"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: