure, is
the tyranny of Procrustes to thought. For the sake of a disagreeable
uniformity, expression must constantly be cramped or extenuated.
In general, the latter expedient will be practised as the easiest;
and thus both sentiment and language will be enfeebled by unmeaning
expletives."[83] It is nevertheless true, that Dryden has very seldom
suffered his poem to languish. Every stanza presents us either with
vivid description, or with some strong thought, which is seldom
suffered to glide into tenuity. But this structure of verse has often
laid him under an odd and rather unpleasing necessity, of filling up
his stanza, by coupling a simile, or a moral, expressed in the two
last lines, along with the fact, which had been announced in the
two first. When these comments, or illustrations, however good in
themselves, appear to be intruded upon the narrative or description,
and not naturally to flow out of either, they must be considered as
defects in composition; and a kind of versification, which compels
frequent recurrence to such expedients for filling up the measure, has
a disadvantage, for which mere harmony can hardly compensate. In the
passages which follow, there is produced a stiff and awkward kind of
balance between the story and the poet's reflections and illustrations.
Lawson among the foremost met his fate,
Whom sea-green Sirens from the rocks lament:
Thus as an offering for the Grecian state,
He first was killed, who first to battle went.
* * * * *
To nearest ports their shattered ships repair,
Where by our dreadful cannon they lay awed
So reverently men quit the open air,
Where thunder speaks the angry gods abroad.
* * * * *
Like hunted castors, conscious of their store,
Their way-laid wealth to Norway's coasts they bring;
There first the North's cold bosom spices bore,
And winter brooded on the eastern spring.
When, after such verses, we find one in which the author expresses
a single idea so happily, as just to fill up the _quatrain_, the
difference is immediately visible, betwixt a simile easily and
naturally introduced, and stanzas made up and levelled with what a
poet of those times would perhaps have ventured to call the _travelled
earth_ of versification:
And now four days the sun had seen our woes;
Four nights the moon beheld the incessant fire;
It seemed as if the stars more sickly rose,
And farther from the feverish north retire.
Of all these difficulties our author seems to have been aware, from
his preliminary epistle to Sir Robert Howard; and it was probably the
experimental conviction, that they were occasionally invincible, which
induced him thenceforward to desert the _quatrain_; although he has
decided that stanza to be more noble, and of greater dignity, both for
the sound and number, than any other verse in use among us.
The turn of composition, as well as the structure of the verse, is
adopted from "Gondibert." But Dryden, more completely master of the
English language, and a writer of much more lively imagination and
expression, has, in general, greatly exceeded his master in conceiving
and bringing out the far-fetched ideas and images, with which each
has graced his poem. D'Avenant is often harsh and turgid, and the
construction of his sentences extremely involved. Dryden has his
obscure, and even unintelligible, passages; but they arise from the
extravagance of the idea, not from the want of power to express it. For
example, D'Avenant says,
Near her seems crucified that lucky thief,
In heaven's dark lottery prosperous more than wise,
Who groped at last by chance for heaven's relief,
And throngs undoes with hopes by one drawn prize.
We here perfectly understand the author's meaning, through his
lumbering and unpoetical expression; but, in the following stanza,
Dryden is unintelligible, because he had conceived an idea approaching
to nonsense, while the words themselves are both poetical and
expressive:
Then we upon our globe's last verge shall go,
And view the ocean leaning on the sky;
From thence our rolling neighbours we shall know,
And on the lunar world securely pry.
In short, Dryden never fails in the power of elegant expression, till
he ventures upon something which it is impossible to express.
The love of conceit and point, that inveterate though decaying disease
of the literature of the time, has not failed to infect the _Annus
Mirabilis_. That monstrous verse, in which the extinction of the
fire is described, cannot be too often quoted, both to expose the
meanness of the image, and the confusion of the metaphor; for it will
be noticed, that the extinguisher, so unhappily conceived, is not
even employed in its own mean office. The flames of London are first
a tallow candle; and secondly hawks, which, while pouncing on their
quarry, are hooded with an extinguisher:
An hollow crystal pyramid he takes,
In firmamental waters dipt above;
Of it a broad extinguisher he makes,
And hoods the flames that to their quarry drove.
Passages also occur, in which, from the author's zealous desire to
be technically minute, the style becomes low and vulgar. There is no
doubt, that, as Dryden has observed, the proper terms of art may be not
only justly, but with the highest advantage, employed in poetry; but
such technical phrases require to be selected with great judgment:
they must bear relation to some striking and important object, or they
are mean and trivial; and they must be at once generally intelligible,
and more expressive in themselves than ordinary language, or they are
unnecessarily obscure and pedantic. Dryden has failed in both these
points, in his account of the repairs of the fleet.[84] Stanza 148, in
particular, combines the faults of meanness and unnecessary obscurity,
from the affected use of the dialect of the dock-yard:
Some the galled ropes with dawby marline bind,
Or searcloth masts with strong tarpawling coats:
To try new shrouds one mounts into the wind,
And one below their ease or stiffness notes.
Other examples might be produced of the faults of this remarkable
poem; but it is time to say, that they are much overbalanced by its
beauties. If Dryden is sometimes obscure, from the extravagance of
his imagination, or the far-fetched labour of his similes, and if his
desire to use appropriate language has occasionally led him into low
and affected minuteness, this poem exhibits a far greater number of
instances of happy and judicious illustration, beautiful description,
and sublime morality. The comparison of the secret rise of the fire of
London to the obscure birth of an usurper, is doubly striking, when we
consider how closely the passage may be understood to bear reference
to the recent domination of the Protector.[85] I will not load these
preliminary observations, by inserting the whole of the striking
passage, on the different manner in which the night, after the battle
of the first of June, was passed on board the English and Dutch fleets;
but certainly the 71st stanza will not lose, by being an hundred times
quoted:
In dreams they fearful precipices tread;
Or, shipwrecked, labour to some distant shore;
Or in dark churches walk among the dead;
They wake with horror, and dare sleep no more.
The verses, in which Prince Rupert and his enemy are compared to a
greyhound and hare, after a course so desperate as totally to exhaust
both, have been always considered as exquisitely beautiful.[86] The
description of the Loyal London partakes of the beauties and faults
which are dispersed through the poem. Nothing can be more majestic than
her description, "firing the air with her sanguine streamers," and
"riding upon her shadow in floating gold." We lament, that the weaver
should have been so fascinated with his labours as to commence seaman;
and still more, that, after describing her "roomy decks," and "depth of
draught," she should furnish no grander simile than that of
----a sea-wasp floating on the waves.
