POETICAL WORKS

OF

JOHN DRYDEN.

With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes,

BY THE

REV. GEORGE GILFILLAN.

VOL. II.

M. DCCC. LV.

CRITICAL ESTIMATE

OF THE

GENIUS AND POETICAL WORKS OF JOHN DRYDEN.

In our Life of Dryden we promised to say something about the question, how far is a poet, particularly in the moral tendency and taste of his writings, to be tried—and either condemned or justified—by the character and spirit of his age? To a rapid consideration of this question we now proceed, before examining the constituent elements or the varied fruits of the poet's genius.

And here, unquestionably, there are extremes, which every critic should avoid. Some imagine that a writer of a former century should be tried, either by the standard which prevails in the cultured and civilised nineteenth, or by the exposition of moral principles and practice which is to be found in the Scriptures. Now, it is obviously, so far as taste is concerned, as unjust to judge a book written in the style and manner of one age by the merely arbitrary and conventional rules established in another, as to judge the dress of our ancestors by the fashions of the present day. And in respect of morality, it is as unfair to visit with the same measure of condemnation offences against decorum or decency, committed by writers living before or living after the promulgation of the Christian code, as it would be to class the Satyrs, Priapi, and Bacchantes of an antique sculptor, with their imitations, by inferior and coarser artists, in later times. There must be a certain measure of allowance made for the errors of Genius when it was working as the galley-slave of its tradition and period, and when it had not yet received the Divine Light which, shining into the world from above, has supplied men with higher æsthetic as well as spiritual models of principles, and revealed man's body to be the temple of the Holy Ghost. To look for our modern philanthropy in that "Greek Gazette," the Iliad of Homer—to expect that reverence for the Supreme Being which the Bible has taught us in the Metamorphoses of Ovid—or to seek that refinement of manners and language which has only of late prevailed amongst us, in the plays of Aristophanes and Plautus—were very foolish and very vain. In ages not so ancient, and which have revolved since the dawn of Christianity, a certain coarseness of thought and language has been prevalent; and for it still larger allowance should be made, because it has been applied to simplicity rather than to sensuality—to rustic barbarism, not to civilised corruption—and carries along with it a rough raciness, and a reference to the sturdy aboriginal beast—just as acorns in the trough suggest the immemorial forests where they grew, and the rich greenswards on which they fell.

In two cases, it thus appears, should the severest censor be prepared to modify his condemnation of the bad taste or the impurity to be found in writers of genius—first, in that of a civilization, perfect in its kind, but destitute of the refining and sublimating element which a revelation only can supply; and, secondly, in that of those ages in which the lights of knowledge and religion are contending with the gloom of barbarian rudeness. Perhaps there are still two other cases capable of palliation—that of a mind so constituted as to be nothing, if not a mirror of its age, and faithfully and irresistibly reflecting even its vices and pollutions; or that of a mind morbidly in love with the morbidities and the vile passages of human nature. But suppose the case of a writer, sitting under the full blaze of Gospel truth, professedly a believer in the Gospel, and intimately acquainted with its oracles, living in a late and dissipated, not a rude and simple age—possessed of varied and splendid talents, which qualified him to make as well as to mirror, and with a taste naturally sound and manly, who should yet seek to shock the feelings of the pious, to gratify the low tendencies, and fire to frenzy the evil passions of his period—he is not to be shielded by the apology that he has only conformed to the bad age on which he was so unfortunate as to fall. Prejudice may, indeed, put in such a plea in his defence; but the inevitable eye of common sense, distinguishing between necessity and choice, between coarseness and corruption, between a man's passively yielding to and actively inviting and encouraging the currents of false taste and immorality which he must encounter, will find that plea nugatory, and bring in against the author a verdict of guilty.

Now this, we fear, is exactly the case of Dryden. He was neither a "barbarian" nor a "Scythian." He was a conscious artist, not a high though helpless reflector of his age. He had not, we think, like his relative, Swift, originally any diseased delight in filth for its own sake; was not—shall we say?—a natural, but an artificial Yahoo. He wielded a power over the public mind, approaching the absolute, and which he could have turned to virtuous, instead of vicious account—at first, it might have been amidst considerable resistance and obloquy, but ultimately with triumphant success. This, however, he never attempted, and must therefore be classed, in this respect, with such writers as Byron, whose powers gilded their pollutions, less than their pollutions degraded and defiled their powers; nay, perhaps he should be ranked even lower than the noble bard, whose obscenities are not so gross, and who had, besides, to account for them the double palliations of passion and of despair.

In these remarks we refer principally to Dryden's plays; for his poems, as we remarked in the Life, are (with the exception of a few of the Prologues, which we print under protest) in a great measure free from impurity. We pass gladly to consider him in his genius and his poetical works. The most obvious, and among the most remarkable characteristics of his poetic style, are its wondrous elasticity and ease of movement. There is never for an instant any real or apparent effort, any straining for effect, any of that "double, double, toil and trouble," by which many even of the weird cauldrons in which Genius forms her creations are disturbed and bedimmed. That power of doing everything with perfect and conscious ease, which Dugald Stewart has ascribed to Barrow and to Horsley in prose, distinguished Dryden in poetry. Whether he discusses the deep questions of fate and foreknowledge in "Religio Laici," or lashes Shaftesbury in the "Medal," or pours a torrent of contempt on Shadwell in "MacFlecknoe," or describes the fire of London in the "Annus Mirabilis," or soars into lyric enthusiasm in his "Ode on the Death of Mrs Killigrew," and "Alexander's Feast," or paints a tournament in "Palamon and Arcite," or a fairy dance in the "Flower and the Leaf,"—he is always at home, and always aware that he is. His consciousness of his own powers amounts to exultation. He is like the steed who glories in that tremendous gallop which affects the spectator with fear. Indeed, we never can separate our conception of Dryden's vigorous and vaulting style from the image of a noble horse, devouring the dust of the field, clearing obstacles at a bound, taking up long leagues as a little thing, and the very strength and speed of whose motion give it at a distance the appearance of smoothness. Pope speaks of his

"Long resounding march, and energy divine."

