RECOMMENDATORY VERSES.
UPON
THE AUTHOR
OF THE FOLLOWING POEM.
Once more our awful poet arms, to engage
The threatning hydra-faction of the age:
Once more prepares his dreadful pen to wield,
And every muse attends him to the field:
By art and nature for this task designed,
Yet modestly the fight he long declined;
Forbore the torrent of his verse to pour,
Nor loosed his satire till the needful hour:
His sovereign's right, by patience half betrayed,
Waked his avenging genius to its aid.
Blest muse, whose wit with such a cause was crowned,
And blest the cause that such a champion found;
With chosen verse upon the foe he falls,
And black sedition in each quarter galls;
Yet, like a prince with subjects forced to engage,
Secure of conquest, he rebates his rage;
His fury not without distinction sheds,
Hurls mortal bolts but on devoted heads:
To less infected members gentle found,
Or spares, or else pours balm into the wound.
Such generous grace the ungrateful tribe abuse,
And trespass on the mercy of his muse;
Their wretched doggrell rhimers forth they bring,
To snarl and bark against the poet's king:
A crew, that scandalize the nation more
Than all their treason-canting priests before!
On these he scarce vouchsafes a scornful smile,
But on their powerful patrons turns his style:
A style so keen, as even from faction draws
The vital poison, stabs to the heart their cause.
Take then, great bard, what tribute we can raise;
Accept our thanks, for you transcend our praise.
TO
THE UNKNOWN AUTHOR[486]
OF THE FOLLOWING POEM,
AND THAT OF
ABSALOM AND ACHITOPHEL.
Thus pious ignorance, with dubious praise,
Altars of old, to gods unknown, did raise:
They knew not the loved Deity, they knew
Divine effects a cause divine did shew:
}
{ Nor can we doubt, when such these numbers are,
{ Such is their cause, though the worst muse shall dare
{ Their sacred worth in humble verse declare.
As gentle Thames, charmed with thy tuneful song,
Glides in a peaceful majesty along;
No rebel stone, no lofty bank, does brave
The easy passage of his silent wave;
So, sacred poet, so thy numbers flow,
Sinewy, yet mild, as happy lovers woo;
Strong, yet harmonious too, as planets move,
Yet soft as down upon the wings of love.
How sweet does virtue in your dress appear!
How much more charming, when much less severe!
Whilst you our senses harmlessly beguile,
With all the allurements of your happy style;
You insinuate loyalty with kind deceit,
And into sense the unthinking many cheat:
So the sweet Thracian, with his charming lyre,
Into rude nature virtue did inspire;
So he the savage herd to reason drew,
Yet scarce so sweet, so charmingly, as you.
Oh that you would, with some such powerful charm,
Enervate Albion to just valour warm!
Whether much-suffering Charles shall theme afford,
Or the great deeds of god-like James's sword;
Again fair Gallia might be ours, again
Another fleet might pass the subject main;
Another Edward lead the Britains on,
Or such an Ossory as you did moan:
While in such numbers you, in such a strain,
Inflame their courage, and reward their pain.
Let false Achitophel the rout engage,
Talk easy Absalom to rebel rage;
Let frugal Shimei curse in holy zeal,
Or modest Corah more new plots reveal;
Whilst constant to himself, secure of fate,
Good David still maintains the royal state;
Though each in vain such various ills employs,
Firmly he stands, and even those ills enjoys;
Firm as fair Albion midst the raging main,
Surveys encircling danger with disdain.
}
{ In vain the waves assault the unmoved shore,
{ In vain the winds with mingled fury roar,
{ Fair Albion's beauteous cliffs shine whiter than before.
Nor shalt thou move, though hell thy fall conspire,
Though the worse rage of zeal's fanatic fire,
Thou best, thou greatest of the British race,
Thou only fit to fill great Charles his place.
Ah wretched Britons! ah too stubborn isle!
Ah stiff-necked Israel on blest Canaan's soil!
Are those dear proofs of heaven's indulgence vain,
Restoring David and his gentle reign?
}
{ Is it in vain thou all the goods dost know,
{ Auspicious stars on mortals shed below,
{ While all thy streams with milk, thy lands with honey flow?
No more, fond isle! no more thyself engaged,
In civil fury, and intestine rage,
No rebel zeal thy duteous land molest,
But a smooth calm sooth every peaceful breast,
While in such charming notes divinely sings
The best of poets, of the best of kings.
To Face Page 430, Vol 9th
THE
MEDAL.
Of all our antic sights and pageantry,
Which English idiots run in crowds to see,
}
{ The Polish Medal[487] bears the prize alone;
{ A monster, more the favourite of the town
{ Than either fairs or theatres have shown.
Never did art so well with nature strive,
Nor ever idol seemed so much alive;
So like the man, so golden to the sight,
So base within, so counterfeit and light.
One side is filled with title and with face;
And, lest the king should want a regal place,
On the reverse a Tower the town surveys,
O'er which our mounting sun his beams displays
The word, pronounced aloud by shrieval voice,
Lætamur, which, in Polish, is rejoice;[488]
The day, month, year, to the great act are joined,
And a new canting holiday designed;
Five days he sat for every cast and look,
Four more than God to finish Adam took.
But who can tell what essence angels are?
Or how long Heaven was making Lucifer?
Oh, could the style that copied every grace,
And plowed such furrows for an eunuch face,
Could it have formed his ever-changing will,
The various piece had tired the graver's skill!
