To you, ye fair, for patronage he sues;
O last defend, who first inspired his muse!
In your soft service he has past his days,
And gloried to be born for woman's praise:
Deprest at length, and in your cause decayed,
The good old man to beauty bends for aid;
}
{ That beauty, he has taught so oft to moan!
{ That ne'er let Imoinda weep alone,
{ And made his Isabella's griefs its own!
Ere you arose to life, ye blooming train;
Ere time brought forth our pleasure and our pain;
He melted hearts, to monarchs' vows denied,
And softened to distress unconquered pride:
O! then protect, in his declining years,
The man, that filled your mother's eyes with tears!
The last of Charles's bards! The living name,
That rose, in that Augustan age, to fame!
And you, his brother authors, bravely dare
To join to-night the squadrons of the fair;
With zeal protect your veteran writer's page,
And save the drama's father, in his age:
Nor let the wreath from his grey head be torn,
For half a century with honour worn!
His merits let your tribe to mind recal;
Of some the patron, and the friend to all!
In him the poets' Nestor ye defend!
Great Otway's peer, and greater Dryden's friend.
Southerne, on his eighty-first birth day, was complimented with
a copy of verses by Pope; and on 26th May, 1746, he died at the
advanced age of eighty-five and upwards.
EPISTLE THE TENTH.
S ure there's a fate in plays, and 'tis in vain
To write, while these malignant planets reign.
Some very foolish influence rules the pit,
Not always kind to sense, or just to wit;
And whilst it lasts, let buffoonry succeed,
To make us laugh, for never was more need.
Farce, in itself, is of a nasty scent;
But the gain smells not of the excrement.
The Spanish nymph, a wit and beauty too,
With all her charms, bore but a single show;
But let a monster Muscovite appear,
He draws a crowded audience round the year.
}
{ May be thou hast not pleased the box and pit;
{ Yet those who blame thy tale applaud thy wit:
{ So Terence plotted, but so Terence writ.
Like his, thy thoughts are true, thy language clean;
Even lewdness is made moral in thy scene.[47]
The hearers may for want of Nokes[48] repine;
But rest secure, the readers will be thine.
Nor was thy laboured drama damned or hissed,
But with a kind civility dismissed;
With such good manners as the Wife[49] did use,
Who, not accepting, did but just refuse.
There was a glance at parting; such a look,
As bids thee not give o'er for one rebuke.
But if thou wouldst be seen, as well as read,
Copy one living author, and one dead.
The standard of thy style let Etherege be;
For wit, the immortal spring of Wycherly.
Learn, after both, to draw some just design,
And the next age will learn to copy thine.
TO
HENRY HIGDEN, Esq.
ON HIS TRANSLATION OF
THE TENTH SATIRE OF JUVENAL.
Henry Higden was a member of the honourable society of
the Middle Temple, and during the reigns of James II. and William
III. held some rank among the wits of the age. He wrote a
play called "Sir Noisy Parrot, or the Wary Widow," represented
in 1693, which seems to have been most effectually damned;
for in the preface the author complains, that "the theatre was
by faction transformed into a bear-garden, hissing, mimicking, ridiculing,
and cat-calling." I mention this circumstance, because
amongst the poetical friends who hastened to condole with Mr
Higden on the bad success of his piece, there is one who attributes
it to the influence of our author over the inferior wits at
Will's coffee-house.[50] But it seems more generally admitted, as
the cause of the downfall of the "Wary Widow," that the author
being a man of a convivial temper, had introduced too great a
display of good eating and drinking into his piece; and that the
actors, although Mr Higden complains of their general negligence,
entered into these convivial scenes with great zeal, and became
finally incapable of proceeding in their parts.[51] The prologue was
written by Sir Charles Sedley, in which the following lines seem
to be levelled at Dryden's critical prefaces:
But against old, as well as new, to rage,
Is the peculiar phrenzy of this age;
Shakespeare must down, and you must praise no more
Soft Desdemona, or the jealous Moor.
Shakespeare, whose fruitful genius, happy wit,
Was framed and finished at a lucky hit;
The pride of nature, and the shame of schools,
Born to create, and not to learn from rules,
Must please no more. His bastards now deride
Their father's nakedness, they ought to hide;
But when on spurs their Pegasus they force,
Their jaded muse is distanced in the course.