More unqualified approbation may be justly afforded to the whole
description of the Dutch homeward-bound fleet, captured in sight of
their desired haven; and the fine moral lessons which the poet takes
the opportunity to inculcate, from so unexpected an incident. The 34th
stanza has a tenderness and simplicity, which every lover of true
poetry must admire:
This careful husband had been long away,
Whom his chaste wife and little children mourn;
Who on their fingers learned to tell the day
On which their father promised to return.
I will only point out to attention the beautiful and happily expressed
simile of the eagle in stanzas 107 and 108, and then, in imitation of
honest John Bunyan,
No more detain the readers in the porch,
Or keep them from the day-light with a torch.
The title of _Annus Mirabilis_ did not, according to Mr Malone,
originate with Dryden; a prose tract, so intitled, being published
in 1662.[87] Neither was he the last that used it; for, the learned
editor of "Predictions and Observations, collected from Mr J.
Partridge's Almanacks for 1687 and 1688," has so entitled his
astrological lucubrations.
The _Annus Mirabilis_ was first printed in octavo, in 1667, the year
succeeding that which was the subject of the poem. The quarto edition
of 1688, which seems very correct, has been employed in correcting that
of Derrick in a few trifling instances.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 83: Essay by Dr Aikin on the Heroic Poem of "Gondibert."]
[Footnote 84: See stanza 146, and those which follow.]
[Footnote 85: Stanzas 213, 214.]
[Footnote 86: See stanzas 131, 132. I wish, however, our author had
spared avouching himself to have been eye-witness to so marvellous a
chase. The "so have I seen" should be confined to things which are
not only possible, but, in a certain degree, of ordinary occurrence.
Dryden's ocular testimony is not, however, so incredible as that of the
bard, who averred,
_So have I seen_, in Araby the blest,
A Phœnix couched upon her funeral nest.
Such chaces, if not frequent, have sometimes happened. In the north
of England, in ancient days, a stag and a famous greyhound, called
Hercules, after a desperate course, were found dead within a few paces
of each other, and interred with this inscription:
Hercules killed Hart of grece,
And Hart of grece killed Hercules.
]
[Footnote 87: MALONE's _Prose Works of Dryden_, Vol. III. p. 250.]
TO THE
METROPOLIS OF GREAT-BRITAIN,
THE MOST RENOWNED AND LATE FLOURISHING
CITY OF LONDON,
IN ITS
REPRESENTATIVES,
THE LORD-MAYOR AND COURT OF ALDERMEN, THE SHERIFFS, AND COMMON-COUNCIL
OF IT.
As, perhaps, I am the first who ever presented a work of this nature to
the metropolis of any nation, so it is likewise consonant to justice,
that he, who was to give the first example of such a dedication, should
begin it with that city, which has set a pattern to all others, of true
loyalty, invincible courage, and unshaken constancy. Other cities have
been praised for the same virtues, but I am much deceived if any have
so dearly purchased their reputation: their fame has been won them by
cheaper trials than an expensive, though necessary war, a consuming
pestilence, and a more consuming fire. To submit yourselves with that
humility to the judgments of heaven, and, at the same time, to raise
yourselves with that vigour above all human enemies; to be combated at
once from above, and from below; to be struck down, and to triumph,--I
know not whether such trials have been ever paralleled in any nation:
the resolution and successes of them never can be. Never had prince
or people more mutual reason to love each other, if suffering for
each other can endear affection. You have come together a pair of
matchless lovers, through many difficulties; he, through a long exile,
various traverses of fortune, and the interposition of many rivals, who
violently ravished and with-held you from him; and certainly you have
had your share in sufferings. But providence has cast upon you want of
trade, that you might appear bountiful to your country's necessities;
and the rest of your afflictions are not more the effects of God's
displeasure (frequent examples of them having been in the reign of the
most excellent princes) than occasions for the manifesting of your
christian and civil virtues. To you, therefore, this Year of Wonders
is justly dedicated, because you have made it so; you, who are to
stand a wonder to all years and ages; and who have built yourselves an
immortal monument on your own ruins. You are now a Phœnix in her
ashes, and, as far as humanity can approach, a great emblem of the
suffering Deity; but heaven never made so much piety and virtue to
leave it miserable. I have heard, indeed, of some virtuous persons who
have ended unfortunately, but never of any virtuous nation: Providence
is engaged too deeply, when the cause becomes so general; and I cannot
imagine it has resolved that ruin of the people at home, which it has
blessed abroad with such successes. I am therefore to conclude, that
your sufferings are at an end; and that one part of my poem has not
been more an history of your destruction, than the other a prophecy
of your restoration. The accomplishment of which happiness, as it is
the wish of all true Englishmen, so is it by none more passionately
desired, than by
The greatest of your admirers,
And most humble of your servants,
JOHN DRYDEN.
AN
ACCOUNT OF THE ENSUING POEM,
IN A LETTER TO THE
HON. SIR ROBERT HOWARD.[88]
SIR,
I am so many ways obliged to you, and so little able to return your
favours, that, like those who owe too much, I can only live by getting
farther into your debt. You have not only been careful of my fortune,
which was the effect of your nobleness, but you have been solicitous
of my reputation, which is that of your kindness. It is not long since
I gave you the trouble of perusing a play for me,[89] and now, instead
of an acknowledgment, I have given you a greater, in the correction of
a poem. But since you are to bear this persecution, I will at least
give you the encouragement of a martyr,--you could never suffer in
a nobler cause; for I have chosen the most heroic subject, which any
poet could desire. I have taken upon me to describe the motives, the
beginning, progress, and successes, of a most just and necessary war;
in it, the care, management, and prudence of our king; the conduct
and valour of a royal admiral, and of two incomparable generals; the
invincible courage of our captains and seamen; and three glorious
victories, the result of all. After this, I have, in the Fire, the most
deplorable, but withal the greatest, argument that can be imagined;
the destruction being so swift, so sudden, so vast and miserable, as
nothing can parallel in story. The former part of this poem, relating
to the war, is but a due expiation for my not serving my king and
country in it. All gentlemen are almost obliged to it; and I know no
reason we should give that advantage to the commonalty of England, to
be foremost in brave actions, which the nobles of France would never
suffer in their peasants. I should not have written this but to a
person, who has been ever forward to appear in all employments, whither
his honour and generosity have called him. The latter part of my poem,
which describes the Fire, I owe, first, to the piety and fatherly
affection of our monarch to his suffering subjects; and, in the second
place, to the courage, loyalty, and magnanimity of the city; both which
were so conspicuous, that I have wanted words to celebrate them as they
deserve. I have called my poem historical, not epic, though both the
actions and actors are as much heroic as any poem can contain. But,
since the action is not properly one, nor that accomplished in the
last successes, I have judged it too bold a title for a few stanzas,
which are little more in number than a single Iliad, or the longest
of the Æneids. For this reason, (I mean not of length, but broken
action, tied too severely to the laws of history) I am apt to agree
with those, who rank Lucan rather among historians in verse, than Epic
poets; in whose room, if I am not deceived, Silius Italicus, though a
worse writer, may more justly be admitted. I have chosen to write my
poem in quatrains, or stanzas of four in alternate rhyme, because I
have ever judged them more noble, and of greater dignity, both for the
sound and number, than any other verse in use amongst us; in which I am
sure I have your approbation. The learned languages have certainly a
great advantage of us, in not being tied to the slavery of any rhyme;
and were less constrained in the quantity of every syllable, which
they might vary with spondees or dactyls, besides so many other helps
of grammatical figures, for the lengthening or abbreviation of them,
than the modern are in the close of that one syllable, which often
confines, and more often corrupts, the sense of all the rest. But in
this necessity of our rhymes, I have always found the couplet verse
most easy, (though not so proper for this occasion,) for there the work
is sooner at an end, every two lines concluding the labour of the poet;
but in quatrains he is to carry it farther on, and not only so, but to
bear along in his head the troublesome sense of four lines together.