A martial hero first, with early care,
Blown, like a pigmy by the winds, to war;
A beardless chief, a rebel ere a man;
So young his hatred to his prince began.[489]
Next this,—how wildly will ambition steer!
A vermin wriggling in the usurper's ear;[490]
Bartering his venal wit for sums of gold,
He cast himself into the saint-like mould;
Groaned, sighed, and prayed, while godliness was gain,
The loudest bagpipe of the squeaking train.
But, as 'tis hard to cheat a juggler's eyes,
His open lewdness he could ne'er disguise.[491]
There split the saint; for hypocritic zeal
Allows no sins but those it can conceal:
Whoring to scandal gives too large a scope;
Saints must not trade, but they may interlope:
The ungodly principle was all the same;
But a gross cheat betrays his partner's game.
Besides, their pace was formal, grave, and slack;
His nimble wit outran the heavy pack;
Yet still he found his fortune at a stay,
Whole droves of blockheads choking up his way;
They took, but not rewarded, his advice;
Villain and wit exact a double price.
}
{ Power was his aim; but thrown from that pretence,
{ The wretch turned loyal in his own defence,
{ And malice reconciled him to his prince[492]
Him, in the anguish of his soul, he served;
Rewarded faster still than he deserved.[493]
Behold him now exalted into trust;
His counsel's oft convenient, seldom just;
Even in the most sincere advice he gave,
He had a grudging still to be a knave.
The frauds, he learned in his fanatic years,
Made him uneasy in his lawful gears;
At best, as little honest as he could,
And, like white witches, mischievously good;
To his first bias longingly he leans,
And rather would be great by wicked means.
Thus framed for ill, he loosed our triple hold;
Advice unsafe, precipitous, and bold.
From hence those tears, that Ilium of our woe!
Who helps a powerful friend, forearms a foe.
What wonder if the waves prevail so far,
When he cut down the banks that made the bar?
Seas follow but their nature to invade;
But he, by art, our native strength betrayed:
So Samson to his foe his force confest,
And, to be shorn, lay slumbering on her breast.
But when this fatal counsel, found too late,
Exposed its author to the public hate;
When his just sovereign by no impious way
Could be seduced to arbitrary sway;
}
{ Forsaken of that hope, he shifts his sail,
{ Drives down the current with a popular gale,
{ And shows the fiend confessed without a veil.[494]
He preaches to the crowd, that power is lent,
But not conveyed, to kingly government;
That claims successive bear no binding force;
That coronation oaths are things of course;
Maintains the multitude can never err;
And sets the people in the papal chair.
}
{ The reason's obvious,—interest never lies;
{ The most have still their interest in their eyes;
{ The power is always theirs, and power is ever wise.
Almighty crowd! thou shortenest all dispute;
Power is thy essence, wit thy attribute!
Nor faith nor reason make thee at a stay;
Thou leapst o'er all eternal truths in thy pindaric way!
Athens, no doubt, did righteously decide,
When Phocion and when Socrates were tried;
As righteously they did those dooms repent;
Still they were wise, whatever way they went:
Crowds err not, though to both extremes they run;
To kill the father, and recal the son.
Some think the fools were most as times went then,
But now the world's o'erstocked with prudent men.
The common cry is even religion's test,—
The Turk's is at Constantinople best,
Idols in India, popery at Rome,
And our own worship only true at home;
And true but for the time, 'tis hard to know
How long we please it shall continue so;
This side to-day, and that to-morrow burns;
So all are God-almighties in their turns.
A tempting doctrine, plausible and new;
What fools our fathers were, if this be true!
Who, to destroy the seeds of civil war,
Inherent right in monarchs did declare;
And, that a lawful power might never cease,
Secured succession to secure our peace.
Thus property and sovereign sway at last
In equal balances were justly cast;
But this new Jehu spurs the hot-mouthed horse,
Instructs the beast to know his native force,
To take the bit between his teeth, and fly
To the next headlong steep of anarchy.
Too happy England, if our good we knew,
Would we possess the freedom we pursue!
The lavish government can give no more;
Yet we repine, and plenty makes us poor.
God tried us once; our rebel fathers fought;
He glutted them with all the power they sought,
Till, mastered by their own usurping brave,
The free-born subject sunk into a slave.
We loath our manna, and we long for quails;
Ah, what is man, when his own wish prevails!
How rash, how swift to plunge himself in ill,
Proud of his power, and boundless in his will!
That kings can do no wrong, we must believe;
None can they do, and must they all receive?
Help, heaven! or sadly we shall see an hour,
When neither wrong nor right are in their power!
Already they have lost their best defence,
The benefit of laws, which they dispense;
No justice to their righteous cause allowed,
But baffled by an arbitrary crowd;
And medals graved their conquest to record,
The stamp and coin of their adopted lord.
The man, who laughed but once to see an ass
Mumbling to make the cross-grained thistles pass,[495]
Might laugh again to see a jury chew
The prickles of unpalatable law.
The witnesses, that leech-like lived on blood,
Sucking for them were med'cinally good;
}
{ But when they fastened on their festered sore,
{ Then justice and religion they forswore;
{ Their maiden oaths debauched into a whore.
Thus men are raised by factions, and decried,
And rogue and saint distinguished by their side;[496]
They rack even scripture to confess their cause,
And plead a call to preach in spite of laws.
But that's no news to the poor injured page,
It has been used as ill in every age;
And is constrained with patience all to take,
For what defence can Greek and Hebrew make?
Happy, who can this talking trumpet seize;
They make it speak whatever sense they please!