If the admirers of Dryden were active in the condemnation of
Higden's play, the offence probably lay in these verses.
It seems likely that Higden's translation, of the Tenth Satire
of Juvenal, which I have never seen, was printed before Dryden
published his own version, in 1693; consequently, before the damnation
of the "Wary Widow," acted in the same year, which
seems to have been attended with a quarrel between Dryden and
the author. It is therefore very probable, that this Epistle should
have stood earlier in the arrangement: but, having no positive evidence,
the Editor has not disturbed the former order.
EPISTLE THE ELEVENTH.
T he Grecian wits, who satire first began,
Were pleasant Pasquins on the life of man;
}
{ At mighty villains, who the state opprest,
{ They durst not rail, perhaps; they lashed, at least,
{ And turned them out of office with a jest.
No fool could peep abroad, but ready stand
The drolls to clap a bauble[52] in his hand.
Wise legislators never yet could draw
A fop within the reach of common law;
For posture, dress, grimace, and affectation,
Though foes to sense, are harmless to the nation.
Our last redress is dint of verse to try,
And satire is our court of chancery.
This way took Horace to reform an age,
Not bad enough to need an author's rage:
But yours,[53] who lived in more degenerate times,
Was forced to fasten deep, and worry crimes.
Yet you, my friend, have tempered him so well,
You make him smile in spite of all his zeal;
An art peculiar to yourself alone,
To join the virtues of two styles in one.
}
{ Oh! were your author's principle received,
{ Half of the labouring world would be relieved;
{ For not to wish is not to be deceived.
Revenge would into charity be changed,
Because it costs too dear to be revenged;
It costs our quiet and content of mind,
And when 'tis compassed leaves a sting behind.
Suppose I had the better end o'the staff,
Why should I help the ill-natured world to laugh?
'Tis all alike to them, who get the day;
They love the spite and mischief of the fray.
No; I have cured myself of that disease;
Nor will I be provoked, but when I please:
But let me half that cure to you restore;
You give the salve, I laid it to the sore.
}
{ Our kind relief against a rainy day,
{ Beyond a tavern, or a tedious play,
{ We take your book, and laugh our spleen away.
If all your tribe, too studious of debate,
Would cease false hopes and titles to create,
Led by the rare example you begun,
Clients would fail, and lawyers be undone.
TO MY DEAR FRIEND
Mr CONGREVE,
ON HIS COMEDY
CALLED
THE DOUBLE DEALER.
This admirable Epistle is addressed to Congreve, whose rising
genius had early attracted our author's attention and patronage.
When Congreve was about to bring out "The Old Bachelor,"
the manuscript was put by Southerne into Dryden's hands, who
declared, that he had never seen such a first play, and bestowed
considerable pains in adapting it to the stage. It was received
with the most unbounded approbation. "The Double Dealer"
was acted in November 1693, but without that universal applause
which attended "The Old Bachelor." The plot was perhaps
too serious, and the villainy of Maskwell too black and
hateful for comedy. It was the opinion too of Dryden, that the
fashionable world felt the satire too keenly.[54] The play, however,
cannot be said to have failed; for it rose by degrees against
opposition. The epistle is one of the most elegant and apparently
heart-felt effusions of friendship, that our language boasts;
and the progress of literature from the Restoration, is described
as Dryden alone could describe it. A critic of that day, whose
candour seems to have been on a level with his taste, has ventured
to insinuate, that huffing Dryden, as he prophanely calls
our poet, had purposely deluded Congreve into presumption, by
his praise, in order that he might lead him to make shipwreck of
his popularity. But such malevolent constructions have been always
put upon the conduct of men of genius, by the mean jealousy
of the vulgar.[55]
EPISTLE THE TWELFTH.
W ell, then, the promised hour is come at last,
The present age of wit obscures the past:
Strong were our sires, and as they fought they writ,
Conquering with force of arms, and dint of wit:
Theirs was the giant race, before the flood;
And thus, when Charles returned, our empire stood.
