The Confederates, or the First Happy Day of the Island Princess.
Ye vile traducers of the female kind,
Who think the fair to cruelty inclined,
Recant your error, and with shame confess
Their tender care of Skipwith[190] in distress:
For now to vindicate this monarch’s right,
The Scotch and English equal charms unite;
In solemn leagues contending nations join,
And Britain labours with the vast design.
An opera with loud applause is played,
Which famed Motteux in soft heroics made;
And all the sworn Confederates resort,
To view the triumph of their sovereign’s court.
In bright array the well-trained host appears;
Supreme command brave Derwentwater[191] bears;
And next in front George Howard’s bride[192] does shine,
The living honour of that ancient line.
The wings are led by chiefs of matchless worth;
Great Hamilton,[193] the glory of the North,
Commands the left; and England’s dear delight,
The bold Fitzwalter[194] charges on the right.
The Prince, to welcome his propitious friends,
A throne erected on the stage ascends.
He said:—Blest angels! for great ends designed,
The best, and sure the fairest, of your kind,
How shall I praise, or in what numbers sing
Your just compassion of an injured king?
Till you appeared, no prospect did remain,
My crown and falling sceptre to maintain;
No noisy beaus in all my realm were found;
No beauteous nymphs my empty boxes crowned:
But still I saw, O dire heart-breaking woe!
My own sad consort[195] in the foremost row.
But this auspicious day new empire gives;
And if by your support my nation lives,
For you my bards shall tune the sweetest lays,
Norton[196] and Henley[197] shall resound your praise;
And I, not last of the harmonious train,
Will give a loose to my poetic vein.
To him great Derwentwater thus replied:—
Thou mighty prince, in many dangers tried,
Born to dispute severe decrees of fate,
The nursing-father of a sickly state;
Behold the pillars of thy lawful reign!
Thy regal rights we promise to maintain:
Our brightest nymphs shall thy dominions grace,
With all the beauties of the Highland race;
The beaus shall make thee their peculiar care,
For beaus will always wait upon the fair:
For thee kind Beereton and bold Webbe shall fight,[198]
Lord Scott[199] shall ogle, and my spouse shall write:[200]
Thus shall thy court our English youth engross,
And all the Scotch, from Drummond down to Ross.
Now in his throne the king securely sat;
But O! this change alarmed the rival state;
Besides he lately bribed, in breach of laws,
The fair deserter of her uncle’s cause.
This roused the monarch of the neighbouring crown,
A drowsy prince, too careless of renown.[201]
Yet prompt to vengeance, and untaught to yield,
Great Scarsdale[202] challenged Skipwith to the field.
Whole shoals of poets for this chief declare,
And vassal players attend him to the war.
Skipwith with joy the dreadful summons took,
And brought an equal force; then Scarsdale spoke;—
Thou bane of empire, foe to human kind,
Whom neither leagues nor laws of nations bind;
For cares of high poetic sway unfit,
Thou shame of learning, and reproach of wit;
Restore bright Helen to my longing sight,
Or now my signal shall begin the fight.—
Hold, said the foe, thy warlike host remove,
Nor let our bards the chance of battle prove:
Should death deprive us of their shining parts,
What would become of all the liberal arts?
Should Dennis fall, whose high majestic wit,
And awful judgment, like two tallies, fit,
Adieu, strong odes, and every lofty strain,
The tragic rant, and proud Pindaric vein.
Should tuneful D’Urfey now resign his breath,
The lyric Muse would scarce survive his death;
But should divine Motteux untimely die,
The gasping Nine would in convulsions lie:
For these bold champions safer arms provide,
And let their pens the double strife decide.
The king consents; and urged by public good,
Wisely retreats to save his people’s blood:
The moving legions leave the dusty plain,
And safe at home poetic wars maintain.
[190] Sir Thomas Skipwith, joint patentee and manager with Charles Rich of the Drury-Lane theatre.
[191] Mary Tudor, natural daughter of Charles the Second, and lady of Lord Ratcliff, (now Earl of Derwentwater,) to whom Dryden dedicated his Third Miscellany. See Vol. XII. p. 47.
[192] Arabella, daughter of Sir Edward Allen, Bart. She first married Francis Thompson, Esq. and was at this time the wife of Lord George Howard, (eldest son of Henry, the sixth duke of Norfolk, by his second wife,) who died in March 1720-21. Malone.