}
{ 'Twas framed at first our oracle, to enquire;
{ But since our sects in prophecy grow higher,
{ The text inspires not them, but they the text inspire.
London, thou great emporium of our isle,
O thou too bounteous, thou too fruitful Nile!
How shall I praise or curse to thy desert?
Or separate thy sound from thy corrupted part?
I called thee Nile; the parallel will stand:
Thy tides of wealth o'erflow the fattened land;
Yet monsters from thy large increase we find,
Engendered on the slime thou leav'st behind.
Sedition has not wholly seized on thee,
Thy nobler parts are from infection free.
Of Israel's tribes thou hast a numerous band,
But still the Canaanite is in the land;
Thy military chiefs are brave and true,
Nor are thy disenchanted burghers few;
The head is loyal which thy heart commands,
But what's a head with two such gouty hands?[497]
The wise and wealthy love the surest way,
And are content to thrive and to obey.
But wisdom is to sloth too great a slave;
None are so busy as the fool and knave.
Those let me curse; what vengeance will they urge,
Whose ordures neither plague nor fire can purge;
Nor sharp experience can to duty bring,
Nor angry heaven, nor a forgiving king!
In gospel-phrase their chapmen they betray;
Their shops are dens, the buyer is their prey:
The knack of trades is living on the spoil;
They boast even when each other they beguile.
Customs to steal is such a trivial thing,
That 'tis their charter to defraud their king.
All hands unite of every jarring sect;
They cheat the country first, and then infect.
They for God's cause their monarchs dare dethrone,
And they'll be sure to make his cause their own.
Whether the plotting jesuit laid the plan
Of murdering kings, or the French puritan,
Our sacrilegious sects their guides outgo,
And kings and kingly power would murder too.
What means their traitorous combination less,
Too plain to evade, too shameful to confess!
But treason is not owned when 'tis descried;
Successful crimes alone are justified.
The men, who no conspiracy would find,
Who doubts, but, had it taken, they had joined,—
Joined in a mutual covenant of defence,
At first without, at last against, their prince?
If sovereign right by sovereign power they scan,
The same bold maxim holds in God and man:
God were not safe, his thunder could they shun,
He should be forced to crown another son.
Thus, when the heir was from the vineyard thrown,
The rich possession was the murderer's own.[498]
}
{ In vain to sophistry they have recourse;
{ By proving their's no plot, they prove 'tis worse,
{ Unmasked rebellion, and audacious force;
Which, though not actual, yet all eyes may see,
'Tis working in the immediate power to be;
For from pretended grievances they rise,
First to dislike, and after to despise;
Then, cyclop-like, in human flesh to deal,
Chop up a minister at every meal;
Perhaps not wholly to melt down the king,
But clip his regal rights within the ring,[499]
From thence to assume the power of peace and war,
And ease him, by degrees, of public care:
}
{ Yet, to consult his dignity and fame,
{ He should have leave to exercise the name,
{ And hold the cards while commons played the game.
For what can power give more than food and drink,
To live at ease, and not be bound to think?
These are the cooler methods of their crime,
But their hot zealots think 'tis loss of time;
}
{ On utmost bounds of loyalty they stand,
{ And grin and whet like a Croatian band,
{ That waits impatient for the last command.
Thus outlaws open villainy maintain;
They steal not, but in squadrons scour the plain;
And if their power the passengers subdue,
The most have right, the wrong is in the few.
Such impious axioms foolishly they show,
For in some soils republics will not grow:
Our temperate isle will no extremes sustain
Of popular sway, or arbitrary reign;
But slides between them both into the best,
Secure in freedom, in a monarch blest;
And though the climate, vexed with various winds,
Works through our yielding bodies on our minds,
The wholesome tempest purges what it breeds,
To recommend the calmness that succeeds.
But thou, the pandar of the people's hearts,
O crooked soul, and serpentine in arts,
Whose blandishments a loyal land have whored,
And broke the bonds she plighted to her lord;
}
{ What curses on thy blasted name will fall,
{ Which age to age their legacy shall call!
{ For all must curse the woes that must descend on all.
Religion thou hast none: thy mercury
Has passed through every sect, or theirs through thee.
But what thou givest, that venom still remains,
And the poxed nation feels thee in their brains.
What else inspires the tongues, and swells the breasts,
Of all thy bellowing renegado priests,[500]
That preach up thee for God, dispense thy laws,
And with thy stum ferment their fainting cause;
Fresh fumes of madness raise, and toil and sweat,
To make the formidable cripple great?
Yet should thy crimes succeed, should lawless power
Compass those ends thy greedy hopes devour,
Thy canting friends thy mortal foes would be,
Thy God and theirs will never long agree;
For thine, if thou hast any, must be one,
That lets the world and human-kind alone;
A jolly god, that passes hours too well,
To promise heaven, or threaten us with hell;
That unconcerned can at rebellion sit,
And wink at crimes he did himself commit.
A tyrant theirs; the heaven their priesthood paints
A conventicle of gloomy sullen saints;
A heaven, like Bedlam, slovenly and sad,
Fore-doomed for souls with false religion mad.
Without a vision, poets can foreshow
What all but fools, by common sense, may know:
If true succession from our isle should fail,
And crowds profane, with impious arms, prevail,
}
{ Not thou, nor those thy factious arts engage,
{ Shall reap that harvest of rebellious rage,
{ With which thou flatterest thy decrepid age.[501]
The swelling poison of the several sects,
Which, wanting vent, the nation's health infects,
Shall burst its bag, and, fighting out their way,
The various venoms on each other prey.