Like Janus, he the stubborn soil manured,
With rules of husbandry the rankness cured;
Tamed us to manners when the stage was rude,
And boisterous English wit with art endued.
Our age was cultivated thus at length;
But what we gained in skill we lost in strength.
Our builders were with want of genius curst;
The second temple was not like the first;
Till you, the best Vitruvius, come at length,
Our beauties equal, but excel our strength.
}
{ Firm Doric pillars found your solid base;
{ The fair Corinthian crowns the higher space:
{ Thus all below is strength, and all above is grace.
In easy dialogue is Fletcher's praise;
He moved the mind, but had not power to raise:
Great Jonson did by strength of judgment please;
Yet, doubling Fletcher's force, he wants his ease.
In differing talents both adorned their age;
One for the study, t'other for the stage.
One for the study, t'other for the stage.
But both to Congreve justly shall submit,
One matched in judgment, both o'ermatched in wit.
}
{ In him all beauties of this age we see,
{ Etherege his courtship, Southerne's purity,
{ The satire, wit, and strength, of manly Wycherly.
All this in blooming youth you have atchieved;
Nor are your foiled contemporaries grieved.
So much the sweetness of your manners move,
We cannot envy you, because we love.
Fabius might joy in Scipio, when he saw
A beardless consul made against the law,
And join his suffrage to the votes of Rome,
Though he with Hannibal was overcome.
Thus old Romano bowed to Raphael's fame,
And scholar to the youth he taught became.
O that your brows my laurel had sustained!
Well had I been deposed, if you had reigned:
The father had descended for the son;
For only you are lineal to the throne.
Thus, when the state one Edward did depose,
A greater Edward in his room arose:
But now not I, but poetry, is cursed;
For Tom the second reigns like Tom the first.[56]
But let them not mistake my patron's part,
Nor call his charity their own desert.
Yet this I prophecy,—Thou shalt be seen,
(Though with some short parenthesis between,)
High on the throne of wit, and, seated there,
Not mine,—that's little,—but thy laurel wear.[57]
Thy first attempt an early promise made;
That early promise this has more than paid.
So bold, yet so judiciously you dare,
That your least praise is to be regular.
Time, place, and action, may with pains be wrought,
But genius must be born, and never can be taught.
}
{ This is your portion, this your native store;
{ Heaven, that but once was prodigal before,
{ To Shakespeare gave as much,—she could not give him more.
Maintain your post; that's all the fame you need;
For 'tis impossible you should proceed.
Already I am worn with cares and age,
And just abandoning the ungrateful stage;
Unprofitably kept at heaven's expence,
I live a rent-charge on his providence:
But you, whom every muse and grace adorn,
Whom I foresee to better fortune born,
Be kind to my remains; and O defend,
Against your judgment, your departed friend!
Let not the insulting foe my fame pursue,
But shade those laurels which descend to you:[58]
And take for tribute what these lines express;
You merit more, nor could my love do less.
TO
Mr GRANVILLE,
ON HIS EXCELLENT TRAGEDY,
CALLED
HEROIC LOVE.
George Granville, afterwards Lord Lansdowne of Biddiford,
was distinguished, by the friendship of Dryden and Pope,
from the mob of gentlemen who wrote with ease. He copied Waller,
a model perhaps chosen from a judicious consideration of his
own powers. His best piece is his "Essay on unnatural Flights
in Poetry," in which he elegantly apologizes for Dryden having suffered
his judgment to be swayed by a wild audience. Granville's
play of the "Heroic Love, or the cruel Separation," was acted in
1698 with great applause. It is a mythological drama on the love
of Agamemnon and Briseis; and this being said, it is hardly necessary
to add, that it now scarcely bears reading. Granville's unshaken
attachment to Tory principles, as well as his excellent private
character, probably gained him favour in our poet's eyes.
Lord Lansdowne (for such became Granville's title when Queen
Anne created twelve peers to secure a majority to ministry in the
House of Lords) died on the 30th January, 1735.
EPISTLE THE THIRTEENTH.
A uspicious poet, wert thou not my friend,
How could I envy, what I must commend!
