Of their own sense, they paint the raven white?
Absalom Senior.
Sharp-judging Adriel, the muses friend,
Himself a muse.—P. [243.]
Adriel is the Earl of Mulgrave, afterwards Marquis of Normanby and Duke of Buckingham. He was one of Dryden's most early and effectual patrons. The "Essay upon Satire" was their joint composition, and Dryden inscribed to him his play of "Aureng-Zebe." The praise bestowed by Dryden is, as usual, discriminating and appropriate. Mulgrave exhibits his "sharp judgement" in his "Essay on Poetry," which contains some good critical remarks; but of his lordship's poetical talents we have spoken sufficiently elsewhere.[342] His political principles were those of a staunch Tory, which he maintained through his whole life; and was zealous for the royal prerogative, although he had no small reason to complain of Charles II., who, to avenge himself of Mulgrave, for a supposed attachment to the Princess Anne, sent him to Tangiers, at the head of some troops, in a leaky vessel, which it was supposed must have perished in the voyage. Though Mulgrave was apprized of the danger, he scorned to shun it; and the Earl of Plymouth, a favourite son of the king, generously insisted upon sharing it along with him. This ungenerous attempt to destroy him, in the very act of performing his duty, with the refusal of a regiment, made a temporary change in Mulgrave's conduct. He connected himself for a time with the country party;[343] but he soon returned to his original principles, and continued steadily to support the court during the progress of the Exclusion Bill, and in all the stormy debates of the troubled period to which Dryden's poem refers. Yet he evinced, that he was not a "slave of state;" for, although James II. made him Lord High Chamberlain, he withstood all the measures which that ill-advised prince adopted in behalf of the Catholic religion. He silenced a priest, who was labouring for his conversion, and had begun with the doctrine of transubstantiation, by the famous repartee, that "though he believed God made man, he could not believe that man was quits by making God in return." But he stood gallantly by King James to the very last, and had the courage to insist upon the council taking measures for the safety of that unfortunate monarch's person, when, after his first flight, he was seized by the sailors at Feversham.
Dryden says, Adriel was adorned with the "honours torn from his disobedient son;" because, when Monmouth was deprived of the government of Hull and lieutenancy of Yorkshire, the king conferred them upon the Earl of Mulgrave.
Jotham, of piercing wit, and pregnant thought,
Endued by nature, and by learning taught,