The presbyter, puffed up with spiritual pride,
Shall on the necks of the lewd nobles ride;
His brethren damn, the civil power defy,
And parcel out republic prelacy.
But short shall be his reign; his rigid yoke,
And tyrant power, will puny sects provoke;
And frogs and toads, and all the tadpole train,
Will croak to heaven for help from this devouring crane.
The cut-throat sword and clamorous gown shall jar,
In sharing their ill-gotten spoils of war;
}
{ Chiefs shall be grudged the part which they pretend;
{ Lords envy lords, and friends with every friend
{ About their impious merit shall contend.
The surly commons shall respect deny,
And jostle peerage out with property.
Their general either shall his trust betray,
And force the crowd to arbitrary sway;
}
{ Or they, suspecting his ambitious aim,
{ In hate of kings shall cast anew the frame,
{ And thrust out Collatine,[502] that bore their name.
}
{ Thus, inborn broils the factions would engage,
{ Or wars of exiled heirs, or foreign rage,
{ Till halting vengeance overtook our age;
And our wild labours, wearied into rest,
Reclined us on a rightful monarch's breast.
———Pudet hæc opprobria, vobis
Et dici potuisse, et non potuisse refelli.
NOTES
ON
THE MEDAL.
The Polish medal.—P. [431.]
It was a standing joke among the opponents of Shaftesbury, that he hoped to be chosen king of Poland at the vacancy, when John Sobieski was elected. This was probably only a revival and new edition of an improbable story, that he expected Cromwell would have made him king of England. His supposed election, its causes, and effects, are very humorously stated in a pamphlet republished among Lord Somers' Tracts, already quoted, pp. 263, 358.
The author complains ironically, that, among the advantages of court favour, which Lord Shaftesbury had renounced for his country, already enumerated by one of his adherents, he had omitted to mention a yet more dignified sacrifice:
"I suppose, there are very few in this kingdom, that do not very sensibly remember the late inter-regnum in Poland, and how many illustrious candidates stood fair for the election. Sobieski, indeed, had done great things for that people; he had kept their potent enemy, the Turk, from entering any farther upon their frontier; was great and popular in the esteem and love of the best army, that, perhaps, they ever had; but, that was by much too little to entitle him to the succession of the throne, it appearing absolutely the interest of that nation, that the great Turk was not only to be beaten, but he must, in short, also be converted. And who so fit for such an enterprize as he that should be promoted to the regal authority? One that, from the high place he was to possess, might not only administer justice to them, but salvation to the greater part of Asia."—
"Upon these considerations, you may imagine quickly the eyes of the whole diet were cast upon little England, and thereupon whom so soon as the little Lord of Shaftesbury? Polish deputies were immediately sent, post-incognito, with the imperial crown and sceptre in a cloak-bag to him. Old Blood[503] smelled it from Bishopgate-street; and had it not been for an old acquaintance and friendship between King Anthony the Elect, for now I must call him so, and himself, I am credibly informed he had laid an ambush for it at the Cock ale-house, by Temple-Bar, where some thirty indigent bullies were eating stuffed beef, helter-skelter, at his charge, on purpose to stand by and assist him at carrying off the booty.
"But heaven, which I hope has ordained that no crown shall ever suffer damage for King Anthony's sake, took care to preserve this. For the sinister designs of the old Irish crown-monger being yet to be doubted, this prudent prince, as I am told, having tried and fitted it to his head, carefully sent it back again by a trusty messenger, concealed in the husk or shell of a Holland cheese, taken asunder merely for that purpose, and cemented again together by an art fit for no man to know, but a king presumptive of Poland.
"All things thus prepared, his election being carried in the diet so unanimously, and so nemine contradicente, that no man to this hour ever heard of it but himself, it is not to be imagined how this little Grig was transported with the thoughts of growing into a leviathan; he fancied himself the picture before Hobb's Commonwealth already; nay, he stopt up his tap, as I am told, on purpose that his dropsy might swell him big enough for his majesty, and of a sudden grew so utter an enemy to all republics and anti-monarchical constitutions, that from that hour he premeditated and laid the foundation of a worse speech than that famous one which he once uttered in our English senate—Delenda est Carthago.
"But now, upon deliberate and weighty consideration of the great change he was to undertake, many difficulties, and of an extraordinary nature, seemed to arise. A Protestant king being elected to a Popish kingdom, great were the debates within himself, which way he was to steer his course in the administration of his government, so as to discharge his conscience, as well in the case incumbent upon him of the souls of his people, as of the protection of their properties and persons.
"The Great Turk, you have heard before, was to be converted. Now, to bring so mighty a potentate over to the church of Rome, seemed altogether destructive of the Protestant interest, for which, he has been always so violent a champion; therefore it is resolved, Protestant, and true Protestant, the Ottoman Emperor must be, or nothing. But how, when that was done, to establish the same church in his dominions? There was the great question. Whereupon, after due consideration, he resolved, at his taking possession of that throne, which stood gaping for him, to carry over from hence such ministers, both of church and state, as might be proper to advise, assist, and support him in a design so pious, though so difficult."
A list is therefore made out of Shaftesbury's real or supposed adherents, with absurd Polish terminations attached to their names, to whom what the satirist deemed suitable offices in King Anthony's court, are respectively assigned. Among these, the reader will be startled to find our author himself under the following entry:
"Jean Drydenurtziz. Our poet laureat for writing panegyrics upon Oliver Cromwell, and libels against his present master, King Charles II. of England.