But since 'tis nature's law, in love and wit,
That youth should reign, and withering age submit,
With less regret those laurels I resign,
Which, dying on my brows, revive on thine.
With better grace an ancient chief may yield
The long contended honours of the field,
Than venture all his fortune at a cast,
And fight, like Hannibal, to lose at last.
Young princes, obstinate to win the prize,
Though yearly beaten, yearly yet they rise:
Old monarchs, though successful, still in doubt,
Catch at a peace, and wisely turn devout.
Thine be the laurel, then; thy blooming age
Can best, if any can, support the stage;
Which so declines, that shortly we may see
Players and plays reduced to second infancy:
Sharp to the world, but thoughtless of renown,
They plot not on the stage, but on the town,
And, in despair their empty pit to fill,
Set up some foreign monster in a bill.
Thus they jog on, still tricking, never thriving,
And murdering plays, which they miscal reviving.[59]
Our sense is nonsense, through their pipes conveyed;
Scarce can a poet know the play he made,
'Tis so disguised in death; nor thinks 'tis he
That suffers in the mangled tragedy.
Thus Itys first was killed, and after dressed
For his own sire, the chief invited guest.
I say not this of thy successful scenes,
Where thine was all the glory, theirs the gains.
With length of time, much judgment, and more toil,
Not ill they acted what they could not spoil.
Their setting-sun still shoots a glimmering ray,
Like ancient Rome, majestic in decay;
And better gleanings their worn soil can boast,
Than the crab-vintage of the neighbouring coast.
This difference yet the judging world will see;
Thou copiest Homer, and they copy thee.
TO MY FRIEND
Mr MOTTEUX,
ON HIS TRAGEDY
CALLED
BEAUTY IN DISTRESS,
PUBLISHED IN 1698.
Peter Anthony Motteux was a French Huguenot, born
at Rohan, in Normandy, in l660. He emigrated upon the revocation
of the edict of Nantz; and having friends in England of
opulence and respectability, he became a merchant and bookseller
of some eminence; besides enjoying a place in the Post-office, to
which his skill as a linguist recommended him. This must have
been considerable, if we judge by his proficiency in the language
of England, certainly not the most easy to be commanded by a
foreigner. Nevertheless, Motteux understood it so completely, as
not only to write many occasional pieces of English poetry, but to
execute a very good translation of "Don Quixote," and compose
no less than fifteen plays, several of which were very well received.
He also conducted the "Gentleman's Journal." On the 19th February,
1717-18, this author was found dead in a house of bad
fame, in the parish of St Clement Danes, not without suspicion of
murder.
Motteux appears to have enjoyed the countenance of Dryden,
who, in the following verses, consoles him under the censure of
those who imputed to his play of "Beauty in Distress" an irregularity
of plot, and complication of incident. But the preliminary
and more important part of the verses regards Jeremy Collier's
violent attack upon the dramatic authors of the age for immorality
and indecency. To this charge, our author, on this as on
other occasions, seems to plead guilty, while he deprecates the virulence,
and sometimes unfair severity of his adversary. The
reader may compare the poetical defence here set up with that in
the prose dedication to the "Fables," and he will find in both the
same grumbling, though subdued, acquiescence under the chastisement
of the moralist; the poet much resembling an over-matched
general, who is unwilling to surrender, though conscious
of his inability to make an effectual resistance. See also Vol. VIII.
p. 462.
EPISTLE THE FOURTEENTH.
'T is hard, my friend, to write in such an age,
As damns not only poets, but the stage.
That sacred art, by heaven itself infused,
Which Moses, David, Solomon, have used,
Is now to be no more: the Muses' foes
Would sink their Maker's praises into prose.
Were they content to prune the lavish vine
Of straggling branches, and improve the wine,
Who, but a madman, would his thoughts defend?
All would submit; for all but fools will mend.
But when to common sense they give the lie,
And turn distorted words to blasphemy,
They give the scandal; and the wise discern,
Their glosses teach an age, too apt to learn.
What I have loosely, or prophanely, writ,
Let them to fires, their due desert, commit:
Nor, when accused by me, let them complain;
Their faults, and not their function, I arraign.[60]
Rebellion, worse than witchcraft, they pursued;
The pulpit preached the crime, the people rued.