Perhaps "ease divine" had been words more characteristic of that almost superhuman power of language by which he makes the most obstinate materials pliant, melts down difficulties as if by the touch of magic, and, to resume the former figure, comes into the goal without a hair turned on his mane, or a single sweat-drop confessing effort or extraordinary exertion. We know no poet since Homer who can be compared to Dryden in this respect, except Scott, who occasionally, in "Marmion," and the "Lay of the Last Minstrel," exhibits the same impetuous ease and fiery fluent movement. Scott does not, however, in general, carry the same weight as the other; and the species of verse he uses, in comparison to the heroic rhyme of Dryden, gives you often the impression of a hard trot, rather than of a "long-resounding" and magnificent gallop. Scott exhibits in his poetry the soul of a warrior; but it is of a warrior of the Border—somewhat savage and coarse. Dryden can, for the nonce at least, assume the appearance, and display the spirit, of a knight of ancient chivalry—gallant, accomplished, elegant, and gay.

Next to this poet's astonishing ease, spirit, and elastic vigour, may be ranked his clear, sharp intellect. He may be called more a logician than a poet. He reasons often, and always acutely, and his rhyme, instead of shackling, strengthens the movement of his argumentation. Parts of his "Religio Laici" and the "Hind and Panther" resemble portions of Duns Scotus or Aquinas set on fire. Indeed, keen, strong intellect, inflamed with passion, and inspirited by that "ardour and impetuosity of mind" which Wordsworth is compelled to allow to him, rather than creative or original genius, is the differentia of Dryden. We have compared him to a courser, but he was not one of those coursers of Achilles, who fed on no earthly food, but on the golden barley of heaven, having sprung from the gods—

  [Greek: Xanthon kai Balion, to ama pnoiaesi, petesthaen.
  Tous eteke Zephuro anemo Arpua Podargae.]

Dryden resembled rather the mortal steed which was yoked with these immortal twain, the brood of Zephyr and the Harpy Podarga; only we can hardly say of the poet what Homer says of Pedasus—

[Greek: Os kai thnaetos eon, epeth ippois athanatoisi.]

He was not, although a mortal, able to keep up with the immortal coursers. His path was on the plains or table-lands of earth—never or seldom in "cloudland, gorgeous land," or through the aerial altitudes which stretch away and above the clouds to the gates of heaven. He can hardly be said to have possessed the power of sublimity, in the high sense of that term, as the power of sympathising with the feeling of the Infinite. Often he gives us the impression of the picturesque, of the beautiful, of the heroic, of the nobly disdainful—but never (when writing, at least, entirely from his own mind) of that infinite and nameless grandeur which the imaginative soul feels shed on it from the multitudinous waves of ocean—from the cataract leaping from his rock, as if to consummate an act of prayer to God—from the hum of great assemblies of men—from the sight of far-extended wastes and wildernesses—and from the awful silence, and the still more mysterious sparkle of the midnight stars. This sense of the presence of the shadow of immensity—immensity itself cannot be felt any more than measured—this sight like that vouchsafed to Moses of the "backparts" of the Divine—the Divine itself cannot be seen—has been the inspiration of all the highest poetry of the world—of the "Paradise Lost," of the "Divina Commedia," of the "Night Thoughts," of Wordsworth and Coleridge, of "Festus," and, highest far, of the Hebrew Prophets, as they cry, "Whither can we go from Thy presence? whither can we flee from Thy Spirit?" Such poets have resembled a blind man, who feels, although he cannot see, that a stranger of commanding air is in the room beside him; so they stand awe-struck in the "wind of the going" of a majestic and unseen Being. This feeling differs from mysticism, inasmuch as it is connected with a reality, while the mystic dreams a vague and unsupported dream, and the poetry it produces is simply the irresistible cry springing from the perception of this wondrous Some One who is actually near them. The feeling is connected, in general, with a lofty moral and religious nature; and yet not always, since, while wanting in Dryden, we find it intensely discovered, although in an imperfect and perverted shape, in Byron and Rousseau.

In Dryden certainly it exists not. We do not—and in this we have Jeffrey's opinion to back us—remember a single line in his poetry that can be called sublime, or, which is the same thing, that gives us a thrilling shudder, as if a god or a ghost were passing by. Pleasure, high excitement,—rapture even, he often produces; but such a feeling as is created by that line of Milton,

"To bellow through the vast and boundless deep,"

never. Compare, in proof of this, the description of the tournament in "Palamon and Arcite"—amazingly spirited as it is—to the description of the war-horse in Job; or, if that appear too high a test, to the contest of Achilles with the rivers in Homer; to the war of the Angels, and the interrupted preparations for contest between Gabriel and Satan in Milton; to the contest between Apollyon and Christian in the "Pilgrim's Progress;" to some of the combats in Spenser; and to that wonderful one of the Princess and the Magician in midair in the "Arabian Nights," in order to understand the distinction between the most animated literal pictures of battle and those into which the element of imagination is strongly injected by the poet, who can, to the inevitable shiver of human nature at the sight of struggle and carnage, add the far more profound and terrible shiver, only created by a vision of the concomitants, the consequences—the UNSEEN BORDERS of the bloody scene. Take these lines, for instance:—

  "They look anew: the beauteous form of fight
  Is changed, and war appears a grisly sight;
  Two troops in fair array one moment showed—
  The next, a field with fallen bodies strowed;
  Not half the number in their seats are found,
  But men and steeds lie grovelling on the ground.
  The points of spears are stuck within the shield,
  The steeds without their riders scour the field;
  The knights, unhorsed, on foot renew the fight—
  The glittering faulchions cast a gleaming light;
  Hauberks and helms are hew'd with many a wound,
  Out-spins the streaming blood, and dyes the ground."

This is vigorous and vivid, but is not imaginative or suggestive. It does not carry away the mind from the field to bring back thoughts and images, which shall, so to speak, brood over, and aggravate the general horror. It is, in a word, plain, good painting, but it is not poetry. There is not a metaphor, such as "he laugheth at the shaking of a spear," in it all.

In connexion with this defect in imagination is the lack of natural imagery in Dryden's poetry. Wordsworth, indeed, greatly overcharges the case, when he says (in a letter to Scott), "that there is not a single image from nature in the whole body of his poetry." We have this minute taken up the "Hind and the Panther," and find two images from nature in one page:—

  "As where in fields the fairy rounds are seen,
  A rank sour herbage rises on the green;
  So," &c.

And a few lines down:—

  "As where the lightning runs along the ground,
  No husbandry can heal the blasting wound."

And some pages farther on occurs a description of Spring, not unworthy of Wordsworth himself; beginning—

  "New blossoms flourish and new flowers arise,
  As God had been abroad, and walking there,
  Had left his footsteps, and reform'd the year."