"Tom Shadworiski. His deputy."
From which it appears, that Dryden, at the time of this pasquinade's being written, was considered as disaffected to the court.
The joke of Shaftesbury's election to the Polish throne having been once thrown out, was echoed, and re-echoed, through an hundred ballads, till it ceased to be a joke at all. The reader must have frequently remarked such allusions; we have, for instance, the following songs:
"Dagon's Fall, or the Whigs Lament for Anthony, King of Poland." (3d February, 1682-3.)
"A New Song on the King of Poland, and the Prince of the Land of Promise."
"The Poet's Address to his most Sacred Majesty, 6th July, 1682."
The Polish prince is charmed, he scorns weak buff,
Conscience's of impenetrable stuff.
Lætamur, which, in Polish, is rejoice.—P. [431.]
It would seem, that the followers of Shaftesbury wore the medal attached to their breast. See "A Panegyrick on their Royal Highnesses, and congratulating his return from Scotland, 1682."
Lætamur is the word, a word which late
As mighty hopes did mighty joy create;
When the famed motto with applause was put
To the effigy of the grand patriot.
Nearest their heart where late their Georges hung,
The pale-faced medal with its silver tongue
Was placed, whilst every wearer still exprest
His joy to harbour there so famed a guest:
The wretch that stamped it got immortal fame,
T'was coined by stealth, like groats at Brumichan;
While each possessor, with exalted voice,
Cries, "England's saved, and now let us rejoice."
A martial hero first, with early care,
Blown, like a pigmy by the winds, to war;
A beardless chief, a rebel ere a man;
So young his hatred to his prince began.—P. [432.]
Dryden does not here do justice to Shaftesbury, who certainly offered Charles I. the first fruits of his courage and address. Being heir to a plentiful fortune, a member of parliament, and high sheriff of the county of Dorset, he came to Oxford when the civil war broke out, and though then only twenty-one or twenty-two years of age, presented to the king a digested plan, for compromising matters between him and his subjects in arms against him: Charles observed, he was a very young man for so great an undertaking; to which, with the readiness which marked his character, he answered, that would not be the worse for the king's affairs, provided the business was done. He had, in consequence, a commission from the king, to promise indemnity and redress of grievances to such of the parliamentary garrisons as would lay down their arms. Accordingly, his plan seems to have taken some effect; for Weymouth actually surrendered to the king, and Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, as his stile then was, was made governor. Some delays occurred in the course of his obtaining this office; and whether disgusted with these, and giving scope to the natural instability of his temper, as is intimated by Clarendon, or offended, as Mr Locke states, at Weymouth having been plundered by Prince Maurice's forces, he made one of those sudden turns, of which his political career furnishes several instances, and went over to the other side. After this, Clarendon says, that he "gave up himself, body and soul, to the parliament, and became an implacable enemy to the royal family." He raised forces in Dorsetshire, with which he took Wareham by storm, in October 1644, and reduced the greater part of the county to the obedience of the parliament. He held various high charges under the authority of the republic. In 1645, he was sheriff of Norfolk; in 1646, sheriff of Wiltshire; and in 1651, one of that committee, which was named for the revisal and reform of the law.
A vermin wriggling in the usurer's ear.—P. [432.]
Shaftesbury was by no means in a hurry to submit to Cromwell's domination, any more than he had been to join the parliament; the uncontrouled authority of an individual, and of one too who was inaccessible to all arts of cajoling or management, and only acted upon his own opinions and impulses, presented to the art and ambition of our statesman a very unpromising field of exertion. Accordingly, he is said to have been active in opposing the dispossession of the long parliament; and, being a member of that convoked by the Protector in 1656, he signed the famous protestation against the personal usurpation of Cromwell, which occasioned a very sudden dissolution of that assembly. But notwithstanding this occasional opposition, he sat in all Cromwell's parliaments, was a member of his privy council, and was so far in his favour, that he is said by his enemies to have nourished hopes of succeeding him in his power, with which view he aimed to become his son-in-law. Hence he is called, in the "Dream of the Cabal,"
"A little bob-tailed lord, urchin of state,
A praise-god-bare-bone peer, whom all men hate."
State Poems, Vol. I. p. [148.]
He cast himself into the saint-like mould;
Groaned, sighed, and prayed, while godliness was gain,
The loudest bagpipe of the squeaking train.
But, as 'tis hard to cheat a juggler's eyes,
His open lewdness he could ne'er disguise.—P. [432.]
According to North, the Earl of Shaftesbury, "in all his ways and workings, held a concert with the antimonarchists and fanatics."[504] As to his dissipation, the well-known speech of Charles II., and his reply, are sufficient evidence. "I believe, Shaftesbury," said the gay monarch, "thou art the wickedest dog in England." "May it please your majesty," retorted the statesman, "of a subject I believe I am." North, the recorder of all that was evil concerning him, says, "whether out of inclination, custom, or policy, I will not determine, it is certain, he was not behind hand with the court in the modest pleasures of the time, and to what excess of libertinism they were commonly grown, is no secret. There was a deformed old gentleman, called Sir Paul Neal, who, they say, sat for the picture of Sydrophel, in Hudibras; and about town was called the Lord Shaftesbury's groom, because he watered his mares (I forbear the vulgar word) in Hyde Park, with Rhenish wine and sugar, and not seldom a bait of cheese-cakes."[505]
Power was his aim; but thrown from that pretence,
The wretch turned loyal in his own defence,
And malice reconciled him to his prince.—P. [432.]
