FROM THE “ELEGIES."

ODE TO THE MEMORY OF MRS. ANNE KILLIGREW.1
Thou youngest virgin-daughter of the skies,
Made in the last promotion of the blest;
Whose palms, new pluck'd from paradise,
In spreading branches more sublimely rise,
Rich with immortal green above the rest :
Whether, adopted to some neighbouring star,
Thou roll'st above us, in thy wand'ring race,
Or, in procession fix'd and regular,
Mov'st with the heaven's majestic pace;
Or, call'd to more superior bliss,

Thou tread'st, with seraphims, the vast abyss:
Whatever happy region is thy place,
Cease thy celestial song a little space;
Thou wilt have time enough for hymns divine,
Since heaven's eternal year is thine.

Hear then a mortal Muse thy praise rehearse,
In no ignoble verse:

But such as thy own voice did practise here,
When thy first fruits of Poesy were given,
To make thyself a welcome inmate there;
While yet a young probationer,

And candidate of heaven.

If by traduction came thy mind,
Our wonder is the less to find

A soul so charming from a stock so good;
Thy father was transfused into thy blood:
So wert thou born into a tuneful strain,
An early, rich, and inexhausted vein.
But if thy pre-existing soul

Was form'd, at first, with myriads more,
It did through all the mighty poets roll,
Who Greek or Latin laurels wore,

And was that Sappho last, which once it was before.
If so, then cease thy flight, O heaven-born mind!
Thou hast no dross to purge from thy rich ore:
Nor can thy soul a fairer mansion find,

Than was the beauteous frame she left behind:
Return to fill or mend the choir of thy celestial kind.

*

*

*

O gracious God! how far have we
Prophaned thy heavenly gift of poesy?

*

243

1 This young lady, the niece of Thomas Killigrew, the celebrated wit of the court of Charles II., obtained some reputation for her talents in poetry and painting. She died of the small-pox in the 25th year of her age. This ode Johnson calls "undoubtedly the noblest that our language has produced." He adds, "all the stanzas are not indeed equal."

2 Dr. Henry Killigrew, Master of the Savoy, and one of the prebendaries of Westminster.

Made prostitute and profligate the Muse,
Debased to each obscene and impious use,
Whose harmony was first ordain'd above
For tongues of angels, and for hymns of love?
O wretched we! why were we hurried down
This lubrique and adulterate age?1

What can we say t' excuse our second fall?
Let this thy vestal, heaven, atone for all:
Her Arethusian2 stream remains unsoil'd,
Unmix'd with foreign filth, and undefiled;
Her wit was more than man, her innocence a child.

Art she had none, yet wanted none;
For nature did that want supply:
So rich in treasures of her own,
She might our boasted stores defy :
Such noble vigour did her verse adorn,

That it seem'd borrow'd, where 'twas only born.
Her morals too were in her bosom bred,
By great examples daily fed.

Ev'n love (for love sometimes her Muse exprest)

Was but a lambent flame which play'd about her breast:
Light as the vapours of a morning dream,

So cold herself, while she such warmth exprest,

'Twas Cupid bathing in Diana's stream.

When in mid-air the golden trump shall sound
To raise the nations under ground;
When in the valley of Jehoshaphat,
The judging God shall close the book of fate;
And there the last assizes keep,

For those who wake, and those who sleep;
When rattling bones together fly,

From the four corners of the sky;

When sinews o'er the skeletons are spread,
Those clothed with flesh, and life inspires the dead;
The sacred poets first shall hear the sound,

And foremost from the tomb shall bound,

1 Of all the bards of the courts of Charles and James, "Roscommon only boasts unspotted bays." Licentiousness was the characteristic of every department of poetry, and especially of the stage. Here Dryden himself was one of the most conspicuous transgressors and it will scarcely be admitted as an excuse that he was "hurried down." The licentiousness of Lyndsay has, in many instances, a political, or may it be said, a religious aim, since respectable names have claimed him as one raised by Providence to be an instrument of the Reformation; that of the age of Shakespeare is frequently the indelicacy of a generation emerging into refinement; that of the age of Charles II. is a corrupt rank exotic, of aimless profligacy, "prurient yet passionless;" disgusting, and, from this very cause, fortunately ephemeral. Dryden's mind had two streams; one that flowed clear and shining in moral purity; the other charged with the fetid waters of what is commonly termed the taste of the age."

2 See note 3, p. 192.

FROM ABSALOM AND ACHITOPHEL.

For they are cover'd with the lightest ground;
And straight, with inborn vigour, on the wing,
Like mounting larks, to the new morning sing.
There thou, sweet saint, before the quire shalt go,
As harbinger of heaven, the way to show,
The way which thou so well hast learned below.

FROM "ABSALOM AND ACHITOPHEL."

245

THE CHARACTER OF THE EARL OF SHAFTESBURY DELINEATED
AS ACHITOPHEL.

Of these the false Achitophel1 was first;
A name to all succeeding ages curst:
For close designs and crooked counsels fit,
Sagacious, bold, and turbulent of wit :
Restless, unfix'd in principles and place;
In power unpleased, impatient of disgrace,
A fiery soul which working out its way,
Fretted the pigmy body to decay,

And o'er informed the tenement of clay :
A daring pilot in extremity;

Pleased with the danger, when the waves went high

He sought the storms; but, for a calm unfit,

Would steer too nigh the sands to boast his wit.

Great wits are sure to madness near allied,

And thin partitions do their bounds divide:

Else why should he, with wealth and honours blest,
Refuse his age the needful hours of rest?
Punish a body which he could not please;
Bankrupt of life, yet prodigal of ease?