For, those, who write correctly in this kind, must needs acknowledge,
that the last line of the stanza is to be considered in the composition
of the first. Neither can we give ourselves the liberty of making any
part of a verse for the sake of rhyme, or concluding with a word which
is not current English, or using the variety of female rhymes,[90] all
which our fathers practised; and for the female rhymes, they are still
in use amongst other nations; with the Italian in every line, with
the Spaniard promiscuously, with the French alternately, as those who
have read the Alaric, the Pucelle, or any of their later poems, will
agree with me. And besides this, they write in Alexandrines, or verses
of six feet; such as, amongst us, is the old translation of Homer by
Chapman:[91] all which, by lengthening of their chain, makes the sphere
of their activity the larger.
I have dwelt too long upon the choice of my stanza, which you may
remember is much better defended in the preface to "Gondibert;"
and therefore I will hasten to acquaint you with my endeavours in
the writing. In general I will only say, I have never yet seen the
description of any naval fight in the proper terms which are used at
sea; and if there be any such, in another language, as that of Lucan
in the third of his Pharsalia, yet I could not avail myself of it in
the English; the terms of art in every tongue bearing more of the idiom
of it than any other words. We hear indeed among our poets, of the
thundering of guns, the smoke, the disorder, and the slaughter; but all
these are common notions. And certainly, as those, who in a logical
dispute keep in general terms, would hide a fallacy; so those, who do
it in any poetical description, would veil their ignorance:[92]
_Descriptas servare vices, operumque colores,
Cur ego, si nequeo ignoroque, poeta salutor?_
For my own part, if I had little knowledge of the sea, yet I have
thought it no shame to learn; and if I have made some few mistakes, it
is only, as you can bear me witness, because I have wanted opportunity
to correct them; the whole poem being first written, and now sent
you from a place, where I have not so much as the converse of any
seaman. Yet though the trouble I had in writing it was great, it was
more than recompensed by the pleasure. I found myself so warm in
celebrating the praises of military men, two such especially as the
prince and general, that it is no wonder if they inspired me with
thoughts above my ordinary level. And I am well satisfied, that, as
they are incomparably the best subject I ever had, excepting only the
royal family, so also, that this I have written of them is much better
than what I have performed on any other. I have been forced to help
out other arguments, but this has been bountiful to me; they have
been low and barren of praise,[93] and I have exalted them, and made
them fruitful; but here--_Omnia sponte suà reddit justissima tellus_.
I have had a large, a fair, and a pleasant field; so fertile, that,
without my cultivating, it has given me two harvests in a summer, and
in both oppressed the reaper. All other greatness in subjects is only
counterfeit; it will not endure the test of danger; the greatness of
arms is only real. Other greatness burdens a nation with its weight;
this supports it with its strength. And as it is the happiness of the
age, so it is the peculiar goodness of the best of kings, that we may
praise his subjects without offending him. Doubtless it proceeds from
a just confidence of his own virtue, which the lustre of no other can
be so great as to darken in him; for the good or the valiant are never
safely praised under a bad or a degenerate prince.
But to return from this digression to a farther account of my poem;
I must crave leave to tell you, that as I have endeavoured to adorn
it with noble thoughts, so much more to express those thoughts with
elocution. The composition of all poems is, or ought to be, of wit;[94]
and wit in the poet, or wit-writing, (if you will give me leave to
use a school-distinction) is no other than the faculty of imagination
in the writer, which, like a nimble spaniel, beats over and ranges
through the field of memory, 'till it springs the quarry it hunted
after; or, without metaphor, which searches over all the memory for the
species or ideas of those things, which it designs to represent. Wit
written is that which is well defined, the happy result of thought, or
product of imagination. But to proceed from wit, in the general notion
of it, to the proper wit of an Heroic or Historical Poem, I judge it
chiefly to consist in the delightful imagining of persons, actions,
passions, or things. It is not the jerk or sting of an epigram, nor
the seeming contradiction of a poor antithesis, (the delight of an
ill-judging audience in a play of rhyme,) nor the gingle of a more
poor paronomasia;[95] neither is it so much the morality of a grave
sentence, affected by Lucan, but more sparingly used by Virgil; but
it is some lively and apt description, dressed in such colours of
speech, that it sets before your eyes the absent object, as perfectly,
and more delightfully than nature. So then the first happiness of the
poet's imagination is properly invention, or finding of the thought;
the second is fancy, or the variation, deriving, or moulding, of that
thought, as the judgment represents it proper to the subject; the
third is elocution, or the art of clothing and adorning that thought,
so found and varied, in apt, significant, and sounding words. The
quickness of the imagination is seen in the invention, the fertility
in the fancy, and the accuracy in the expression. For the two first of
these, Ovid is famous amongst the poets; for the latter, Virgil. Ovid
images more often the movements and affections of the mind, either
combating between two contrary passions, or extremely discomposed
by one. His words therefore are the least part of his care; for he
pictures nature in disorder, with which the study and choice of words
is inconsistent. This is the proper wit of dialogue or discourse, and
consequently of the drama, where all that is said is supposed to be the
effect of sudden thought; which, though it excludes not the quickness
of wit in repartees, yet admits not a too curious election of words,
too frequent allusions, or use of tropes, or, in fine, any thing that
shews remoteness of thought, or labour in the writer. On the other
side, Virgil speaks not so often to us in the person of another, like
Ovid, but in his own: he relates almost all things as from himself,
and thereby gains more liberty than the other, to express his thoughts
with all the graces of elocution, to write more figuratively, and to
confess as well the labour as the force of his imagination. Though he
describes his Dido well and naturally, in the violence of her passions,
yet he must yield in that to the Myrrha, the Biblis, the Althæa, of
Ovid; for, as great an admirer of him as I am, I must acknowledge,
that if I see not more of their souls than I see of Dido's, at least I
have a greater concernment for them: and that convinces me, that Ovid
has touched those tender strokes more delicately than Virgil could. But
when action or persons are to be described, when any such image is to
be set before us, how bold, how masterly, are the strokes of Virgil!