[193] Elizabeth, daughter of Digby, Lord Gerard, and second wife of James, Duke of Hamilton, who was killed in a duel by Lord Mohun, in November 1712. Malone.
[194] Elizabeth, daughter of Charles Bertie of Uffington, in the county of Lincoln, Esq. a younger son of Montague, the second earl of Lindsey. She was at this time the wife of Charles Mildmay, the second Lord Fitzwalter of that family. Malone.
[195] Margaret, daughter of George, Lord Chandos, and relict of William Brownlow of Humby, in Lincolnshire.
[196] Richard Norton of Southwick, in Hampshire, Esq. Cibber’s comedy, entitled, “Love’s last Shift,” was dedicated to this gentleman, in February 1696-7. Mr Norton died December 10, 1732, in his sixty-ninth year.
[197] Anthony Henley, of the Grange, in Hampshire, Esq., a man of parts and learning, and a correspondent of Swift, who died in 1711.
[198] Perhaps General Webbe, whose “firm platoon” was afterwards celebrated by Tickell. Of the prowess of Mr Beereton no memorials have been discovered. Malone.
[199] Lord Henry Scott, second surviving son of James, Duke of Monmouth, who was born in 1676. In 1706 he was created Earl of Deloraine; and died about 1730.
[200] The Earl of Derwentwater’s poetry, which, according to Dryden, was none of the best.
[201] The famous Betterton, who, in 1695, again divided the two companies, and headed that in Lincoln’s Inn Fields.
[202] Robert, third Earl of Scarsdale, a protector of Betterton’s company.
[203] Alluding to the statutes imposing the oath of allegiance and supremacy on all Catholics, under the penalty of incapacity to hold landed property. 11 and 12 William III. cap. 4.
[204] The excellent comedy entitled the “Way of the World.” It had cost Congreve much pains, and he was so much disgusted with the cold reception alluded to in the text, that he never again wrote for the stage.
[205] His Fables.
[206] King William had made large grants of land out of the forfeited estates in Ireland, to his foreign servants, Portland, Albemarle, Rochford, Galway, and Athlone, and to his favourite, Lady Orkney. The Commons, who now watched every step of their deliverer with bitter jealousy, appointed a commission to enquire into the value of these grants; and followed it with a bill for resuming and applying them to the payment of public debt; “and; in order to prevent the bill from being defeated in the House of Lords, they, by a form seldom used, and which very seldom should be used, tacked it to their bill of supply; so that the Lords could not refuse the one, without disappointing the other. The Lords, to secure themselves from that insignificancy, to which the form of the bill tended to reduce them, disputed, in some conferences with the Commons, the form of it with warmth; but the resumption which it contained with indifference. And in both Houses, even the servants of the Crown gave themselves little trouble to defeat it; partly to gain popularity, but more from national antipathy to foreigners, and envy at gifts in which themselves were no sharers. The King, making allowances for national weaknesses, and for those of human nature, passed the bill without any complaint in public, but with a generous indignation in private, which perhaps made the blow fall more heavy on his friends, when, in order to soften it, he said to them, that it was for his sake, and not for their own, they were suffering,”—Dalrymple’s Annals. William felt so deeply the unkindness offered to him, that he prorogued the Parliament without the usual ceremony of a speech from the throne.
[207] Mr Steward.
[208] More commonly called Vanbrugh. In Dryden’s age, the spelling of proper names was not punctiliously adhered to.
[209] Dryden died on the 1st of May, and this letter was written on the 11th of the preceding month. The prologue and epilogue were therefore composed within less than a month of his death.
[210] The Hall of the College of Physicians.
[211] Mr Malone doubts his being Doctor.
[212] Thomas.
[213] Sir Richard Philipps, according to Collins.
[214] Sir Edward Hartop, says Collins.
[215] Susanna, the wife of Sir John Pickering, according to Collins, was the eldest daughter of Sir Erasmus Driden.
[216] Erasmus Driden, the poet’s father, was the writer’s great uncle. All these corrections are made by Mr Malone.
[217] Ego sum Preceptor Amoris. Art. Am. Lib.
[218] His Ode on St Cecilia’s Day, entitled, Alexander’s Feast, or the Power of Music.
[219] Mrs Philips.
[220] Mrs Behn.