The stage was silenced; for the saints would see
In fields performed their plotted tragedy.
But let us first reform, and then so live,
That we may teach our teachers to forgive;
Our desk be placed below their lofty chairs,
Ours be the practice, as the precept theirs.
The moral part, at least we may divide,
Humility reward, and punish pride;
Ambition, interest, avarice, accuse;
These are the province of a tragic muse.
These hast thou chosen; and the public voice
Has equalled thy performance with thy choice.
}
{ Time, action, place, are so preserved by thee,
{ That e'en Corneille might with envy see
{ The alliance of his tripled unity.
Thy incidents, perhaps, too thick are sown,
But too much plenty is thy fault alone.
At least but two can that good crime commit,
Thou in design, and Wycherly in wit.
Let thy own Gauls condemn thee, if they dare,
Contented to be thinly regular:
Born there, but not for them, our fruitful soil
With more increase rewards thy happy toil.
Their tongue, enfeebled, is refined too much,
And, like pure gold, it bends at every touch.
Our sturdy Teuton yet will art obey,
More fit for manly thought, and strengthened with allay.
But whence art thou inspired, and thou alone,
To flourish in an idiom not thy own?
It moves our wonder, that a foreign guest
Should overmatch the most, and match the best.
In under-praising thy deserts, I wrong;
Here find the first deficience of our tongue:
Words, once my stock, are wanting, to commend
So great a poet, and so good a friend.
TO MY HONOURED KINSMAN
JOHN DRIDEN,
OF
CHESTERTON, IN THE COUNTY OF
HUNTINGDON, ESQ.
The person to whom this epistle is addressed was Dryden's
first cousin; being the second son of Sir John Driden, elder brother
of the poet's father Erasmus. He derived from his maternal
grandfather, Sir Robert Bevile, the valuable estate of Chesterton,
near Stilton, where latterly our author frequently visited him, and
where it is said he wrote the first four verses of his Virgil with a
diamond on a glass pane. The mansion-house is at this time
(spring, 1807,) about to be pulled down, and the materials sold.
The life of Mr John Driden, for he retained the ancient spelling of
the name, seems to have been that of an opulent and respectable
country gentleman, more happy, perhaps, in the quiet enjoyment of
a large landed property, than his cousin in possession of his brilliant
poetical genius. He represented the county of Huntingdon in
parliament, in 1690, and from 1700 till his death in 1707-8.
The panegyric of our author is an instance, among a thousand,
how genius can gild what it touches; for the praise of this lofty
rhyme, when minutely examined, details the qualities of that very
ordinary, though very useful and respectable, character, a wealthy
and sensible country squire. "Just, good, and wise," contending
neighbours referred their disputes to his decision; in humble
prose, he was an active justice of peace. That he was hospitable,
and kept a good pack of hounds, was a fox-hunter while young, and
now followed beagles or harriers, that he represented his county,
and voted against ministry, sums up his excellencies; for I will
not follow my author, by numbering among them his living and
dying a bachelor.[61] Yet these annals, however simple and vulgar,
illuminated by the touch of our author's pen, shine like the
clouds under the influence of a setting sun. The greatest illustration
of our author's genius is, that the praise, though unusually
applied, is appropriate, and hardly exaggerated; we lay down the
book, and recollect to how little this laboured character amounts;
and when we resume it, are again hurried away by the magic of
the poet. But in this epistle, besides the compliment to his cousin,
Dryden had a further intention in view, which was, to illustrate
the character of a good English member of Parliament, whom,
in conformity with his own prejudice, he represents as inclining to
oppose the ministry. It was coincidence in this sentiment which
had done much to reconcile Dryden and his cousin; and thus politics
reunited relations, whom political disputes had long parted.
At this time we learn from one of our author's letters, that Mr
Dryden of Chesterton, although upon different principles, was in
as warm opposition as his cousin could have wished him.[62] Our
poet, however, who had felt the hand of power, did not venture
on this portrait without such an explanation to Charles Montague,
afterwards Lord Halifax, as he thought sufficient to avert any risk
of misconstruction.[63]
There has not been found any early edition of this epistle separate
from the volume of Fables; of which therefore it probably
made an original part, and was first published with them in 1700.
