POEM.

But thou, great bard, whose hoary merits claim
The laureat’s place, without the laureat’s name;
Whose learned brows, encircled by the bays,
Bespeak their owner’s, and their giver’s praise;
Thou, Dryden, should’st our loss alone relate,
And heroes mourn, who heroes canst create.
Amidst thy verse the wife already shines,
And owes her virtues, what she owes thy lines.
Down from above the saint our sorrows views,
And feels a second heaven in thy muse;
Whose verse as lasting as her fame shall be,
While thou shall live by her, and she by thee.
Oh! let the same immortal numbers tell,
How just the husband lived, and how he fell;
What vows, when living, for his life were made;
What floods of tears at his decease were paid;
And since their deathless virtues were the same,
Equal in worth, alike should be their fame.
But thou, withdrawn from us, and public cares,
Flatter’st thy age, and feed’st thy growing years;
Supine, unmoved, regardless of our cries,
Thou mind’st not where thy noble patron lies:
Wrapt in death’s icy arms, within his urn,
Behold him sleeping, and, beholding, mourn:
Speechless that tongue for wholesome counsels famed,
And without sight those eyes for lust unblamed;
Bereaved of motion are those hands which gave
Alms to the needy, did the needy crave.
Ah! such a sight, and such a man divine,
Does only call for such a hand as thine!
Great is the task, and worthy is thy pen;
The best of bards should sing the best of men.
Awake, arise from thy lethargic state,
Mourn Britain’s loss, though Britain be ingrate;
Nor let the sacred Mantuan’s labours be
A ne plus ultra to thy fame and thee.
Thy Abingdon, if once thy glorious theme,
Shall vie with his Marcellus for esteem;
Tears in his eyes, and sorrow in his heart,
Shall speak the reader’s grief, and writer’s art;
And, though this barren age does not produce
A great Augustus, to reward thy muse;
Though in this isle no good Octavia reigns,
And gives thee Virgil’s premium for his strains:
Yet, Dryden, for a while forsake thy ease,
And quit thy pleasures, that thou more may’st please.
Apollo calls, and every muse attends,
With every grace, who every beauty lends.
Sweet is thy voice, as was thy subject’s mind,
And, like his soul, thy numbers unconfined;
Thy language easy, and thy flowing song,
Soft as a vale, but like a mountain strong.
Such verse as thine, and such alone, should dare
To charge the muses with their present care.
Thine, and the cause of wit, with speed maintain,
Lest some rude hand the sacred work profane,
And the dull, mercenary, rhyming crew,
Rob the deceased and thee, of what’s your due.
Such fears as these, (if duty cannot move,
And make thy labours equal to thy love,)
Should hasten forth thy verse, and make it show
What thou, mankind, and every muse does owe.
As Abingdon’s high worth exalted shines,
And gives and takes a lustre from thy lines;
As Eleonora’s pious deeds revive
In him who shared her praises when alive:
So the stern Greek, whom nothing could persuade
To quit the rash engagements which he made,
With sullen looks, and helmet laid aside,
He soothed his anger, and indulged his pride;
Careless of fate, neglectful of the call
Of chiefs entreating, till Patroclus’ fall.
Roused by his death, his martial soul could bend,
And lose his whole resentments in his friend;
As to the dusky field he winged his course,
With eyes impatient, and redoubled force,
And weeped him dead, in thousands of the slain,
Whom living, Greece had beg’d his sword in vain.
O Dryden! quick the sacred pencil take,
And rise in virtue’s cause for virtue’s sake;
Of heaven’s the song, and heaven-born is thy muse,
Fitting to follow bliss, which mine will lose:
Bold are thy thoughts, and soaring is thy flight;
Thy fancy tempting, thy expressions bright;
Moving thy grief, and powerful is thy praise,
Or to command our tears, or joys to raise.
So shall his worth, from age to age conveyed,
Shew what the hero did, and poet paid;
And future times shall practice what they see
Performed so well by him, and praised by thee,
While I confess the weakness of my lays,
And give my wonder where thou giv’st thy praise:
As I from every muse but thine retire,
And him in thee, and thee in him, admire.

No. VIII.
EXTRACTS
FROM
POEMS ATTACKING DRYDEN,
FOR HIS SILENCE UPON
THE DEATH OF QUEEN MARY.

The author of one of these Mourning Odes inscribes it to Dryden with the following letter:

Sir,

Though I have little acquaintance with you, nor desire to have more, I take upon me, with the assurance of a poet, to make this dedication to you, which I hope you will the more easily excuse, since you have often used the same freedom to others; and since I protest sincerely, that I expect no money from you.

I could not forbear mentioning your admired Lewis, whom you compare to Augustus, as justly as one may compare you to Virgil. Augustus (though not the most exact pattern of a prince) yet, on some occasions, shewed personal valour, and was not a league-breaker, a poisoner, a pirate: Virgil was a good man and a clean poet; all his excellent writings may be carried by a child in one hand more easily, than all your almonzors can be by a porter upon both shoulders.