We see the objects he presents us with in their native figures, in
their proper motions; but so we see them, as our own eyes could never
have beheld them so beautiful in themselves. We see the soul of the
poet, like that universal one of which he speaks, informing and moving
through all his pictures:
----_Totamque infusa per artus
Mens agitat molem, et magno se corpore miscet._
We behold him embellishing his images, as he makes Venus breathing
beauty upon her son Æneas:
---- ----_lumenque juventæ
Purpureum, & lætos oculis afflârat honores:
Quale manus addunt ebori decus, aut ubi flavo
Argentum, Pariusve lapis, circundatur auro._
See his Tempest, his Funeral Sports, his Combat of Turnus and Æneas:
and in his "Georgics," which I esteem the divinest part of all his
writings, the Plague, the Country, the Battle of the Bulls, the labour
of the Bees; and those many other excellent images of nature, most of
which are neither great in themselves, nor have any natural ornament
to bear them up; but the words wherewith he describes them are so
excellent, that it might be well applied to him, which was said by
Ovid, _Materium superabat opus_: the very sound of his words has often
somewhat that is connatural to the subject; and while we read him,
we sit, as in a play, beholding the scenes of what he represents. To
perform this, he made frequent use of tropes, which you know change
the nature of a known word, by applying it to some other signification;
and this is it which Horace means in his Epistle to the Piso's:
_Dixeris egregiè, notum si callida verbum
Reddiderit junctura novum._----
But I am sensible I have presumed too far to entertain you with a
rude discourse of that art, which you both know so well, and put into
practice with so much happiness. Yet before I leave Virgil, I must
own the vanity to tell you, and by you the world, that he has been
my master in this poem. I have followed him every where, I know not
with what success, but I am sure with diligence enough; my images are
many of them copied from him, and the rest are imitations of him. My
expressions also are as near as the idioms of the two languages would
admit of in translation. And this, sir, I have done with that boldness,
for which I will stand accountable to any of our little critics, who,
perhaps, are no better acquainted with him than I am. Upon your first
perusal of this poem, you have taken notice of some words, which I have
innovated (if it be too bold for me to say refined) upon his Latin;
which, as I offer not to introduce into English prose, so I hope they
are neither improper, nor altogether inelegant in verse; and, in this,
Horace will again defend me:
_Et nova, fictaque nuper, habebunt verba fidem, si
Græco fonte cadunt, parcè detorta._----
The inference is exceeding plain; for, if a Roman poet might have
liberty to coin a word, supposing only that it was derived from the
Greek, was put into a Latin termination, and that he used this liberty
but seldom, and with modesty; how much more justly may I challenge
that privilege to do it with the same prerequisites, from the best
and most judicious of Latin writers? In some places, where either
the fancy or the words were his, or any other's, I have noted it in
the margin, that I might not seem a plagiary;[96] in others I have
neglected it, to avoid as well tediousness, as the affectation of
doing it too often. Such descriptions or images well wrought, which
I promise not for mine, are, as I have said, the adequate delight of
heroic poesy; for they beget admiration, which is its proper object;
as the images of the burlesque, which is contrary to this, by the
same reason beget laughter: for, the one shews nature beautified, as
in the picture of a fair woman, which we all admire; the other shews
her deformed, as in that of a lazar, or of a fool with distorted face
and antique gestures, at which we cannot forbear to laugh, because it
is a deviation from nature. But though the same images serve equally
for the Epic poesy, and for the Historic and Panegyric, which are
branches of it, yet a several sort of sculpture is to be used in them.
If some of them are to be like those of Juvenal, _stantes in curribus
Æmiliani_, heroes drawn in their triumphal chariots, and in their full
proportion; others are to be like that of Virgil, _spirantia mollius
æra_: there is somewhat more of softness and tenderness to be shewn in
them. You will soon find I write not this without concern. Some, who
have seen a paper of verses, which I wrote last year to her highness
the Duchess, have accused them of that only thing I could defend in
them. They said, I did _humi serpere_,--that I wanted not only height
of fancy, but dignity of words, to set it off. I might well answer
with that of Horace, _Nunc non erat his locus_; I knew I addressed
them to a lady, and accordingly I affected the softness of expression,
and the smoothness of measure, rather than the height of thought; and
in what I did endeavour, it is no vanity to say I have succeeded. I
detest arrogance; but there is some difference betwixt that and a just
defence. But I will not farther bribe your candour, or the reader's.
I leave them to speak for me; and, if they can, to make out that
character, not pretending to a greater, which I have given them.[97]
And now, sir, it is time I should relieve you from the tedious length
of this account. You have better and more profitable employment for
your hours, and I wrong the public to detain you longer. In conclusion,
I must leave my poem to you with all its faults, which I hope to find
fewer in the printing by your emendations. I know you are not of the
number of those, of whom the younger Pliny speaks; _Nec sunt parum
multi, qui carpere amicos suos judicium vocant_: I am rather too secure
of you on that side. Your candour in pardoning my errors may make
you more remiss in correcting them; if you will not withal consider,
that they come into the world with your approbation, and through your
hands. I beg from you the greatest favour you can confer upon an absent
person, since I repose upon your management what is dearest to me, my
fame and reputation; and therefore I hope it will stir you up to make
my poem fairer by many of your blots: if not, you know the story of
the gamester who married the rich man's daughter, and when her father
denied the portion, christened all the children by his sirname, that
if, in conclusion, they must beg, they should do so by one name,
as well as by the other. But, since the reproach of my faults will
light on you, it is but reason I should do you that justice to the
readers, to let them know, that, if there be any thing tolerable in
this poem, they owe the argument to your choice, the writing to your
encouragement, the correction to your judgment, and the care of it to
your friendship, to which he must ever acknowledge himself to owe all
things, who is,
SIR,
The most obedient, and most
Faithful of your servants,
JOHN DRYDEN.