It supplies one instance among many, that the poet's lamp burned
clear to the close of life. It is said that his cousin acknowledged
the honour done him by the poet, by a handsome gratuity. The
amount has been alleged to be five hundred pounds, which is probably
exaggerated. Mr Driden of Chesterton bequeathed that
sum to Charles Dryden, the poet's son, who did not live to profit
by the legacy. As the report of the present to Dryden himself
depends only on tradition,[64] it is possible the two circumstances
may have been more or less confounded together.
The reader may be pleased to see the epitaph of John Driden
of Chesterton, which concludes with some lines from this epistle.
It is in the church of the village of Chesterton:
M.S.
Johannis Driden, Arm.
F. Natu secundi Johannis Driden
de Canons Ashby in agro Northampton Bart.
ex Honorâ F. et cohærede, e tribus unâ,
Roberti Bevile, Bart.
unde sortem maternam
in hâc viciniâ de Chesterton et Haddon
adeptus,
prædia dein latè,
per comitatum Huntington
adjecit;
nec sui profusus nec alieni appetens:
A litibus ipse abhorrens,
Et qui aliorum lites
Æquissimo sæpe arbitrio diremit,
Vivus,
adeo Amicitiam minimè fucatam coluit,
et publicam Patriæ salutem asseruit strenuè,
ut illa vicissim Eum summis quibus potuit
Honoribus cumulârit;
lubens sæpiusq. Senatorem voluerit:
vel moriens,
honorum atq. beneficiorum non immemor,
maximè vero Religiosæ charitatis interitu,
largam sui censûs partem
ad valorem 16 Millium plus minus Librarum,
vel in locis ubi res et commercium,
vel inter familiares quibus necessitudo
cum eo vivo intercesserat,
erogavit
Marmor hoc P.
Nepos et Hæres Viri multum desiderati
Robertus Pigott, Arm.
Obiit Cœlebs 3 Non. Jan. Anno Dom. 1707, Æt. 72.
}
{ just, good, and wise, contending neighbours come,
{ from your award to wait their final doom;
{ and, foes before, return in freindship home.
without their cost, you terminate the cause,
and save the expence of long litigious laws;
where suits are traversed, and so little won,
that he who conquiers is but last undone.
Vide p. 75.
EPISTLE THE FIFTEENTH.
H ow blessed is he, who leads a country life,
Unvexed with anxious cares, and void of strife!
Who, studying peace, and shunning civil rage,
Enjoyed his youth, and now enjoys his age:
All who deserve his love, he makes his own;
And, to be loved himself, needs only to be known.
}
{ Just, good, and wise, contending neighbours come,
{ From your award to wait their final doom;
{ And, foes before, return in friendship home.
Without their cost, you terminate the cause,
And save the expence of long litigious laws;
Where suits are traversed, and so little won,
That he who conquers is but last undone:
}
{ Such are not your decrees; but so designed,
{ The sanction leaves a lasting peace behind;
{ Like your own soul, serene, a pattern of your mind.
Promoting concord, and composing strife,
Lord of yourself, uncumbered with a wife;
Where, for a year, a month, perhaps a night,
Long penitence succeeds a short delight:
Minds are so hardly matched, that even the first,
Though paired by heaven, in Paradise were cursed.
For man and woman, though in one they grow,
Yet, first or last, return again to two.
He to God's image, she to his was made;
So, farther from the fount the stream at random strayed.
How could he stand, when, put to double pain,
He must a weaker than himself sustain!
Each might have stood perhaps, but each alone;
Two wrestlers help to pull each other down.
}
{ Not that my verse would blemish all the fair;
{ But yet if some be bad, 'tis wisdom to beware,
{ And better shun the bait, than struggle in the snare.
Thus have you shunned, and shun the married state,
Trusting as little as you can to fate.
No porter guards the passage of your door,
To admit the wealthy, and exclude the poor;
For God, who gave the riches, gave the heart,
To sanctify the whole, by giving part;
Heaven, who foresaw the will, the means has wrought,
And to the second son a blessing brought;
The first-begotten had his father's share;
But you, like Jacob, are Rebecca's heir.[65]
So may your stores and fruitful fields increase;
And ever be you blessed, who live to bless.
