No. X.
TO THE
MEMORY OF MR DRYDEN,
A POEM.
Huic versatile ingenium sic pariter ad omnia fuit,
Ut ad id unum natum diceres quodcunque ageret.
1700, 17th June.
When mortals formed of common clay expire,
These vulgar souls an elegy require;
But some hero of more heavenly frame,
Exerts his valour, and extends his fame;
Below the spheres impatient to abide,
With universal joy is deified.
Thus our triumphant Bard from hence is fled.
But let us never, never say he’s dead;
Let poetasters make the Muses mourn,
And common-place it o’er his sacred urn;
The public voice exalts him to the sky,
And fate decrees him immortality;
Ordains, instead of tears or mournful hearse,
His apotheosis be sung in verse.
Great poets sure are formed of heavenly race,
And with great heroes justly claim a place.
As Cæsar’s pen did Cæsar best commend,
And all the elegies of Rome transcend;
So Dryden’s muse alone, like Phœbus bright,
Outshines all human praise, or borrowed light;
To form his image, and to make it true,
There must be art, and inspiration too.
Auspicious stars had doomed him to the trade,
By nature framed, by art a poet made:
Thus Maro’s words and sense in him we see,
And Ovid’s teeming vein of poesy.
In his vast miscellaneous works we find,
What charms at once, and edifies the mind:
His pregnant muse has in the offspring shown
What’s rare for use, or beauty to be known:
In monumental everlasting verse
Epitomised, he grasped the universe.
No power but his could tune a British lyre
To sweeter notes than any Tuscan quire,
Teutonic words to animate and raise,
Strong, shining, musical, as attic lays;
Rude matter indisposed he formed polite,
His muse seemed rather to create than write.
His nervous eloquence is brighter far
Than florid pulpit, or the noisy bar.
His periods shine harmonious in the close,
As if a muse presided in his prose;
Yet unaffected plain, but strong his style,
It overflows to fructify, like Nile.
The God of wit conspires with all the Nine,
To make the orator and poet join.
We’re charmed when he the lady or the friend,
Pleased in majestic numbers to commend.
The panegyric flows in streams profuse,
When worth or beauty sublimates the muse.
His notes are moving, powerful, and strong,
As Orpheus’ lyre, or as a Syren’s song;
Sweet as the happy Idumean fields,
And fragrant as the flowers that Tempe yields.
Thrice happy she to whom such tribute’s paid,
And has such incense at her altar laid;
A sacrifice that might with envy move
Jove’s consort, or the charming Queen of Love.
His lasting lines will give a sacred name,
(Eternal records in the book of fame,)
His favourites are doom’d by Jove’s decree,
To share with him in immortality.
The wealthy muse on innate mines could live,
Though no Mecenas any smile would give;
His light not borrowed, but was all his own;
His rays were bright and warm without the sun.
Pictures (weak images of him) are sold,
The French are proud to have the head for gold:
The echo of his verse has charmed their ear,—
O could they comprehend the sound they hear!
Who hug the cloud, caress an airy face,
What would they give the goddess to embrace?
The characters his steady muse could frame,
Are more than like, they are so much the same;
The pencil and the mirror faintly live,
’Tis but the shadow of a life they give;
Like resurrection from the silent grave,
He the numeric soul and body gave.
No art, no hand but his could e’er bring home
The noblest choicest flowers of Greece and Rome;
Transplant them with sublimest art and toil,
And make them flourish in a British soil.
Whatever ore he cast into his mould }
He did the dark philosophy unfold, }
And by a touch converted all to gold. }
With epic feet who ere can steady run,
May drive the fiery chariot of the sun,
Must neither soar too high, nor fall too low;
Must neither burn like fire, nor freeze like snow.
All ages mighty conquerors have known,
Who courage and their power in arms have shown:
Greece knew but one, and Rome the Mantuan swain,
Who durst engage in lofty epic strain;
Heroics here were lands unknown before,
Our great Columbus first descried the shore.