Still it is true, that, taking his writings as a whole, they are thin in natural images; and even those which occur, are often rather the echoes of his reading, than the results of his observation. And what Wordsworth adds is, we fear, true; in his translation of Virgil, where Virgil can be fairly said to have his eye upon his object, Dryden always spoils the passage. The reason of this, apart from his want of high imaginative sympathy, may be found in his long residence in London; and his lack of that intimate daily familiarity with natural scenes, which can alone supply thorough knowledge, or enkindle thorough love. Nature is not like the majority of other mistresses. Her charms deepen the longer she is known; and he that loves her most warmly, has watched her with the narrowest inspection. She can bear the keenest glances of the microscope, and to see all her glory would exhaust an antediluvian life. The appetite, in her case, "grows with what it feeds on;" but such an appetite was not Dryden's.

Another of his great defects is, in true tenderness of feeling. He has very few passages which can be called pathetic. His Elegies and funeral Odes, such as those on "Mrs Killigrew" and "Eleonora," are eloquent; but they move you to admiration, not to tears. Dryden's long immersion in the pollutions of the playhouses, had combined, with his long course of domestic infelicity, and his employments as a hack author, a party scribe, and a satirist, to harden his heart, to brush away whatever fine bloom of feeling there had been originally on his mind, and to render him incapable of even simulating the softer emotions of the soul. But for the discovered fact, that he was in early life a lover of his relative, Honor Driden, you would have judged him from his works incapable of a pure passion. "Lust hard by Hate," being his twin idols, how could he represent human, far less ethereal love; and how could he touch those springs of holy tears, which lie deep in man's heart, and which are connected with all that is dignified, and all that is divine in man's nature? What could the author of "Limberham" know of love, or the author of "MacFlecknoe" of pity?

Wordsworth, in that admirable letter to which we have repeatedly referred, says, "Whenever his language is poetically impassioned, it is mostly upon unpleasing subjects, such as the follies, vices, and crimes of classes of men, or individuals." This is unquestionable. He never so nearly reaches the sublime, as when he is expressing contempt. He never rises so high, as in the act of trampling. He is a "good hater," and expresses his hatred with a mixture of animus and ease, of fierceness and of trenchant rapidity, which makes it very formidable. He only, as it were, waves off his adversaries disdainfully, but the very wave of his hand cuts like a sabre. His satire is not savage and furious, like Juvenal's; not cool, collected, and infernal, like that of Junius; not rabid and reckless, like that of Swift; and never darkens into the unearthly grandeur of Byron's: but it is strong, swift, dashing, and decisive. Nor does it want deep and subtle touches. His pictures of Shaftesbury and Buckingham are as delicately finished, as they are powerfully conceived. He flies best at the highest game; but even in dealing with Settles and Shadwells, he can be as felicitous as he is fierce. No satire in the world contains lines more exquisitely inverted, more ingeniously burlesqued, more artfully turned out of their apparently proper course, like rays at once refracted and cooled, than those which thus ominously panegyrise Shadwell:—

  "His brows thick fogs, instead of glories grace,
  And lambent dulness play'd about his face.
  As Hannibal did to the altar come,
  Sworn by his sire, a mortal foe to Rome;
  So Shadwell swore, nor should his vow be vain,
  That he till death true dulness would maintain."

Better still the following picture, in imitation of the Homeric or
Miltonic manner:—

  "The Sire then shook the honours of his head,
  And from his brows damps of oblivion shed
  Full on the filial dulness—long he stood
  Repelling from his breast the raging God."

What inimitable irony in this epithet! The God of dulness raging! A stagnant pool in a passion; a canal insane; a mouton enragé, as the French says; or a snail in a tumultuous state of excitement, were but types of the satirical ideas implied in these words. What a description of labouring nonsense—of the Pythonic genius of absurdity, panting and heaving on his solemnly ridiculous tripod!

The language and versification of Dryden have been praised, and justly. His style is worthy of a still more powerful and original vein of genius than his own. It is a masculine, clear, elastic, and varied diction, fitted to express all feelings, save the deepest; all fancies, save the subtlest; all passions, save the loftiest; all moods of mind, save the most disinterested and rapt; to represent incidents, however strange; characters, however contradictory to each other; shades of meaning, however evasive: and to do all this, as if it were doing nothing, in point of ease, and as if it were doing everything in point of felt and rejoicing energy. No poetic style since can, in such respects, be compared to Dryden's. Pope's to his is feeble—and Byron's forced. He can say the strongest things in the swiftest way, and the most felicitous expressions seem to fall unconsciously from his lips. Had his matter, you say, but been equal to his manner, his thought in originality and imaginative power but commensurate with the boundless quantity, and no less admirable quality, of his words! His versification deserves a commendation scarcely inferior. It is "all ear," if we may so apply an expression of Shakspeare's. No studied rules,—no elaborate complication of harmonies,—it is the mere sinking and swelling of the wave of his thought as it moves onward to the shore of his purpose. And, as in the sea, there are no furrows absolutely isolated from each other, but each leans on, or melts into each, and the subsidence of the one is the rise of the other—so with the versification of his better poetry. The beginning of the "Hind and Panther," we need not quote; but it will be remembered, as a good specimen of that peculiar style of running the lines into one another, and thereby producing a certain free and noble effect, which the uniform tinkle of Pope and his school is altogether unable to reach; a style which has since been copied by some of our poets—by Churchill, by Cowper, and by Shelley. The lines of the artificial school, on the other hand, may be compared to rollers, each distinct from each other,—each being in itself a whole,—but altogether forming none. Pope, says Hazlitt, has turned Pegasus into a rocking-horse.

We are, perhaps, nearly right when we call Dryden the most eloquent and rhetorical of English poets. He bears in this respect an analogy to Lucretius among the Romans, who, inferior in polish to Virgil, was incomparably more animated and energetic in style; who exhibited, besides, traits of lofty imagination rarely met with in Virgil, and never in Dryden; and who equalled the English poet in the power of reasoning in verse, and setting the severe abstractions of metaphysical thought to music. With the Shakspeares, Chaucers, Spensers, Miltons, Byrons, Wordsworths, and Coleridges, the Dii majorum gentium of the Poetic Pantheon of Britain, Dryden ranks not, although towering far above the Moores, Goldsmiths, Gays, and Priors. He may be classed with a middle, but still high order, in which we find the names of Scott, as a poet, Johnson, Pope, Cowper, Southey, Crabbe, and two or three others, who, while all excelling Dryden in some qualities, are all excelled by him in others, and bulk on the whole about as largely as he on the public eye.