From Charlton, in Wiltshire,
Nov. 10, 1666.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 88: Sir Robert Howard was son to the Earl of Berkshire, and
brother to Lady Elizabeth Dryden, our author's wife. This epistle is
dated from Charlton, the seat of Lord Berkshire.]
[Footnote 89: Probably "The Indian Queen," which was a joint production
of Dryden and Howard.]
[Footnote 90: The author alludes to the privilege, anciently used,
of throwing an accentuation on the last syllable, of such a word as
_noble_, so as to make it sound _nobley_. An instance may be produced
from our author's poem on the Coronation:
Some lazy ages, lost in sleep and ease,
No action have to busy chronicles.
]
[Footnote 91: These translations are, however, in fourteen, not twelve
syllables; a vile hobbling sort of measure, used also by Phayr, and
other old translators.]
[Footnote 92: This is one of Dryden's hasty and inaccurate averments.
The ancient dramatic authors were particularly well acquainted with
nautical terms, and applied them with great accuracy. See a note in
Gifford's excellent edition of Massinger, vol. II. p. 229.]
[Footnote 93: We need not here suppose, that Dryden speaks particularly
of those to whom he had offered panygyricks: undoubtedly, he had
written poems on many subjects, which, remaining unpublished, have not
descended to us.]
[Footnote 94: Understood in the large sense, of the regulated exercise
of the imagination.]
[Footnote 95: Commonly called a pun.]
[Footnote 96: These notes are all retained in this edition, as well as
the smaller foot notes, by which the poet thought proper to explain
difficult passages. They are distinguished by the addition of his name.]
[Footnote 97: In the early editions of the _Annus Mirabilis_, the
verses to the Duchess are here inserted.]
ANNUS MIRABILIS;
THE
YEAR OF WONDERS,
1666.
1.
In thriving arts long time had Holland grown,
Crouching at home and cruel when abroad;
Scarce leaving us the means to claim our own;
Our king they courted, and our merchants awed.[98]
2.
Trade, which like blood should circularly flow,
Stopped in their channels, found its freedom lost;
Thither the wealth of all the world did go,
And seemed but shipwrecked on so base a coast.
3.
For them alone the heavens had kindly heat,
In eastern quarries ripening precious dew;[99]
For them the Idumæan balm did sweat,
And in hot Ceylon spicy forests grew.
4.
The sun but seemed the labourer of the year;
Each waxing moon supplied her watery store,[100]
To swell those tides, which from the Line did bear
Their brim-full vessels to the Belgian shore.
5.
Thus, mighty in her ships, stood Carthage long,
And swept the riches of the world from far;
Yet stooped to Rome, less wealthy, but more strong;
And this may prove our second Punic war.[101]
6.
What peace can be, where both to one pretend?
(But they more diligent, and we more strong,)
Or if a peace, it soon must have an end;
For they would grow too powerful, were it long.
7.
Behold two nations then, engaged so far,
That each seven years the fit must shake each land;
Where France will side to weaken us by war,
Who only can his vast designs withstand.
8.
See how he feeds the Iberian[102] with delays,
To render us his timely friendship vain;
And while his secret soul on Flanders preys,
He rocks the cradle of the babe of Spain.[103]
9.
Such deep designs of empire does he lay
O'er them, whose cause he seems to take in hand;
And prudently would make them lords at sea,
To whom with ease he can give laws by land.
10.
This saw our king; and long within his breast
His pensive counsels balanced to and fro;
He grieved the land he freed should be oppressed,
And he less for it than usurpers do.[104]
11.
His generous mind the fair ideas drew
Of fame and honour, which in dangers lay;
Where wealth, like fruit on precipices, grew,
Not to be gathered but by birds of prey.
12.
The loss and gain each fatally were great;
And still his subjects called aloud for war:
But peaceful kings, o'er martial people set,
Each other's poize and counterbalance are.
13.
He first surveyed the charge with careful eyes,
Which none but mighty monarchs could maintain;
Yet judged, like vapours that from limbecks rise,
It would in richer showers descend again.
14.
At length resolved to assert the watery ball,
He in himself did whole Armadas bring;
Him aged seamen might their master call,
And chuse for general, were he not their king.[105]
15.
It seems as every ship their sovereign knows,
His awful summons they so soon obey;--
So hear the scaly herd when Proteus blows,
And so to pasture follow through the sea.[106]
16.
To see this fleet upon the ocean move,
Angels drew wide the curtains of the skies;
And heaven, as if there wanted lights above,
For tapers made two glaring comets rise.[107]
17.
Whether they unctuous exhalations are,
Fired by the sun, or seeming so alone;
Or each some more remote and slippery star,
Which loses footing when to mortals shewn;
18.
Or one, that bright companion of the sun,[108]
Whose glorious aspect sealed our new-born king;
And now, a round of greater years begun,
New influence from his walks of light did bring.
19.
Victorious York did first, with famed success,
To his known valour make the Dutch give place;[109]
Thus heaven our monarch's fortune did confess,
Beginning conquest from his royal race.
20.
But since it was decreed, auspicious king,
In Britain's right that thou shouldst wed the main,
Heaven, as a gage, would cast some precious thing,
And therefore doomed that Lawson should be slain.[110]
21.
Lawson amongst the foremost met his fate,
Whom sea-green Sirens from the rocks lament;
Thus, as an offering for the Grecian state,
He first was killed, who first to battle went.[111]
22.
Their chief blown up, in air, not waves, expired,
To which his pride presumed to give the law;[112]
The Dutch confessed heaven present, and retired,
And all was Britain the wide ocean saw.
23.
To nearest ports their shattered ships repair,
Where by our dreadful cannon they lay awed;
So reverently men quit the open air,
Where thunder speaks the angry gods abroad.
24.
And now approached their fleet from India, fraught
With all the riches of the rising sun;
And precious sand from southern climates brought,
The fatal regions where the war begun.[113]
25.
Like hunted castors, conscious of their store,[114]
Their way-laid wealth to Norway's coast they bring;
There first the North's cold bosom spices bore,
And winter brooded on the eastern spring.
26.
By the rich scent we found our perfumed prey,
Which, flanked with rocks, did close in covert lie;
And round about their murdering cannon lay,
At once to threaten and invite the eye.
27.
Fiercer than cannon, and than rocks more hard,
The English undertake the unequal war;
Seven ships alone, by which the port is barred,
Besiege the Indies, and all Denmark dare.
28.
These fight like husbands, but like lovers those;
These fain would keep, and those more fain enjoy;
And to such height their frantic passion grows,
That what both love, both hazard to destroy.
