When Charles lodged in thy boughs, thou couldst not want
Many degrees to be a sensitive plant.
TO
LORD CHANCELLOR HYDE.
&c.
The great statesman, to whom Dryden made this new-year's offering, was the well known Earl of Clarendon, of whose administration Hume gives the following striking account:
"Clarendon not only behaved with wisdom and justice in the office of chancellor: all the counsels, which he gave the king, tended equally to promote the interest of prince and people. Charles, accustomed, in his exile, to pay entire deference to the judgment of this faithful servant, continued still to submit to his direction; and for some time no minister was ever possessed of more absolute authority. He moderated the forward zeal of the royalists, and tempered their appetite for revenge. With the opposite party, he endeavoured to preserve, inviolate, all the king's engagements. He kept an exact register of the promises which had been made, for any service; and he employed all his industry to fulfil them."
Notwithstanding the merits of Clarendon, and our author's prophecy in the following verses, that
He had already wearied fortune so,
She could no longer be his friend or foe;