When I saw your prodigious epistle to the translation of Juvenal, I feared you were wheeling to the government; I confess too, I long expected something from you on the late sad occasion, that has employed so many pens; but it is well that you have kept silence. I hope you will always be on the other side; did even popery ever get any honour by you? You may wonder that I subscribe not my name at length, but I defer that to another time. I hear you are translating again; let English Virgil be better than English Juvenal, or it is odds you will hear of me more at large. In the mean time, hoping that you and your covey will dislike what I have written, I remain, Sir, your very humble servant,

A. B.

There is also an attack upon our author, as presiding in the Wits Coffee-house, which gives us a curious view into the interior of that celebrated place of rendezvous. It is entitled, “Urania’s Temple; or, a Satire upon the Silent Poets,” and is as follows:—

URANIA’S TEMPLE;
OR,
A SATIRE UPON THE SILENT POETS.

Carmina, nulla canam.——Virg.

1694-5. 2. March.

A house there stands where once a convent stood,
A nursery still to the old convent brood:
This ever hospitable roof of yore
The famous sign of the old Osiris bore,
A fair red Io, hieroglyphic-fair,
For all the suckling wits o’ the town milcht there.
This long old emblematic, that had past
Full many a bleak winter’s shaking blast,
At last with age fell down, some say, confusion,
Shamed and quite dasht at the new Revolution;
Dropt out of modesty, (as most suppose,)
Not daring face the new bright Royal Rose.
Here in supiner state, ’twixt reaking tiff,
And fumigating clouds of funk and whiff,
Snug in a nook, his dusky tripos, sits
A senior Delphic ’mongst the minor wits;
Feared like an Indian god, a god indeed
True Indian, smoked with his own native weed.
From this oped mouth, soft eloquence rich mint
Steals now and then a keen well-hammered hint,
Some sharp state raillery, or politic squint,
Hard midwived wit, births by slow labours stopt,
Sense not profusely shower’d, but only dropt.
Sometimes for oracles yet more profound,
A titillating sonnet’s handed round,
Some Abdication-Damon madrigal,
His own sour pen’s too overflowing gall.
I must confess in pure poetic rage,
Bowed down to the old Moloch of that age,
His strange bigotted muse our wonder saw,
Tuned to the late great court tarantula.
What though worn out in pleasures old and stale,
The reverend Outly sculkt within the pale;
It was enough, like the old Mahomet’s pigeon,
He lured to bread, and masked into religion.
Had that, now silent, muse been but so kind
As to this funeral-dirge her numbers joined,
On that great theme what wonders had he told!
For though the bard, the quill is not grown old,
Writes young Apollo still, with his whole rays
Encircled and enriched, though not his bays.
Thus when the wreath, so long, so justly due,
The great Mecænas from those brows withdrew,
With pain he saw such merit sunk so far,
Shamed that the dragon’s tail swept down the star.
Not that the conscience-shackle tied so hard,
But had he been the prophet, as the bard,
Prognostick’d the diminutive slender birth
His seven-hill’d mountain-labour has brought forth,
His foreseen precipice; that thought alone
Had stopt his fall, secured him all our own;
Free from his hypochondriac dreams he had slept,
And still his unsold Esau’s birthright kept.
’Tis thus we see him lost, thus mourn his fall;
That single teint alone has sullied all.
So have I in the Muses garden seen
The spreading rose, or blooming jessamine;
Once from whose bosom the whole Hybla train
The industrious treasurers of the rich plain,
Those winged foragers for their fragrant prey,
On loaded thighs bore thousand sweets away:
Now shaded by a sullen venomed guest
Cankered and sooted o’er to a spider’s nest.
His sweets thus soured, what melancholy change,
What an ill-natur’d lour, a face so strange!
His life one whole long scene of all unrest,
And airy hopes his thin cameleon-feast;
Pleased only with the pride of being preferred,
The echoed voice to his own listning herd,
A magisterial Belweather tape,
The lordly leader of his bleating troop.
These doctrines our young Sullenists preach round,
The texts which their poetic silence found.
But why the doctor of their chair, why thou,
Their great rabbinic voice, thus silent too?
Could Noll’s once meteor glories blaze so fair,
To make thee that all-prostrate zealot there?
Strange, that that fiery nose could boast that charm
Thy muse with those seraphic raptures warm!
And our fair Albion star to shine so bleak,
Her radiant influence so chill, so weak!
Gorged with his riotous festival of fame,
Could thy weak stomach pule at Mary’s name!
Or was thy junior palate more canine,
And now in years grows squeamish, and more fine!
Fie, peevish-niggard, with thy flowing store
To play the churl,—excuse thy shame no more.

No. IX.
VERSES
OCCASIONED BY READING
MR DRYDEN’S FABLES.
INSCRIBED TO
HIS GRACE THE DUKE OF BUCKINGHAMSHIRE.
BY MR JABEZ HUGHES.

Musæum ante omnes, medium nam plurima turba
Hunc habet, atque humeris extantem suspicit altis.—Virg.