Whatever Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper's private political principles might be, he failed not to take a share of power upon the changes which so rapidly succeeded the death of Cromwell. Under the Rump parliament, he was one of the council of state, and a commissioner for managing the army, one of the committee to secure the Tower, and colonel of a regiment of horse. He made use of the influence which these situations afforded him, for hastening the Restoration. Sir Anthony had long held a secret correspondence with the loyal party, and was to have joined Sir George Booth at his rising, had he not been so suddenly crushed.[506]
He was taxed with this intended co-operation in parliament; but he was at least resolved not to bear witness against himself, for he made the highest professions of his innocence, and imprecated God's judgments on him and his posterity, if he had the slightest communication with the king, or his friends:[507] Nevertheless, he was one of those who invited Monk into England; was the first to supply him with a regiment of horse; was active in defeating the schemes of Lambert; and, in conclusion, was named one of the twelve members, who were deputed by the House of Commons to invite the king to return to his dominions.
Him, in the anguish of his soul, he served;
Rewarded faster still than he deserved.
Behold him now exalted into trust.—P. [432.]
"At the time of his majesty's restoration, as a most signal testimony of his majesty's good sentiments of his former actions, Shaftesbury was advanced to be one of the first rank in his majesty's most honourable privy council, and was placed above his majesty's royal brother, the Duke of Gloucester, and even General Monk himself, whom his majesty used to call his political father. And about three days before his majesty's coronation, he was in the Banquetting-house created Baron Ashley of Wimbourn, St Giles; and another addition of honour was conferred on him, Lord Cooper of Paulett; and at last, in the year 1672, he was made Earl of Shaftesbury, at the same time when Duke Lauderdale, the Earl of Arlington, and the Lord Clifford, were promoted."[508] To these honours were added substantial power and weight in the administration, called the cabal, from the initial letters of the ministers, names who composed it.[509] In this ministry, Shaftesbury was Chancellor of the Exchequer; and, on the resignation of Lord Keeper Bridgeman, became Lord High Chancellor of England. In this high station, he furthered, with all his policy and eloquence, the union with France against Holland, and the breach of the triple league; fatal measures, which tended to the destruction of our natural barrier against the universal dominion of France. It is probable, that Shaftesbury's ardent spirit flattered itself with the hopes of conducting a popular and triumphant war. But whatever were his motives, let it be remembered, to his honour, that French bribery, so common among the British ministers of the period, had no influence with Shaftesbury. Whether he found the war, ill managed by the court, and ill relished by the nation, was likely to do very little honour to those who had pushed it on; or whether he was dissatisfied with the share he enjoyed of the king's favour; or, finally, whether distrusting the easiness and mutability of the king's temper, is absolutely uncertain; but, moved either by these, or more patriotic motives, Shaftesbury, in the parliament of 1672-3, although in office, showed himself prepared to join opposition on very short notice.
But when this fatal counsel, found too late,
Exposed its author to the public hate;
When his just sovereign by no impious way
Could be seduced to arbitrary sway;
}
{ Forsaken of that hope, he shifts his sail,
{ Drives down the current with a popular gale,
{ And shows the fiend confessed without a veil.—P. [433.]
Two circumstances seem chiefly to have influenced Shaftesbury in his change of politics in 1672. Some vacancies had occurred in the House of Commons, during a recess of parliament. These his lordship, as chancellor, had caused to be filled up, by issuing writs for election, of his own authority, without waiting for the speaker's warrant; a proceeding, which was deemed by the House an undue exertion of prerogative, and the elections were declared irregular and null. This greatly irritated Shaftesbury's haughty temper, who thought the crown did not support him with sufficient energy, in a step which he had taken to extend its influence. From this he judged, that the king had not energy sufficient to venture upon bold measures; and, consequently, that there was no room for the game of a minister, who delighted in bold and masterly strokes of policy. But this was yet more to be inferred from the king's conduct in the matter of the Indulgence. This was a declaration, which the king, by advice of Shaftesbury and his other ministers, had sent forth, on the 25th March, 1672, dispensing with the penal laws against non-conformists of every description, and indulging to Protestant dissenters the public, and to Catholics the private exercise of their religious worship. It is remarkable, that Shaftesbury, afterwards the champion for the test against popery, was made chancellor, chiefly for the purpose of affixing the great seal to this declaration, which the Lord Keeper Bridgeman refused to do. The House of Commons remonstrated against this exercise of prerogative. After an inefficient struggle, Charles recalled the declaration, and broke the seals with his own hand. From that moment Shaftesbury declared, that the king had forsaken himself, and deserved to be forsaken. Suspicious that a monarch, who preferred so evidently his peace and pleasures to his prerogative, would not hesitate to make the lesser sacrifice of an obnoxious minister; anxious also, on account of the preponderance of the Duke of York, who hated him, and whom he hated, the Chancellor probably foresaw, that, in making an apparent sacrifice of court favour, he would not only save himself, but become the leader, instead of being the victim, of the popular faction. Accordingly, he promoted the test act in the House of Commons, and stood forth in the House of Lords as the leader of the Protestant party, whom the declaration had grievously alarmed. From so unexpected a change, at this eventful period, his removal from office was a matter of course. But in the mode of accomplishing it, circumstances occurred, which strongly mark the character of Shaftesbury, who delighted in an opportunity of teasing and alarming his enemies, even in the very act of retreating before them. When he waited upon the king, to surrender the seals, he observed a circle of his enemies in the anti-chamber, anticipating, with triumph, his returning without these badges of his office. Upon obtaining his audience, the falling minister begged the king, that his dismissal might be so arranged, as not to appear as it he was thrown off with contempt. "Godsfish," replied the good-natured monarch, "I will not do it with any circumstance that looks like an affront." The earl then begged permission to carry the seals before the king to chapel, and return them afterwards from his house. His boon being granted, he carried on the conversation with much humour, upon such gay subjects as usually entertained the king, while his adversaries, upon the tenterhooks of anxiety, awaited the issue of so long an audience. But when they saw the king and the chancellor come out together smiling, and go in company to the chapel, the party concluded Shaftesbury's peace was made, and his expected successor was inconsolable. After enjoying this little triumph, Shaftesbury sent the seals to the king, and placed himself at the head of the country party, who, from the general and well-founded opinion of his talents, did not hesitate to adopt as their leader, one who had just deserted the banners of the enemy.