We come to make a few remarks, in addition to some we have already incidentally made, on Dryden's separate works. And first of his Lyrics. His songs, properly so called, are lively, buoyant, and elastic; yet, compared to those of Shakspeare, they are of "the earth, earthy." They are the down of the thistle, carried on a light breeze upwards. Shakspeare's resemble aerial notes—snatches of superhuman melody—descending from above. Compared to the warm-gushing songs of Burns, Dryden's are cold. Better than his songs are his Odes. That on the death of Mrs Killigrew has much divided the opinion of critics—Dr Johnson calling it magnificent, and Warton denying it any merit. We incline to a mediate view. It has bold passages; the first and the last stanzas are very powerful, and the whole is full of that rushing torrent-movement characteristic of the poet. But the sinkings are as deep as the swellings, and the inequality disturbs the general effect. This is still more true of "Threnodia Augustalis," the ode on the death of Charles II. Not only is its spirit fulsome, and its statement of facts grossly partial, but many of its lines are feeble, and the whole is wire-spun. Yet what can be nobler in thought and language than the following, descriptive of the joy at the king's partial recovery!—

  "Men met each other with erected look,
  The steps were higher that they took;
  Each to congratulate his friend made haste,
  And long inveterate foes saluted as they pass'd."

How admirably this last line describes that sudden solution of the hostile elements in human nature-that swift sense of unity in society, produced by some glad tidings or great public enthusiasm, when for an hour the Millennium is anticipated, and the poet's wish, that

  "Man wi' man, the warld o'er,
  Shall brithers be, for a' that,"

is fulfilled!

The two odes on St Cecilia's Day are both admirable in different ways. "Alexander's Feast," like Burns's "Tam o' Shanter," seems to come out at once "as from a mould." It is pure inspiration, but of the second order—rather that of the Greek Pythoness than of the Hebrew prophet. Coleridge or Wordsworth makes the objection to it, that the Bacchus it describes is the mere vulgar deity of drink—

  "Flush'd with a purple grace,
  He shows his honest face"—

not the ideal Bacchus, clad in vine-leaves, returning from the conquest of India, and attended by a procession of the lions and tigers he had tamed. But this, although a more imaginative representation of the god of wine, had not been so suitably sung at an entertainment presided over by an Alexander and a Thais, a drunk conqueror and a courtezan. Dryden himself, we have seen, thought this the best ode that ever was or would be written in the English language. In a certain sense he was right. For vivacity, freedom of movement, and eloquence, it has never been equalled. But there are some odes—such as Coleridge's "Ode to France" and Wordsworth's "Power of Sound"—which as certainly excel it in strength of imagination, grandeur of conception, and unity of execution and effect.

Of Dryden's Satires we have already spoken in a general way. "Absalom and Achitophel" is of course the masterpiece, and cannot be too highly praised as a gallery of portraits, and for the daring force and felicity of its style. Why enlarge on a poem, almost every line of which has become a proverb? "The Medal" is inferior only in condensation—in spirit and energy it is quite equal. In "MacFlecknoe," the mock-heroic is sustained with unparalleled vigour from the first line to the last. Shadwell is a favourite of Dryden's ire. He fancies him, and loves to empty out on his head all the riches of his wrath. What can be more terrible than the words occurring in the second part of "Absalom and Achitophel"—

  "When wine hath given him courage to blaspheme,
  He curses God—but God before curst him!"

He has written two pieces, which may be called didactic or controversial poems—"Religio Laici" and "The Hind and Panther." The chief power of the former is in its admirable combination of two things, often dissociated—reason and rhyme; and its chief interest lies in the light it casts upon Dryden's uncertainty of religious view. The thought has little originality, the versification less varied music than is his wont, and no passage of transcendent power occurs. Far more faulty in plan, and far more unequal, is "The Hind and Panther;" but it has, on the other hand, many passages of amazing eloquence—some satirical pictures equal to anything in "Absalom and Achitophel"—some vivid natural descriptions; and even the absurdities of the fable, and the sophistries of the argument add to its character as the most exquisitely perverted piece of ingenuity in the language. Nothing but high genius, very vigorously exerted, could reconcile us to a story so monstrous, and to reasoning so palpably one-sided and weak.

His Epistles are of divers merit, but all discover Dryden's usual sense, sarcastic observation, and sweeping force of style. The best are that to Sir Godfrey Kneller—remarkable for its knowledge of, and graceful tribute to, the "serene and silent art" of painting; and the very noble epistle addressed to Congreve, which reminds you of one giant hand of genius held out to welcome and embrace another. Gross flatterer as Dryden often was, there is something in this epistle that rings true, and the emotion in it you feel even all his powers could never have enabled him to counterfeit. Such generous patronage of rising, by acknowledged merit, was as rare then as it is still. The envy of the literary man too often crowns his gray hairs with a chaplet of nightshade, and pours its dark poison into the latest cup of existence.

His "Annus Mirabilis" is another instance of perverted power, and ingenuity astray. Written in that bad style he found prevalent in his early days—the style of the metaphysical poets, Cowley, Donne, and Drayton—the author ever and anon soars out of his trammels into strong and simple poetry, fervid description, and in one passage—that about the future fortunes of London—into eloquent prophecy. The fire of London is vigorously pictured, but its breath of flame should have burned up petty conceit and tawdry ornament. He should have sternly daguerreotyped the spectacle of the capital of the civilised world burning—a spectacle awful, not only in the sight of men, but, as Hall says of the French Revolution, in that of superior beings. We need not dwell on the far-famed absurdities which the poem contains—about God turning a "crystal pyramid into a broad extinguisher" to put out the fire—of the ship compared to a sea-wasp floating on the waves—and of men in the fight killed by "aromatic splinters" from the Spice Islands! Criticism has long ago said its best and its worst about these early escapades of a writer whose taste, to the last, was never commensurate with his genius.

His Translations we have not included in this edition, as we reserve them, along with other masterpieces of translated verse, for a separate issue afterwards. That of the "Art of Poetry," sometimes included in editions of his works, was not his, but only revised by him. We may say here, in general, however, that although there are more learned and more correct translators than Dryden, there are few who have produced versions so vigorous, so full of exuberant life, and, in those parts of the authors suitable to the peculiarities of the translator's own genius, so faithful to their spirit and soul, if not to their letter and their body, as he. Parts of Virgil he does not translate well; he has no sympathy with Maro's elegance, concinnitas, chaste grandeur, and minute knowledge of nature; but wherever Virgil begins to glow and gallop, Dryden glows and gallops with him; and wherever Virgil is nearest Homer, Dryden is nearest him.