29.
Amidst whole heaps of spices lights a ball,
And now their odours armed against them fly;
Some preciously by shattered porcelain fall,
And some by aromatic splinters die.
30.
And though by tempests of the prize bereft,
In heaven's inclemency some ease we find;
Our foes we vanquished by our valour left,
And only yielded to the seas and wind.
31.
Nor wholly lost we so deserved a prey;
For storms, repenting, part of it restored;
Which as a tribute from the Baltic sea,
The British ocean sent her mighty lord.[115]
32.
Go, mortals, now, and vex yourselves in vain
For wealth, which so uncertainly must come;
When what was brought so far, and with such pain,
Was only kept to lose it nearer home.
33.
The son, who twice three months on th' ocean tost,
Prepared to tell what he had passed before,
Now sees in English ships the Holland coast,
And parents' arms, in vain, stretched from the shore.
34.
This careful husband had been long away,
Whom his chaste wife and little children mourn;
Who on their fingers learned to tell the day,
On which their father promised to return.
35.
Such are the proud designs of human-kind,
And so we suffer shipwreck every where![116]
Alas, what port can such a pilot find,
Who in the night of fate must blindly steer!
36.
The undistinguished seeds of good and ill,
Heaven in his bosom from our knowledge hides;
And draws them in contempt of human skill,
Which oft, for friends mistaken, foes provides.
37.
Let Munster's prelate ever be accurst,
In whom we seek the German faith in vain;[117]
Alas, that he should teach the English first,
That fraud and avarice in the church could reign!
38.
Happy, who never trust a stranger's will,
Whose friendship's in his interest understood;
Since money given but tempts him to be ill,
When power is too remote to make him good.
39.
Till now, alone the mighty nations strove;
The rest, at gaze, without the lists did stand;
And threatening France, placed like a painted Jove,
Kept idle thunder in his lifted hand.
40.
That eunuch guardian of rich Holland's trade,
Who envies us what he wants power to enjoy;
Whose noiseful valour does no foe invade,
And weak assistance will his friends destroy.
41.
Offended that we fought without his leave,
He takes this time his secret hate to shew;
Which Charles does with a mind so calm receive,
As one that neither seeks nor shuns his foe.
42.
With France, to aid the Dutch, the Danes unite;
France as their tyrant, Denmark as their slave.[118]
But when with one three nations join to fight,
They silently confess that one more brave.
43.
Lewis had chased the English from his shore,
But Charles the French as subjects does invite;[119]
Would heaven for each some Solomon restore,
Who, by their mercy, may decide their right.
44.
Were subjects so but only by their choice,
And not from birth did forced dominion take,
Our prince alone would have the public voice,
And all his neighbours' realms would deserts make.
45.
He without fear a dangerous war pursues,
Which without rashness he began before;
As honour made him first the danger chuse,
So still he makes it good on virtue's score.
46.
The doubled charge his subjects' love supplies,
Who in that bounty to themselves are kind:
So glad Egyptians see their Nilus rise,
And in his plenty their abundance find.[120]
47.
With equal power he does two chiefs create,
Two such as each seemed worthiest when alone;[121]
Each able to sustain a nation's fate,
Since both had found a greater in their own.
48.
Both great in courage, conduct, and in fame,
Yet neither envious of the other's praise;
Their duty, faith, and interest too the same,
Like mighty partners equally they raise.
49.
The Prince long time had courted fortune's love,
But once possessed did absolutely reign;
Thus with their Amazons the heroes strove,
And conquered first those beauties they would gain.
50.
The Duke beheld, like Scipio, with disdain,
That Carthage, which he ruined, rise once more;
And shook aloft the fasces of the main,
To fright those slaves with what they felt before.
51.
Together to the watery camp they haste,
Whom matrons passing to their children show;
Infants first vows for them to heaven are cast,
And future people bless them as they go.[122]
52.
With them no riotous pomp, nor Asian train,
To infect a navy with their gaudy fears;
To make slow fights, and victories but vain;
But war severely, like itself, appears.
53.
Diffusive of themselves, where'er they pass,
They make that warmth in others they expect;
Their valour works like bodies on a glass,
And does its image on their main project.
54.
Our fleet divides, and straight the Dutch appear,
In number, and a famed commander, bold;[123]
The narrow seas can scarce their navy bear,
Or crowded vessels can their soldiers hold.
55.
The Duke, less numerous, but in courage more,
On wings of all the winds to combat flies;
His murdering guns a loud defiance roar,
And bloody crosses on his flag-staffs rise.
56.
Both furl their sails, and strip them for the fight;
Their folded sheets dismiss the useless air;
The Elean plains could boast no nobler sight,[124]
When struggling champions did their bodies bare.
57.
Born each by other in a distant line,
The sea-built forts in dreadful order move;
So vast the noise, as if not fleets did join,
But lands unfixed, and floating nations strove.[125]
58.
Now passed, on either side they nimbly tack;
Both strive to intercept and guide the wind;
And, in its eye, more closely they come back,[126]
To finish all the deaths they left behind.
59.
On high-raised decks the haughty Belgians ride,
Beneath whose shade our humble frigates go;
Such port the elephant bears, and so defied
By the rhinoceros, her unequal foe.
60.
And as the built,[127] so different is the fight,
Their mounting shot is on our sails designed;
Deep in their hulls our deadly bullets light,
And through the yielding planks a passage find.[128]
61.
Our dreaded admiral from far they threat,
Whose battered rigging their whole war receives;
All bare, like some old oak which tempests beat,
He stands, and sees below his scattered leaves.
62.
Heroes of old, when wounded, shelter sought;
But he, who meets all danger with disdain,
Even in their face his ship to anchor brought,
And steeple-high stood propt upon the main.[129]
63.
At this excess of courage, all amazed,
The foremost of his foes awhile withdraw;
With such respect in entered Rome they gazed,
Who on high chairs the god-like Fathers saw.[130]
64.
And now, as where Patroclus' body lay,
Here Trojan chiefs advanced, and there the Greek;
Ours o'er the Duke their pious wings display,
And theirs the noblest spoils of Britain seek.
65.
Meantime his busy mariners he hastes,
His shattered sails with rigging to restore;
And willing pines ascend his broken masts,
Whose lofty heads rise higher than before.
66.
Straight to the Dutch he turns his dreadful prow,
More fierce the important quarrel to decide;
Like swans, in long array, his vessels show,
Whose crests advancing do the waves divide.
67.
They charge, recharge, and all along the sea
They drive, and squander the huge Belgian fleet;
Berkley alone, who nearest danger lay,
Did a like fate with lost Creusa meet.[131]
68.