From this time, Shaftesbury must always be considered as in opposition to the court. For, although a number of the country party were admitted into the council of state, formed by the advice of Temple, and Shaftesbury himself was president, he was, in fact, no more united to the king's party, than a detachment of besiegers become a part of the garrison of a besieged town, because a bastion or redoubt has been surrendered to them by capitulation.
Thus men are raised by factions, and decried,
And rogue and saint distinguished by their side.—P. [435.]
This was the argument concerning the credibility of the plot-witnesses, which was so triumphantly urged by the Tories, who asked, "Are not these men good witnesses, upon whose testimony Stafford, and so many Catholics, have been executed, and whom you yourselves have so long celebrated as men of credit and veracity? You have admitted them into your bosom; they are best acquainted with your treasons. They are determined in another shape to serve their king and country; and you cannot complain, that the same measure which you meted to others, should now, by a righteous doom of vengeance, be measured out to you."[510] To this there was but one answer: "We have been duped by our own prejudices, and the perjury of these men; but you, by employing against us witnesses whom you know to be forsworn villains, and whom their versatility has sufficiently proved to be such, are doing with your eyes open what we did in the blindness of prejudice, and are worse than us, as guilt is worse than folly." But this, though the Whigs' true defence, required a candid disavowal of the Popish plot, and reprobation of the witnesses; and that no true Protestant would submit to.
Thy military chiefs are brave and true,
Nor are thy disenchanted burghers few;
The head is loyal which thy heart commands,
But what's a head, with two such gouty hands?—P. [436.]
As matters carried more and more the appearance of actual insurrection and civil war, the more wealthy of the citizens of London, to whom nothing could be more ruinous than such an event, began to draw to the royal party. They were grieved also, that the ancient course of feasting and hospitality, observed by former sheriffs, had given way for furious cabals in coffee-houses; and, by degrees, a large body of citizens, who had, according to North, good hearts, and good spirits, were formed for the purpose of restoring the ancient order and course of living in the city. By means of this party, Sir John Moor was elected Lord Mayor; for whose character and conduct, and that of Shute and Pilkington, the Whig sheriffs, whom Dryden here terms his "two gouty hands," see the two last notes on the Second Part of "Absalom and Achitophel," pp. 401, 403. It was a great advantage to the court, that the military chiefs of the city, i. e. the officers of the trained bands, &c. were attached to the royal cause; and it was very much by their emphatic interference, that the election of sheriffs for 1683 was carried against the Whig party.
Perhaps not wholly to melt down the king,
But clip his regal rights within the ring.—P. [437.]
Until 1663, milled money was not struck in England; and the hammered coin, which continued to be in circulation long after that period, was liable to be clipped, which occasioned great frauds on the public, and loss to individuals. It is remarkable, that the verses which follow, describing the cypher-like state of royalty, to which the country party wished to reduce the king, agree accurately with what North believed to be Shaftesbury's real designs upon the authority and person of Charles. "If he was really a friend to any human kind, besides himself, I believe it was to King Charles the second; whose gaiety, breeding, wit, good-humour, familiarity, and disposition to enjoy the pleasures of society and greatness, engaged him very much, that had a great share of wit, agreeableness, and gallantry himself. But this same superiority spoiled all; his majesty would not always be influenced by him, but would take short turns on his toe, and so frustrate his projects; and finding by that he could not work under him, he strove, if possible, to reduce his authority, and get above him. It seems, by what was given out, that he would not have hurt the king personally, but kept him tame in a cage, with his ordinary pleasures about him. And if he was privy to the cruel stroke intended at the Rye, or any way concurring, it was the necessity of affairs, such as are laws to a politician, and superior to all human engagements, that obliged him. And of that sort, the chief was self-preservation; for, though he had found the king very easily reconciled, as not being in his nature vindicative, it was possible that humour, as age advanced, might spend; and he had launched so deep in treason, as it seemed necessary that either the king or he should fall." Examen. p. 119.
What else inspires the tongues, and swells the breasts,
Of all thy bellowing renegado priests.—P. [438.]
The keen and violent attack made upon the dissenting and fanatical clergy, in these and the following lines, called forth the indignation of the famous Edmund Hickeringill, who had been originally one of Cromwell's fighting saints, was at this time rector of All-Saints, in Colchester, and was notorious for composing fanatical pamphlets, songs, and sermons.[511] This reverend gentleman did not let the sun go down without venting his ire; for, the very next day after the publication of "The Medal," he sent to the press an answer to it, entitled. "The Mushroom, or a Satire against libelling Tories and prelatical Tantivies; in answer to a Satire against Sedition, called the Medal, by the author of Absalom and Achitophel; and here answered by the author of the Black Nonconformist, the next day after the publication of the Medal, to keep the sale thereof." To this unintelligible title-page succeeds a prefatory epistle, and a poem almost equally unintelligible, as will appear from a few extracts:
Epistle to the Tories and Tantivies:
Instead of an epistle to you Tories,
I'll only preface here with some old stories.