We have reserved to the close his Fables, as, on the whole, forming the culmination of Dryden the artist, if not, perhaps, of Dryden the poet. In preparing his poems for publication, how refreshing we found it to pass from a needful although cursory perusal of his plays, and a revision of his prologues, to these comparatively pure, right-manly, and eloquent compositions—the fables of Dryden! We do not, because it would be hardly fair, with Wordsworth, seek to compare them with the Chaucerian originals—a comparison under which they would be infallibly crushed. We prefer looking at them as bearing only the relation to Chaucer which Macpherson's, did to the original, Ossian. And regarding them in this light, as adaptations, where the original author furnishes only the ground-work, they are surely masterpieces and models of composition, if not exemplars of creative power and genius. How free and majestic their numbers! How bold and buoyant their language! How interesting the stories they tell! How perfect the preservation, and artful the presentment, of the various characters! What a fine chivalrous spirit breathes in "Palamon and Arcite!" What a soft yet purple, pure yet gorgeous, light of love hovers over the "Flower and the Leaf!"—the only poem of Dryden's in which—thanks perhaps to his master, Chaucer—the poet discovers the slightest perception of that

  "Love which spirits feel
  In climes where all is equable and pure."

What gay and gallant badinage, exquisite irony, and interesting narrative, in the story of "The Cock and Fox!" And what knowledge of human nature and skilful construction in "The Wife of Bath's Tale!" We are half inclined, with George Ellis, to call these fables the "noblest specimen of versification to be found in any modern language." We gather, too, from them a notion about Dryden's capabilities, which we may state. It is, that had Dryden lived in a novel and romance-writing age, and turned his great powers in that direction, he might have easily become the best fictionist—next to Cervantes and Scott—that ever lived, possessing, as he did, most of the qualities of a good novelist—vigorous and facile diction; dramatic skill; an eye for character; the power of graphic description, and rapid changeful narrative; the command of the grave and the gay, the severe and the lively; and a sympathy both with the bustling activities and the wild romance of human life, if not with its more solemn aspects, its transcendental references, and its aerial heights and giddy abysses of imagination and poetry.

[We have followed the judicious example of Warton and Mitford in excluding several Prologues which appear in some editions, but which reflect no honour on their author.

Dryden's Translations will be published in the separate series of "Translations," which it is the intention of the Publisher to issue, independent of the "Poetical Works" of the various authors.]

CONTENTS.

EPISTLES.

  I. To my honoured friend, Sir Robert Howard, on his excellent
           Poems

II. To my honoured friend, Dr Charleton, on his learned and useful Works; but more particularly his Treatise of Stonehenge, by him restored to the true founder

III. To the Lady Castlemain, upon her encouraging his first play

IV. To Mr Lee, on his "Alexander"

  V. To the Earl of Roscommon, on his excellent Essay on Translated
           Verse

  VI. To the Duchess of York, on her return from Scotland in the
           year 1682

VII. A Letter to Sir George Etherege

VIII. To Mr Southerne, on his Comedy called "The Wives' Excuse"

  IX. To Henry Higden, Esq., on his translation of the Tenth
           Satire of Juvenal

  X. To my dear friend, Mr Congreve, on his Comedy called "The
           Double-dealer"

  XI. To Mr Granville, on his excellent Tragedy called "Heroic
           Love"

  XII. To my friend, Mr Motteux, on his Tragedy called "Beauty
           in Distress"

  XIII. To my honoured kinsman, John Dryden of Chesterton, in
           the county of Huntingdon, Esq.

XIV. To Sir Godfrey Kneller, principal painter to his Majesty

  XV. To his friend the author, John Hoddesdon, on his Divine
           Epigrams

  XVI. To my friend, Mr J. Northleigh, author of "The Parallel"
           on his "Triumph of the British Monarchy"

ELEGIES AND EPITAPHS.

I. To the Memory of Mr Oldham

II. To the pious memory of the accomplished young lady, Mrs Anne Killigrew, excellent in the two sister arts of Poesy and Painting: an Ode

III. Upon the death of the Earl of Dundee

IV. Eleonora: a Panegyrical Poem, dedicated to the memory of the late Countess of Abingdon

V. On the Death of Amyntas: a Pastoral Elegy

VI. On the Death of a very Young Gentleman

VII. Upon young Mr Rogers of Gloucestershire

VIII. On the Death of Mr Purcell

IX. Epitaph on the Lady Whitmore

X. Epitaph on Sir Palmes Fairbone's tomb in Westminster Abbey

XI. Under Mr Milton's picture, before his "Paradise Lost"

XII. On the monument of a fair Maiden Lady, who died at Bath, and is there interred

XIII. Epitaph on Mrs Margaret Paston of Burningham, in Norfolk

XIV. On the monument of the Marquis of Winchester

SONGS, ODES, AND A MASQUE.

I. The Fair Stranger

II. On the Young Statesmen

III. A Song for St Cecilia's Day, 1687

IV. The Tears of Amynta for the death of Damon

V. The Lady's Song

VI. A Song

VII. A Song

VIII. Roundelay

IX. A Song

X. A Song to a fair Young Lady going out of town in Spring

XI. Song in the "Indian Emperor"

XII. Song in "The Maiden Queen"

XIII. Songs in "The Conquest of Granada"

XIV. Song of the Sea-fight in "Amboyna"

XV. Incantation in "Oedipus"

XVI. Songs in "Albion and Albanius"

XVII. Songs in "King Arthur"

XVIII. Song of Jealousy in "Love Triumphant"

XIX. Song—Farewell, fair Armida

XX. Alexander's Feast; or, the Power of Music: an Ode in honour of St Cecilia's Day

XXI. The Secular Masque

XXII. Song of a Scholar and his Mistress

PROLOGUES AND EPILOGUES.