The night comes on, we eager to pursue
The combat still, and they ashamed to leave;
Till the last streaks of dying day withdrew,
And doubtful moonlight did our rage deceive.
69.
In the English fleet each ship resounds with joy,
And loud applause of their great leader's fame;
In fiery dreams the Dutch they still destroy,
And, slumbering, smile at the imagined flame.
70.
Not so the Holland fleet, who, tired and done,
Stretched on their decks, like weary oxen, lie;
Faint sweats all down their mighty members run,
Vast bulks, which little souls but ill supply.
71.
In dreams they fearful precipices tread;
Or, shipwrecked, labour to some distant shore;
Or in dark churches walk among the dead;
They wake with horror, and dare sleep no more,
72.
The morn they look on with unwilling eyes,
Till from their main-top joyful news they hear
Of ships, which, by their mould, bring new supplies,
And in their colours Belgian lions bear.[132]
73.
Our watchful general had discerned from far
This mighty succour, which made glad the foe;
He sighed, but, like a father of the war,
His face spake hope, while deep his sorrows flow.[133]
74.
His wounded men he first sends off to shore,
Never, till now, unwilling to obey;
They, not their wounds, but want of strength, deplore,
And think them happy, who with him can stay.
75.
Then to the rest, "Rejoice," said he, "to-day;
In you the fortune of Great Britain lies;
Among so brave a people, you are they,
Whom heaven has chose to fight for such a prize.
76.
"If number English courages could quell,
We should at first have shun'd, not met, our foes,
Whose numerous sails the fearful only tell;[134]
Courage from hearts, and not from numbers grows."[135]
77.
He said, nor needed more to say; with haste,
To their known stations, cheerfully they go;
And, all at once, disdaining to be last,
Solicit every gale to meet the foe.
78.
Nor did the encouraged Belgians long delay,
But, bold in others, not themselves, they stood;
So thick, our navy scarce could steer their way,
But seemed to wander in a moving wood.
79.
Our little fleet was now engaged so far,
That, like the sword-fish in the whale they fought;[136]
The combat only seemed a civil war,
Till through their bowels we our passage wrought.
80.
Never had valour, no not ours before
Done aught like this upon the land or main;
Where, not to be o'ercome, was to do more
Than all the conquests former kings did gain.
81.
The mighty ghosts of our great Harries rose,
And armed Edwards looked with anxious eyes,
To see this fleet among unequal foes,
By which fate promised them their Charles should rise.
82.
Meantime the Belgians tack upon our rear,
And raking chase-guns through our sterns they send;
Close by their fire-ships, like jackals, appear,
Who on their lions for the prey attend.[137]
83.
Silent, in smoke of cannon, they come on;
Such vapours once did fiery Cacus hide:[138]
In these, the height of pleased revenge is shewn,
Who burn contented by another's side.
84.
Sometimes from fighting squadrons of each fleet,
Deceived themselves, or to preserve some friend,
Two grappling Ætnas on the ocean meet,
And English fires with Belgian flames contend.
85.
Now, at each tack, our little fleet grows less;
And, like maimed fowl, swim lagging on the main.
Their greater loss their numbers scarce confess,
While they lose cheaper than the English gain.
86.
Have you not seen, when whistled from the fist,
Some falcon stoops at what her eye designed,
And with her eagerness the quarry missed,
Straight flies at check, and clips it down the wind?[139]
87.
The dastard crow, that to the wood made wing,
And sees the groves no shelter can afford,
With her loud caws her craven kind does bring,
Who, safe in numbers, cuff the noble bird.
88.
Among the Dutch thus Albemarle did fare:
He could not conquer, and disdained to fly;
Past hope of safety, 'twas his latest care,
Like falling Cæsar, decently to die.
89.
Yet pity did his manly spirit move,
To see those perish who so well had fought;
And generously with his despair he strove,
Resolved to live till he their safety wrought.
90.
Let other muses write his prosperous fate,
Of conquered nations tell, and kings restored;
But mine shall sing of his eclipsed estate,
Which, like the sun's, more wonders does afford.
91.
He drew his mighty frigates all before,
On which the foe his fruitless force employs;
His weak ones deep into his rear he bore,
Remote from guns, as sick men from the noise.[140]
92.
His fiery cannon did their passage guide,
And following smoke obscured them from the foe:
Thus Israel, safe from the Egyptians' pride.
By flaming pillars, and by clouds did go.
93.
Elsewhere the Belgian force we did defeat,
But here our courages did theirs subdue;
So Xenophon once led that famed retreat,
Which first the Asian empire overthrew.
94.
The foe approached; and one for his bold sin
Was sunk, as he that touched the ark was slain:[141]
The wild waves mastered him, and sucked him in,
And smiling eddies dimpled on the main.
95.
This seen, the rest at awful distance stood;
As if they had been there as servants set,
To stay, or to go on, as he thought good,
And not pursue, but wait on his retreat.
96.
So Libyan huntsmen, on some sandy plain,
From shady coverts roused, the lion chace;
The kingly beast roars out with loud disdain,
And slowly moves, unknowing to give place.[142]
97.
But if some one approach to dare his force,
He swings his tail, and swiftly turns him round:
With one paw seizes on his trembling horse,
And with the other tears him to the ground.
98.
Amidst these toils succeeds the balmy night;
Now hissing waters the quenched guns restore;
And weary waves, withdrawing from the fight,
Lie lulled and panting on the silent shore.[143]
99.
The moon shone clear on the becalmed flood,
Where, while her beams like glittering silver play,
Upon the deck our careful general stood,
And deeply mused on the succeeding day.[144]
100.
"That happy sun," said he, "will rise again,
Who twice victorious did our navy see;
And I alone must view him rise in vain,
Without one ray of all his star for me.
101.
"Yet, like an English general will I die,
And all the ocean make my spacious grave:
Women and cowards on the land may lie;
The sea's a tomb that's proper for the brave."
102.
Restless he passed the remnant of the night,
Till the fresh air proclaimed the morning nigh;
And burning ships, the martyrs of the fight,
With paler fires beheld the eastern sky.
103.
But now his stores of ammunition spent,
His naked valour is his only guard;
Rare thunders are from his dumb cannon sent,
And solitary guns are scarcely heard.
104.
Thus far had fortune power, here forced to stay,
No longer durst with fortune be at strife;
This as a ransom Albemarle did pay,
For all the glories of so great a life.
105.
For now brave Rupert from afar appears,
Whose waving streamers the glad general knows;
With full-spread sails his eager navy steers,
And every ship in swift proportion grows.[145]
106.