"About the year of our Lord 1218, at Paris, in a synod, or convocation of the clergy, one that was appointed to clerum, or preach the convocation sermon, was put to his trumps, and much troubled in his gizzard what to say or what subject to insist upon. Whereupon the devil, who always catches men napping, and observing the preacher to be melancholy and perplexed in mind, appears to him, as he sat in a brown study, and asked him why he was so careful what to preach? Say thus, quoth the devil—The princes of hell salute you, O the princes and prelates of the church, and gladly give you thanks, that, through your default and negligence, all souls go to hell, &c. &c. &c."
You call the Popes hard names, bears, wolves, and sherks:
For mischief what is then; the bishop and his clerks,
At the land's end of England? those dire stones
On which ships, men, are lost, body and bones.
The poem itself begins thus:
Time was, John Lawreat, when thy pretty muse,
Young, plump, and buxome, no man would refuse;
Though thou did'st poorly prostitute her store,
And, for vile pence, made her a hackney whore.
Against the rules of art, Phœbus is just;
Her former lovers does her now disgust;
And I, that once in private loved her well,
Nay, sometimes smiled at her Achitophel,
I longed to kiss her kindly, and to greet
Her loving airs, so charming, and so sweet:
Nay, be not jealous, John, thou hast no cause,
This was whilst she within the modest laws
Of a true poet kept; she's nauseous grown,
Thou needs must blush to own her for thine own.
If thou has any grace; she's poor and spent,
So far from witty, that grows impudent.
O what a silly do, thou keep'st in vain,
About a medal thus to break thy brain;
The ancient Romans, so renowned for wars,
Kept medals of their friends and ancestors;
Art thou red-letter bred, of hopes from Rome;
Yet against pictures speak'st, from whence they come?
A satyr once, satyrs could speak ere thine,
Why men did blow their nails, could not divine,
Nor why they did their porridge blow, was told,
One was to make them hot, the other cold:
At which news, satyr set up skut and run,
As if he had been frighted with a gun;
How would he run from thee, in naked truth,
Who blow'st both hot and cold from the same mouth!
"The Mushroom" concludes with the following awful threat; which, doubtless, must have greatly appalled Dryden:
I'll take thy laurells from thee, if I list,
An honour to my fairer brow when mist;
'Tis a day thrown away, (no more) think I,
No more it was, yet—diem perdidi,
Unless it be to make thy Satyre fell,
And Tonson begged this boon, which some think well.
Thy Satyre, three months old, a cripple came
This day to hand, I now return it lame.
London, March 17. 1681.
The ingenious author tacks to his poem some rants of inimitable nonsense and scurrility in prose, in which he is pleased to intimate, that there is, from the wonderful celerity of its production, some ground for believing, that he himself, the author, had received miraculous aid.
"And if any man think or say, that it is a wonder if this book and verses were composed and writ in one day, and sent to the press, since it would employ the pen of a ready writer to copy this book in a day—it may be so.
"But it is a truth, as certain and stable as the sun in the firmament, and which, if need be, the bookseller, printer, and other worthy citizens that are privy to it, can avouch for an infallible truth—deo soli gloria—when a divine hand assists, one of despicable, dull, and inconsiderate parts, may do wonders, which God usually performs by most weak and unlikely instruments."
A single extract more may be added, to shew the high popularity of "Absalom and Achitophel" among the country gentlemen of England. "What sport it is to see an old country justice, with his eager chaplain at his elbow, putting his barnacles on his nose; bless us, how he gapes and admires Nat. Thomson, the addresses in the Gazette, Abhorrences, Heraclitus, or the Observator! But shew him but—"Absalom and Achitophel"—oh—then the man's horn mad, there's no holding him; then he hunts up, and though in his dining-room, how he spends, with double mouth, and whoops and hallows, just as he hunts his dogs when at full cry. "That—that—that—that—Rattle—Towzer—Bulldog—Thunder—that—that—" while the little trencher-chaplain echoes to him, and cries, "Amen."
With which thou flatterest thy decrepid age.—P. [439.]
Shaftesbury was at this period little above sixty years old. But he was in a state of premature decrepitude; partly owing to natural feebleness of body, and partly to an injury which he received by an overturn in a Dutch carriage when he was in Holland, in 1660, as one of the parliamentary committee. He received on this occasion a wound, or bruise in his side, which came to an internal exulceration; so that in the year 1672 he was opened by Mr Knolls the surgeon, under the direction of Dr Willis, and an issue inserted for the regular discharge of the humour. This one of his biographers has called the "greatest cure that ever was done on the body of man."[512] The royalists forgot the honourable cause in which this injury was received, nothing less than a journey undertaken to invite the king to repossession of his throne, when they made its consequences the subject of scurrilous jests.[513] Dryden had already called Shaftesbury "the formidable cripple;" and in the Essay of Satire, he sarcastically describes the contrast between the activity of his spirit, and the decrepitude of his person.
THE END OF THE NINTH VOLUME.
Edinburgh: Printed by James Ballantyne & Co.