I. Prologue to "The Rival Ladies"

II. Prologue to "The Indian Queen"

III. Epilogue to "The Indian Queen"

IV. Epilogue to "The Indian Emperor"

V. Prologue to "Sir Martin Marr-all"

VI. Prologue to "The Tempest"

VII. Prologue to "Tyrannic Love"

VIII. Epilogue to "The Wild Gallant"

IX. Prologue, spoken the first day of the King's House acting after the fire of London

X. Epilogue to the Second Part of the "Conquest of Granada"

XI. Prologue to "Aboyna"

XII. Epilogue to "Aboyna"

  XIII. Prologue, spoken at the Opening of the New House,
           March 26, 1674

XIV. Prologue to the University of Oxford, 1674

XV. Prologue to "Circe," a Tragic Opera

  XVI. Epilogue, intended to have been spoken by the Lady
           Hen. Mar. Wentworth, when "Calista" was acted at
           Court

XVII. Prologue to "Aurenzebe"

XVIII. Epilogue to "The Man of Mode; or, Sir Fopling Flutter"

XIX. Epilogue to "All for Love"

XX. Prologue to "Limberham"

XXI. Epilogue to "Mithridates, King of Pontus"

XXII. Prologue to "Oedipus"

XXIII. Epilogue to "Oedipus"

XXIV. Prologue to "Troilus and Cressida"

XXV. Prologue to "Cæsar Borgia"

XXVI. Prologue to "Sophonisba"

XXVII. Prologue to "The Royal General"

XXVIII. Prologue to "The University of Oxford," 1681

  XXIX. Prologue to his Royal Highness, upon his first appearance
           at the Duke's Theatre, after his return from
           Scotland, 1682

  XXX. Prologue to "The Earl of Essex; or, the Unhappy
           Favourite"

XXXI. Epilogue for "The King's House"

  XXXII. Prologue to "The Loyal Brother; or, the Persian
           Prince".

XXXIII. Prologue to "The King and Queen"

XXXIV. Prologue to the University of Oxford

XXXV. Epilogue

XXXVI. Epilogue spoken at Oxford by Mrs Marshall

XXXVII. Prologue to the University of Oxford

XXXVIII. Prologue to the University of Oxford

XXXIX. Prologue to "Albion and Albanins"

XL. Epilogue to "Albion and Albanius"

XLI. Prologue to "Aviragus and Philicia Revived"

XLII. Prologue to "Don Sebastian"

XLIII. Prologue to "The Prophetess"

XLIV. Prologue to "The Mistakes"

XLV. Prologue to "King Arthur"

XLVI. Prologue to "Albumazar"

XLVII. An Epilogue

XLVIII. Prologue to "The Husband his own Cuckold"

XLIX. Prologue to "The Pilgrim"

L. Epilogue to "The Pilgrim"

TALES FROM CHAUCER.

To her Grace the Duchess of Ormond

Palamon and Arcite; or, the Knight's Tale

The Cock and the Fox; or, the Tale of the Nun's Priest

The Flower and the Leaf; or, the Lady in the Arbour: a Vision

The Wife of Bath, her Tale

The Character of a good Parson

DRYDEN'S POEMS.

EPISTLES.

EPISTLE I.

TO MY HONOURED FRIEND SIR ROBERT HOWARD,[1] ON HIS EXCELLENT POEMS.

  As there is music uninform'd by art
  In those wild notes, which, with a merry heart,
  The birds in unfrequented shades express,
  Who, better taught at home, yet please us less:
  So in your verse a native sweetness dwells,
  Which shames composure, and its art excels.
  Singing no more can your soft numbers grace,
  Than paint adds charms unto a beauteous face.
  Yet as, when mighty rivers gently creep,
  Their even calmness does suppose them deep; 10
  Such is your muse: no metaphor swell'd high
  With dangerous boldness lifts her to the sky:
  Those mounting fancies, when they fall again,
  Show sand and dirt at bottom do remain.
  So firm a strength, and yet withal so sweet,
  Did never but in Samson's riddle meet.
  'Tis strange each line so great a weight should bear,
  And yet no sign of toil, no sweat appear.
  Either your art hides art, as Stoics feign
  Then least to feel when most they suffer pain; 20
  And we, dull souls, admire, but cannot see
  What hidden springs within the engine be:
  Or 'tis some happiness that still pursues
  Each act and motion of your graceful muse.
  Or is it fortune's work, that in your head
  The curious net,[2] that is for fancies spread,
  Lets through its meshes every meaner thought,
  While rich ideas there are only caught?
  Sure that's not all; this is a piece too fair
  To be the child of chance, and not of care. 30
  No atoms casually together hurl'd
  Could e'er produce so beautiful a world.
  Nor dare I such a doctrine here admit,
  As would destroy the providence of wit.
  'Tis your strong genius, then, which does not feel
  Those weights would make a weaker spirit reel.
  To carry weight, and run so lightly too,
  Is what alone your Pegasus can do.
  Great Hercules himself could ne'er do more,
  Than not to feel those heavens and gods he bore. 40
  Your easier odes, which for delight were penn'd,
  Yet our instruction make their second end:
  We're both enrich'd and pleased, like them that woo
  At once a beauty and a fortune too.
  Of moral knowledge poesy was queen,
  And still she might, had wanton wits not been;
  Who, like ill guardians, lived themselves at large,
  And, not content with that, debauch'd their charge.
  Like some brave captain, your successful pen
  Restores the exiled to her crown again: 50
  And gives us hope, that having seen the days
  When nothing flourish'd but fanatic bays,
  All will at length in this opinion rest,—
  "A sober prince's government is best."
  This is not all: your art the way has found
  To make the improvement of the richest ground;
  That soil which those immortal laurels bore,
  That once the sacred Maro's temples wore.
  Eliza's griefs are so express'd by you,
  They are too eloquent to have been true. 60
  Had she so spoke, Æneas had obey'd
  What Dido, rather than what Jove had said.
  If funeral rites can give a ghost repose,
  Your Muse so justly has discharged those;
  Eliza's shade may now its wandering cease,
  And claim a title to the fields of peace.
  But if Æneas be obliged, no less
  Your kindness great Achilles doth confess;
  Who, dress'd by Statius[3] in too bold a look,
  Did ill become those virgin robes he took. 70
  To understand how much we owe to you,
  We must your numbers, with your author's, view:
  Then we shall see his work was lamely rough,
  Each figure stiff, as if design'd in buff:
  His colours laid so thick on every place,
  As only show'd the paint, but hid the face.
  But as in perspective we beauties see,
  Which in the glass, not in the picture, be;
  So here our sight obligingly mistakes
  That wealth, which his your bounty only makes. 80
  Thus vulgar dishes are by cooks disguised,
  More for their dressing than their substance prized.
  Your curious notes so search into that age,
  When all was fable but the sacred page,
  That, since in that dark night we needs must stray,
  We are at least misled in pleasant way.
  But what we most admire, your verse no less
  The prophet than the poet doth confess.
  Ere our weak eyes discern'd the doubtful streak
  Of light, you saw great Charles his morning break. 90
  So skilful seamen ken the land from far,
  Which shows like mists to the dull passenger.
  To Charles your Muse first pays her duteous love,
  As still the ancients did begin from Jove;
  With Monk you end,[4] whose name preserved shall be,
  As Rome recorded Rufus' [5] memory,
  Who thought it greater honour to obey
  His country's interest, than the world to sway.
  But to write worthy things of worthy men,
  Is the peculiar talent of your pen: 100
  Yet let me take your mantle up, and I
  Will venture in your right to prophesy—
  "This work, by merit first of fame secure,
  Is likewise happy in its geniture:
  For, since 'tis born when Charles ascends the throne,
  It shares at once his fortune and its own."