The anxious prince had heard the cannon long,
And, from that length of time, dire omens drew
Of English overmatched, and Dutch too strong,
Who never fought three days, but to pursue.
107.
Then, as an eagle, who with pious care
Was beating widely on the wing for prey,
To her now silent eiry does repair,
And finds her callow infants forced away;
108.
Stung with her love, she stoops upon the plain,
The broken air loud whistling as she flies;
She stops and listens, and shoots forth again,
And guides her pinions by her young ones cries.
109.
With such kind passion hastes the prince to fight,
And spreads his flying canvas to the sound;
Him, whom no danger, were he there, could fright,
Now absent, every little noise can wound.
110.
As in a drought the thirsty creatures cry,
And gape upon the gathered clouds for rain;
And first the martlet meets it in the sky,
And with wet wings joys all the feathered train;
111.
With such glad hearts did our despairing men
Salute the appearance of the prince's fleet;
And each ambitiously would claim the ken,
That with first eyes did distant safety meet.
112.
The Dutch, who came like greedy hinds before,
To reap the harvest their ripe ears did yield,
Now look like those, when rolling thunders roar,
And sheets of lightning blast the standing field.
113.
Full in the prince's passage, hills of sand,
And dangerous flats, in secret ambush lay;
Where the false tides skim o'er the covered land,
And seamen, with dissembled depths, betray.
114.
The wily Dutch, who, like fallen angels, feared
This new Messiah's coming, there did wait,
And round the verge their braving vessels steered,
To tempt his courage with so fair a bait.
115.
But he, unmoved, contemns their idle threat,
Secure of fame whene'er he please to fight;
His cold experience tempers all his heat,
And inbred worth doth boasting valour slight.
116.
Heroic virtue did his actions guide,
And he the substance, not the appearance, chose;
To rescue one such friend he took more pride,
Than to destroy whole thousands of such foes.
117.
But when approached, in strict embraces bound,
Rupert and Albemarle together grow;
He joys to have his friend in safety found,
Which he to none but to that friend would owe.
118.
The cheerful soldiers, with new stores supplied,
Now long to execute their spleenful will;
And, in revenge for those three days they tried,
Wish one, like Joshua's, when the sun stood still.
119.
Thus reinforced, against the adverse fleet,[146]
Still doubling ours, brave Rupert leads the way;
With the first blushes of the morn they meet,
And bring night back upon the new-born day.
120.
His presence soon blows up the kindling fight,
And his loud guns speak thick like angry men;
It seemed as slaughter had been breathed all night,
And death new-pointed his dull dart agen.
121.
The Dutch too well his mighty conduct knew,
And matchless courage, since the former fight;
Whose navy like a stiff-stretched cord did shew,
Till he bore in, and bent them into flight.
122.
The wind he shares, while half their fleet offends
His open side, and high above him shows;
Upon the rest at pleasure he descends,
And, doubly harmed, he double harms bestows.
123.
Behind, the general mends his weary pace,
And sullenly to his revenge he sails;
So glides some trodden serpent on the grass,
And long behind his wounded volume trails.[147]
124.
The increasing sound is borne to either shore,
And for their stakes the throwing nations fear;
Their passions double with the cannons' roar,
And with warm wishes each man combats there.
125.
Plied thick and close as when the fight begun,
Their huge unwieldy navy wastes away:
So sicken waneing moons too near the sun,
And blunt their crescents on the edge of day.
126.
And now, reduced on equal terms to fight,
Their ships like wasted patrimonies show;
Where the thin scattering trees admit the light,
And shun each other's shadows as they grow.
127.
The warlike prince had sever'd from the rest
Two giant ships, the pride of all the main;
Which with his one so vigorously he pressed,
And flew so home, they could not rise again.
128.
Already battered, by his lee they lay;
In vain upon the passing winds they call;
The passing winds through their torn canvas play,
And flagging sails on heartless sailors fall.
129.
Their opened sides receive a gloomy light,
Dreadful as day let into shades below;
Without, grim death rides barefaced in their sight,
And urges entering billows as they flow.
130.
When one dire shot, the last they could supply,
Close by the board the prince's main-mast bore:
All three, now helpless, by each other lie,
And this offends not, and those fear no more.
131.
So have I seen some fearful hare maintain
A course, till tired before the dog she lay;
Who, stretched behind her, pants upon the plain,
Past power to kill, as she to get away.
132.
With his loll'd tongue he faintly licks his prey;
His warm breath blows her flix[148] up as she lies;
She, trembling, creeps upon the ground away,
And looks back to him with beseeching eyes.
133.
The prince unjustly does his stars accuse,
Which hindered him to push his fortune on;
For what they to his courage did refuse,
By mortal valour never must be done.
134.
This lucky hour the wise Batavian takes,
And warns his tattered fleet to follow home;
Proud to have so got off with equal stakes,
Where 'twas a triumph not to be o'ercome.[149]
135.
The general's force, as kept alive by fight,
Now not opposed, no longer can pursue;
Lasting till heaven had done his courage right;
When he had conquered, he his weakness knew.
136.
He casts a frown on the departing foe,
And sighs to see him quit the watery field;
His stern fixed eyes no satisfaction show,
For all the glories which the fight did yield.
137.
Though, as when fiends did miracles avow,
He stands confessed e'en by the boastful Dutch;
He only does his conquest disavow,
And thinks too little what they found too much.
138.
Returned, he with the fleet resolved to stay;
No tender thoughts of home his heart divide;
Domestic joys and cares he puts away,
For realms are households which the great must guide.[150]
139.
As those, who unripe veins in mines explore,
On the rich bed again the warm turf lay,
Till time digests the yet imperfect ore,
And know it will be gold another day;[151]
140.
So looks our monarch on this early fight,
Th' essay and rudiments of great success;
Which all-maturing time must bring to light,
While he, like heaven, does each day's labour bless.
141.
Heaven ended not the first or second day,
Yet each was perfect to the work designed:
God and kings work, when they their work survey,
A passive aptness in all subjects find.
142.
In burdened vessels first, with speedy care,
His plenteous stores do season'd timber send;
Thither the brawny carpenters repair,
And as the surgeons of maimed ships attend.
143.
With cord and canvas from rich Hamburgh sent,
His navy's molted wings he imps[152] once more;
Tall Norway fir, their masts in battle spent,
And English oak, sprung leaks and planks restore.
144.
All hands employed, the royal work grows warm;
Like labouring bees on a long summer's day,
Some sound the trumpet for the rest to swarm,
And some on bells of tasted lilies play.
145.
Wi
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