As Ceres sowed, where-e'er her chariot flew;
As heaven in deserts rained the bread of dew;
So free to many, to relations most,
You feed with manna your own Israel host.
With crowds attended of your ancient race,
You seek the champaign sports, or sylvan chace;
With well-breathed beagles you surround the wood,
Even then industrious of the common good;
And often have you brought the wily fox
To suffer for the firstlings of the flocks;
Chased even amid the folds, and made to bleed,
Like felons, where they did the murderous deed.
This fiery game your active youth maintained;
Not yet by years extinguished, though restrained:
You season still with sports your serious hours;
For age but tastes of pleasures, youth devours.
The hare in pastures or in plains is found,
Emblem of human life; who runs the round,
}
{ And, after all his wandering ways are done,
{ His circle fills, and ends where he begun,
{ Just as the setting meets the rising sun.
Thus princes ease their cares; but happier he,
Who seeks not pleasure through necessity,
Than such as once on slippery thrones were placed,
And chasing, sigh to think themselves are chased.
So lived our sires, ere doctors learned to kill,
And multiplied with theirs the weekly bill.
The first physicians by debauch were made;
Excess began, and sloth sustains the trade.
Pity the generous kind their cares bestow
To search forbidden truths, (a sin to know,)
To which if human science could attain,
The doom of death, pronounced by God, were vain.
In vain the leech would interpose delay;
Fate fastens first, and vindicates the prey.
}
{ What help from art's endeavours can we have?
{ Guibbons[66] but guesses, nor is sure to save;
{ But Maurus[67] sweeps whole parishes, and peoples every grave;
And no more mercy to mankind will use,
Than when he robbed and murdered Maro's muse.
Would'st thou be soon dispatched, and perish whole,
Trust Maurus with thy life, and Milbourne with thy soul.[68]
By chace our long-lived fathers earned their food;
Toil strung the nerves, and purified the blood:
But we their sons, a pampered race of men,
Are dwindled down to threescore years and ten.
Better to hunt in fields, for health unbought,
Than fee the doctor for a nauseous draught.
The wise, for care, on exercise depend;
God never made his work for man to mend.
The tree of knowledge, once in Eden placed,
Was easy found, but was forbid the taste:
O had our grandsire walked without his wife,
He first had sought the better plant of life!
Now both are lost: yet, wandering in the dark,
Physicians, for the tree, have found the bark;
}
{ They, labouring for relief of human kind,
{ With sharpened sight some remedies may find;
{ The apothecary-train is wholly blind.
From files a random recipe they take,
And many deaths of one prescription make.
Garth,[69] generous as his muse, prescribes and gives;
The shopman sells, and by destruction lives:
Ungrateful tribe! who, like the viper's brood,
From Med'cine issuing, suck their mother's blood!
Let these obey, and let the learned prescribe,
That men may die without a double bribe;
Let them, but under their superiors, kill,
When doctors first have signed the bloody bill;
He 'scapes the best, who, nature to repair,
Draws physic from the fields, in draughts of vital air.
You hoard not health for your own private use,
But on the public spend the rich produce.
When, often urged, unwilling to be great,
Your country calls you from your loved retreat,
And sends to senates, charged with common care,
Which none more shuns, and none can better bear:
Where could they find another formed so fit,
To poise, with solid sense, a sprightly wit?
Were these both wanting, as they both abound,
Where could so firm integrity be found?
Well born, and wealthy, wanting no support,
You steer betwixt the country and the court;
Nor gratify whate'er the great desire,
Nor grudging give, what public needs require.
Part must be left, a fund when foes invade,
And part employed to roll the watery trade;
Even Canaan's happy land, when worn with toil,
Required a sabbath-year to mend the meagre soil.
Good senators (and such as you) so give,
That kings may be supplied, the people thrive:
}
{ And he, when want requires, is truly wise,
{ Who slights not foreign aids, nor overbuys,
{ But on our native strength, in time of need, relies.