* * * * *

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: 'Sir Robert Howard:' brother to Dryden's wife.]

[Footnote 2: 'The curious net,' &c.: a compliment to a poem of Sir
Robert's, called 'Rete Mirabile.']

[Footnote 3: 'Statius:' author of 'Thebaid' and the 'Achilleid;' the latter translated by Sir Robert Howard.]

[Footnote 4: 'With Monk you end,' &c.: alluding to a poem of this gentleman's on General Monk.]

[Footnote 5: 'Rufus:' a Roman consul, banished to Smyrna through intrigues, but greatly respected.]LE II.

* * * * *

EPISTLE II

TO MY HONOURED FRIEND DR CHARLETON, ON HIS LEARNED AND USEFUL WORKS; BUT MORE PARTICULARLY HIS TREATISE OF STONEHENGE,[6] BY HIM RESTORED TO THE TRUE FOUNDER.

  The longest tyranny that ever sway'd,
  Was that wherein our ancestors betray'd
  Their free-born reason to the Stagyrite,
  And made his torch their universal light.
  So truth, while only one supplied the state,
  Grew scarce, and dear, and yet sophisticate.
  Still it was bought, like empiric wares, or charms,
  Hard words seal'd up with Artistotle's arms.
  Columbus was the first that shook his throne,
  And found a temperate in a torrid zone, 10
  The feverish air fann'd by a cooling breeze,
  The fruitful vales set round with shady trees:
  And guiltless men, who danced away their time,
  Fresh as their groves, and happy as their clime.
  Had we still paid that homage to a name,
  Which only God and nature justly claim,
  The western seas had been our utmost bound,
  Where poets still might dream the sun was drown'd:
  And all the stars that shine in southern skies,
  Had been admired by none but savage eyes. 20

    Among the asserters of free reason's claim,
  Our nation's not the least in worth or fame.
  The world to Bacon does not only owe
  Its present knowledge, but its future too.
  Gilbert[7] shall live, till loadstones cease to draw,
  Our British fleets the boundless ocean awe.
  And noble Boyle, not less in nature seen,
  Than his great brother read in states and men.
  The circling streams, once thought but pools, of blood
  (Whether life's fuel, or the body's food) 30
  From dark oblivion Harvey's[8] name shall save;
  While Ent[9] keeps all the honour that he gave.
  Nor are you, learned friend, the least renown'd,
  Whose fame, not circumscribed with English ground,
  Flies like the nimble journeys of the light;
  And is, like that, unspent too in its flight.
  Whatever truths have been, by art or chance,
  Redeem'd from error, or from ignorance,
  Thin in their authors, like rich veins of ore,
  Your works unite, and still discover more. 40
  Such is the healing virtue of your pen,
  To perfect cures on books, as well as men.
  Nor is this work the least: you well may give
  To men new vigour, who make stones to live.
  Through you, the Danes, their short dominion lost,
  A longer conquest than the Saxons boast.
  Stonehenge, once thought a temple, you have found
  A throne, where kings, our earthly gods, were crown'd;
  Where by their wondering subjects they were seen,
  Joy'd with their stature, and their princely mien. 50
  Our sovereign here above the rest might stand,
  And here be chose again to rule the land.

    These ruins[10] shelter'd once his sacred head,
  When he from Worcester's fatal battle fled;
  Watch'd by the genius of this royal place,
  And mighty visions of the Danish race.
  His refuge then was for a temple shown:
  But, he restored, 'tis now become a throne.

* * * * *

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 6: 'Treatise of Stonehenge:' Charleton wrote a book proving, against Inigo Jones, that Stonehenge was built by the Danes.]

[Footnote 7: 'Gilbert:' Dr William Gilbert, a physician both to Queen
Elizabeth and King James, and author of a treatise on the magnet.]

[Footnote 8: 'Harvey:' discoverer of the circulation of the blood.]

[Footnote 9: 'Ent:' a physician of the day.]

[Footnote 10: 'These ruins,' &c.: in the dedication of this book to Charles II. is the following passage, which gave occasion to the last six lines of this poem:—'I have had the honour to hear from your majesty's own mouth, that you were pleased to visit this monument, and entertain yourself with the delightful view thereof, after the defeat of your army at Worcester.']

* * * * *

EPISTLE III.

TO THE LADY CASTLEMAIN,[11] UPON HER ENCOURAGING HIS FIRST PLAY.

As seamen, shipwreck'd on some happy shore,
Discover wealth in lands unknown before;
And, what their art had labour'd long in vain,
By their misfortunes happily obtain:
So my much-envied Muse, by storms long tost,
Is thrown upon your hospitable coast,
And finds more favour by her ill success,
Than she could hope for by her happiness.
Once Cato's virtue did the gods oppose;
While they the victor, he the vanquish'd chose: 10
But you have done what Cato could not do,
To choose the vanquish'd, and restore him too.
Let others triumph still, and gain their cause
By their deserts, or by the world's applause;
Let merit crowns, and justice laurels give,
But let me happy by your pity live.
True poets empty fame and praise despise;
Fame is the trumpet, but your smile the prize.
You sit above, and see vain men below
Contend for what you only can bestow: 20
But those great actions others do by chance,
Are, like your beauty, your inheritance;
So great a soul, such sweetness join'd in one,
Could only spring from noble Grandison.[12]
You, like the stars, not by reflection bright,
Are born to your own heaven, and your own light;
Like them are good, but from a nobler cause,
From your own knowledge, not from nature's laws.
Your power you never use, but for defence,
To guard your own, or other's innocence: 30
Your foes are such as they, not you, have made,
And virtue may repel, though not invade.
Such courage did the ancient heroes show,
Who, when they might prevent, would wait the blow:
With such assurance as they meant to say,
We will o'ercome, but scorn the safest way.
What further fear of danger can there be?
Beauty, which captives all things, sets me free.
Posterity will judge by my success.
I had the Grecian poet's happiness, 40
Who, waving plots, found out a better way;
Some god descended, and preserved the play.
When first the triumphs of your sex were sung
By those old poets, beauty was but young,
And few admired the native red and white,
Till poets dress'd them up to charm the sight;
So beauty took on trust, and did engage
For sums of praises till she came to age.
But this long-growing debt to poetry
You justly, madam, have discharged to me, 50
When your applause and favour did infuse
New life to my condemn'd and dying Muse.