In friendship false, implacable in hate,
Resolved to ruin or to rule the state.

To compass this the triple bond he broke,2
The pillars of the public safety shook,

And fitted Israel with a foreign yoke;

Then, seized with fear, yet still affecting fame,

Usurped a patriot's all-atoning name;

1 Anthony, Earl of Shaftesbury (Achitophel), was the soul of the party of Monmouth (Absalom). At the time of the publication of this satire he was in the tower on an accusation of treasonable connection with Monmouth's designs. His acquittal some time after gave rise to Dryden's piece," the Medal." An adherent of the court party and a member of the infamous Cabal ministry, he afterwards in his multitudinous intrigues became the champion of the country party. His connection with Monmouth ultimately exiled him; he died in Holland.

2 He is allowed to have been a principal adviser of the Dutch war in 1672, by which the triple alliance between England, Sweden, and Holland, the chef d'œuvre of Sir W. Temple's negociation, was broken."-Scott.

3 England. The poet symbolises the whole policy, persons, and geography of the times under Jewish appellations. The foreign yoke is that of France, to whose policy Charles II. became fatally subservient.

By going over to the popular party, to escape the odium attached to the measures he had himself recommended.

So easy still it proves, in factious times,
With public zeal to cancel private crimes.
How safe is treason, and how sacred ill,
Where none can sin against the people's will!
Where crowds can wink, and no offence be known,
Since in another's guilt they find their own?
Yet fame deserved no enemy can grudge;
The statesman we abhor, but praise the judge.
In Israel's courts ne'er sat an Abethdin

With more discerning eyes or hands more clean,1
Unbribed, unsought, the wretched to redress;
Swift of despatch and easy of access.

Oh had he been content to serve the crown
With virtue only proper to the gown;
Or had the rankness of the soil been freed
From cockle, that oppressed the noble seed;
David for him his tuneful harp had strung,
And heaven had wanted one immortal song.
But wild Ambition loves to slide, not stand;
And Fortune's ice prefers to Virtue's land.
Achitophel, grown weary to possess
A lawful fame, and lazy happiness,
Disdained the golden fruit to gather free,
And lent the crowd his arm to shake the tree.
Now, manifest of crimes contrived long since,
He stood at bold defiance with his prince;
Held up the buckler of the people's cause
Against the crown, and skulked behind the laws.

VILLIERS, DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM, DELINEATED AS ZIMRI. A man 3 so various that he seemed to be

Not one but all mankind's epitome;

Stiff in opinions, always in the wrong,

Was every thing by starts, and nothing long;

1 Others have praised Shaftesbury for his judicial integrity.-See Scott's Note, Dryden, ix. 264. Abethdin; Ab-beth-din (Father of the House of Judgment); the second dignitary, or vice-president of the Sanhedrim, the Jewish council of government, from about the period of the Maccabees

2 Charles II.

3 George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, was the son of the favourite of Charles I. (see p. 167). His immense fortune and versatile talents were exerted in a career of unparalleled profligacy, marked even with dark and deadly crime. Like Shaftesbury a member of the Cabal ministry, he deserted the court party, and was distinguished in the agitation of the Popish plot. He ultimately died neglected, at Kirkby Moorside, in Yorkshire, but not in the wretched circumstances described by Pope. Dryden may be considered in his satire merciful to Buckingham. The Duke had personally and deeply injured him in the satirical farce the Rehearsal, yet the poet confines his strictures simply to his follies and his weakness.

A second part of Absalom and Achitophel was published, but Dryden contributed to it only a castigation of his literary enemies Settle and Shadwell, under the names of Doeg and Og. The remainder is by Nahum Tate, the versifier of the English Psalms.

FROM "RELIGIO LAICI."

But, in the course of one revolving moon,
Was chemist, fiddler, statesman, and buffoon.

*

Blest madman, who could every hour employ
With something new to wish or to enjoy.
Railing and praising were his usual themes,
And both, to shew his judgment, in extremes.
So over-violent or over-civil,

That every man with him was god or devil.
In squandering wealth was his peculiar art,
Nothing went unrewarded but desert;

Beggared by fools whom still he found too late;
He had his jest, and they had his estate.
He laughed himself from court, then had relief,
By forming parties, but could ne'er be chief;
For, spite of him, the weight of business fell
On Absalom and wise Achitophel.

FROM "RELIGIO LAICI."

OPENING OF THE "RELIGIO LAICI."1

Dim as the borrow'd beams of moon and stars
To lonely, weary, wandering travellers,
Is reason to the soul: and as on high,
Those rolling fires discover but the sky,
Not light us here; so reason's glimmering ray
Was lent, not to assure our doubtful way,
But guide us upward to a better day.
And as those nightly tapers disappear

When day's bright lord ascends our hemisphere;
So pale grows reason at religion's sight-
So dies, and so dissolves in supernatural light.

247

THE POSITION OF MAN IN THE SCHEME OF REDEMPTION.

Thus man by his own strength to heaven would soar:
And would not be obliged to God for more.
Vain wretched creature, how art thou misled,
To think thy wit these god-like notions bred!
These truths are not the product of thy mind,
But dropt from Heaven, and of a nobler kind.
Reveal'd religion first inform'd thy sight,
And reason saw not till faith sprung the light.
Hence all thy natural worship takes the source:
'Tis revelation what thou think'st discourse.2

1 The opening lines in most of Dryden's poems shew the bold sweep of his versification, and his command of the stores of the English language. The above is eminently beautiful.

2 In his preface, Dryden alleges his belief that "the principles of natural worship are only faint remnants or dying flames of revealed religion in the posterity of Noah.'