Munster was bought, we boast not the success;
Who fights for gain, for greater makes his peace.
Our foes, compelled by need, have peace embraced;[70]
The peace both parties want, is like to last;
Which if secure, securely we may trade;
Or, not secure, should never have been made.
Safe in ourselves, while on ourselves we stand,
The sea is ours, and that defends the land.
Be, then, the naval stores the nation's care,
New ships to build, and battered to repair.
Observe the war, in every annual course;
What has been done, was done with British force:
Namur subdued, is England's palm alone;
The rest besieged, but we constrained the town:[71]
We saw the event that followed our success;
France, though pretending arms, pursued the peace,
Obliged, by one sole treaty, to restore
What twenty years of war had won before.
Enough for Europe has our Albion fought;
Let us enjoy the peace our blood has bought.
When once the Persian king was put to flight,
The weary Macedons refused to fight;
Themselves their own mortality confessed,
And left the son of Jove to quarrel for the rest.
}
{ Even victors are by victories undone;
{ Thus Hannibal, with foreign laurels won,
{ To Carthage was recalled, too late to keep his own.
While sore of battle, while our wounds are green,
Why should we tempt the doubtful dye again?
In wars renewed, uncertain of success;
Sure of a share, as umpires of the peace.
A patriot both the king and country serves;
Prerogative and privilege preserves:
Of each our laws the certain limit show;
One must not ebb, nor t'other overflow:
}
{ Betwixt the prince and parliament we stand,
{ The barriers of the state on either hand;
{ May neither overflow, for then they drown the land.
When both are full, they feed our blessed abode;
Like those that watered once the paradise of God.
Some overpoise of sway, by turns, they share;
In peace the people, and the prince in war:
Consuls of moderate power in calms were made;
When the Gauls came, one sole dictator swayed.
Patriots, in peace, assert the people's right,
With noble stubbornness resisting might;
No lawless mandates from the court receive,
Nor lend by force, but in a body give.
Such was your generous grandsire; free to grant
In parliaments, that weighed their prince's want:
But so tenacious of the common cause,
As not to lend the king against his laws;
}
{ And, in a loathsome dungeon doomed to lie,
{ In bonds retained his birthright liberty,
{ And shamed oppression, till it set him free.[72]
O true descendant of a patriot line,
Who, while thou shar'st their lustre, lend'st them thine.
Vouchsafe this picture of thy soul to see;
'Tis so far good, as it resembles thee;
The beauties to the original I owe,
Which when I miss, my own defects I show:
Nor think the kindred muses thy disgrace;
A poet is not born in every race.
Two of a house few ages can afford,
One to perform, another to record.[73]
Praise-worthy actions are by thee embraced,
And 'tis my praise to make thy praises last.
}
{ For even when death dissolves our human frame,
{ The soul returns to heaven from whence it came;
{ Earth keeps the body, verse preserves the fame.
TO
SIR GODFREY KNELLER.
PRINCIPAL PAINTER TO
HIS MAJESTY.
The well-known Sir Godfrey Kneller was a native of Lubec,
but settled in London about 1674. He was a man of genius; but,
according to Walpole, he lessened his reputation, by making it
subservient to his fortune. No painter was more distinguished by
the great, for ten sovereigns sate to him. What may tend longer
to preserve his reputation, no painter ever received more incense
from the praise of poets. Dryden, Pope, Addison, Prior, Tickell,
Steele, all wrote verses to him in the tone of extravagant eulogy.
Those addressed to Kneller by Addison, in which the series of the
heathen deities is, with unexampled happiness, made to correspond
with that of the British monarchs painted by the artist, are
not only the best production of that elegant poet, but of their
kind the most felicitous ever written. Sir Godfrey Kneller died
27th November, 1723.
Dryden seems to have addressed the following epistle to Sir
Godfrey Kneller, as an acknowledgment for the copy of the Chandos'
portrait of Shakespeare, mentioned in the verses. It would
appear that, upon other occasions, Sir Godfrey repaid the tributes
of the poets, by the productions of his pencil.
There is great luxuriance and richness of idea and imagery in
the epistle.
EPISTLE THE SIXTEENTH.