* * * * *

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 11: 'Lady Castlemain' this lady was for many years a favourite mistress of Charles II., and was afterwards created Duchess of Cleveland.]

[Footnote 12: 'Grandison:' her father, killed at Edgehill.]

* * * * *

EPISTLE IV.

TO MR LEE, ON HIS "ALEXANDER."

  The blast of common censure could I fear,
  Before your play my name should not appear;
  For 'twill be thought, and with some colour too,
  I pay the bribe I first received from you;
  That mutual vouchers for our fame we stand,
  And play the game into each other's hand;
  And as cheap pen'orths to ourselves afford,
  As Bessus[13] and the brothers of the sword.
  Such libels private men may well endure,
  When states and kings themselves are not secure: 10
  For ill men, conscious of their inward guilt,
  Think the best actions on by-ends are built.
  And yet my silence had not 'scaped their spite;
  Then, envy had not suffer'd me to write;
  For, since I could not ignorance pretend,
  Such merit I must envy or commend.
  So many candidates there stand for wit,
  A place at court is scarce so hard to get:
  In vain they crowd each other at the door;
  For even reversions are all begg'd before: 20
  Desert, how known soe'er, is long delay'd;
  And then, too, fools and knaves are better paid.
  Yet, as some actions bear so great a name,
  That courts themselves are just, for fear of shame;
  So has the mighty merit of your play
  Extorted praise, and forced itself away.
  'Tis here as 'tis at sea; who farthest goes,
  Or dares the most, makes all the rest his foes.
  Yet when some virtue much outgrows the rest,
  It shoots too fast and high to be express'd; 30
  As his heroic worth struck envy dumb,
  Who took the Dutchman, and who cut the boom.
  Such praise is yours, while you the passions move,
  That 'tis no longer feign'd, 'tis real love,
  Where nature triumphs over wretched art;
  We only warm the head, but you the heart.
  Always you warm; and if the rising year,
  As in hot regions, brings the sun too near,
  'Tis but to make your fragrant spices blow,
  Which in our cooler climates will not grow. 40
  They only think you animate your theme
  With too much fire, who are themselves all phlegm.
  Prizes would be for lags of slowest pace,
  Were cripples made the judges of the race.
  Despise those drones, who praise, while they accuse
  The too much vigour of your youthful Muse.
  That humble style which they your virtue make,
  Is in your power; you need but stoop and take.
  Your beauteous images must be allow'd
  By all, but some vile poets of the crowd. 50
  But how should any sign-post dauber know
  The worth of Titian or of Angelo?
  Hard features every bungler can command;
  To draw true beauty shows a master's hand.

* * * * *

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 13: 'Bessus:' a cowardly character in Beaumont and Fletcher's comedy of 'A King and no King.']

* * * * *

EPISTLE V.

TO THE EARL OF ROSCOMMON, ON HIS EXCELLENT ESSAY ON TRANSLATED VERSE.

  Whether the fruitful Nile, or Tyrian shore,
  The seeds of arts and infant science bore,
  'Tis sure the noble plant, translated first,
  Advanced its head in Grecian gardens nursed.
  The Grecians added verse: their tuneful tongue
  Made Nature first, and Nature's God their song.
  Nor stopp'd translation here: for conquering Rome,
  With Grecian spoils, brought Grecian numbers home;
  Enrich'd by those Athenian Muses more,
  Than all the vanquish'd world could yield before. 10
  Till barbarous nations, and more barbarous times,
  Debased the majesty of verse to rhymes:
  Those rude at first; a kind of hobbling prose,
  That limp'd along, and tinkled in the close.
  But Italy, reviving from the trance
  Of Vandal, Goth, and Monkish ignorance,
  With pauses, cadence, and well-vowell'd words,
  And all the graces a good ear affords,
  Made rhyme an art, and Dante's polish'd page
  Restored a silver, not a golden age. 20
  Then Petrarch follow'd, and in him we see
  What rhyme improved in all its height can be:
  At best a pleasing sound, and fair barbarity.
  The French pursued their steps; and Britain, last,
  In manly sweetness all the rest surpass'd.
  The wit of Greece, the gravity of Rome,
  Appear exalted in the British loom:
  The Muses' empire is restored again,
  In Charles' reign, and by Roscommon's pen.
  Yet modestly he does his work survey, 30
  And calls a finish'd Poem an Essay;
  For all the needful rules are scatter'd here;
  Truth smoothly told, and pleasantly severe;
  So well is art disguised, for nature to appear.
  Nor need those rules to give translation light:
  His own example is a flame so bright,
  That he who but arrives to copy well
  Unguided will advance, unknowing will excel.
  Scarce his own Horace could such rules ordain,
  Or his own Virgil sing a nobler strain. 40
  How much in him may rising Ireland boast—
  How much in gaining him has Britain lost!
  Their island in revenge has ours reclaim'd;
  The more instructed we, the more we still are shamed.
  'Tis well for us his generous blood did flow,
  Derived from British channels long ago,
  That here his conquering ancestors were nursed;
  And Ireland but translated England first:
  By this reprisal we regain our right,
  Else must the two contending nations fight; 50
  A nobler quarrel for his native earth,
  Than what divided Greece for Homer's birth.
  To what perfection will our tongue arrive,
  How will invention and translation thrive,
  When authors nobly born will bear their part,
  And not disdain the inglorious praise of art!
  Great generals thus, descending from command,
  With their own toil provoke the soldier's hand.
  How will sweet Ovid's ghost be pleased to hear
  His fame augmented by an English peer;[14] 60
  How he embellishes his Helen's loves,
  Outdoes his softness, and his sense improves;
  When these translate, and teach translators too,
  Nor firstling kid, nor any vulgar vow,
  Should at Apollo's grateful altar stand.
  Roscommon writes; to that auspicious hand,
  Muse, feed the bull that spurns the yellow sand.
  Roscommon, whom both court and camps commend,
  True to his prince, and faithful to his friend;
  Roscommon first in fields of honour known, 70
  First in the peaceful triumphs of the gown;
  Who both Minervas justly makes his own.
  Now let the few beloved by Jove, and they
  Whom infused Titan form'd of better clay,
  On equal terms with ancient wit engage,
  Nor mighty Homer fear, nor sacred Virgil's page:
  Our English palace opens wide in state;
  And without stooping they may pass the gate.

* * * * *

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 14: 'An English peer:' the Earl of Mulgrave.]

* * * * *