No prophet moved the passions of the mind,
With sovereign power and force so unconfined:
We sympathised with his poetic rage,
In lofty buskins when he ruled the stage;
He roused our love, our hope, despairs, and fears,
Dissolved in joy we were, or drowned in tears.
When juster indignation roused his hate,
Insipid rhymes to lash, or knaves of state;
Each line’s a sting, and ev’ry sting a death,
As if their fate depended on his breath.
Like sun-beams swift, his fiery shafts were sent,
Or lightning darted from the firmament.
No warmer clime, no age or muse divine,
In pointed satire could our bard outshine.
His unexhausted force knew no decay;
In spite of years, his muse grew young and gay,
And vigorous, like the patriarch of old,
His last-born Joseph cast in finest mould;
This son of sixty-nine, surpassing fair,
With any elder offspring may compare,
Has charms in courts of monarchs to be seen,
Caressed and cherished by a longing queen.
Great prophets oft extend their just command,
Receive the tribute of a foreign land;
When in their own ungrateful native ground
Few just admiring votaries they found.
But when these god-like men their clay resign,
Pale Envy’s laid a victim at their shrine;
United mortals do their worth proclaim,
And altars raise to their eternal fame.
Wealth, beauty, force of wit, without allay,
In Dryden’s heavenly muse profusely lay;
Which mighty charms did never yet combine,
In any single deity to shine,
But were dispensed, more thriftily, between
Jove’s wife, his daughter, and the Cyprian queen.
The nymphs recorded in his artful lays,
Produce the grateful homage of their praise;
Assisted in their vows by powers divine,
Offer their sacred incense at his shrine.
The spheres exalt their music, to commend
The poet’s master and the muse’s friend;
In concert form seraphic notes to sing,
Of numbers, and of harmony the king.
In this triumphant scene to act her part,
Nature’s attended by her hand-maid, Art:
Resounding Echo, with her mimic voice,
Concurs to make the universe rejoice.
Let ev’ry tongue and pen the poet sing,
Who mounts Parnassus top with lofty wing;
Whose splendid muse has crowns of laurel won,
That brave the shining beauties of the sun.
His lines (those sacred reliques of the mind)
Not by the laws of fate or war confined,
In spite of flames will everlasting prove,
Devouring rust of time, or angry Jove.
No. XI.
EXTRACT
FROM
POETÆ BRITANNICI.
A POEM, SATIRICAL AND PANEGYRICAL.
1700. 9. January.
L—gh aim’d to rise above great Dr—-n’s height,
But lofty Dryden kept a steady flight.
Like Dædalus, he times with prudent care
His well-waxed wings, and waves in middle air.
Crowned with the sacred snow of reverend years,
Dryden above the ignobler crowd appears,
Raises his laurelled head, and, as he goes,
O’er-shoulders all, and like Apollo shows.
The native spark, which first advanced his name,
By industry he kindled to a flame.
Then to a different coast his judgment flew,
He left the old world behind, and found a new.
On the strong columns of his lasting wit,
Instructive Dryden built, and peopled it.
In every page delight and profit shines;
Immortal sense flows in his mighty lines.
His images so strong and lively be,
I hear not words alone, but substance see,
The proper phrase of our exalted tongue
To such perfection from his numbers sprung;
His tropes continued, and his figures fine,
All of a piece throughout, and all divine.
Adapted words and sweet expressions move
Our various passions, pity, rage, and love.
I weep to hear fond Antony complain
In Shakespeare’s fancy, but in Virgil’s strain.
Though for the comic, others we prefer,
Himself the judge; nor does his judgment err.
But comedy, ’tis thought, can never claim
The sounding title of a poem’s name.
For raillery, and what creates a smile,
Betrays no lofty genius, nor a style.
That heavenly heat refuses to be seen
In a town character, and comic mien.
If we would do him right, we must produce
The Sophoclean buskin; when his muse
With her loud accents filled the listning ear,
And peals applauding shook the theatre.
They fondly seek, great name, to blast thy praise,
Who think that foreign banks produced thy bays.
Is he obliged to France, who draws from thence,
By English energy, their captive sense?
Though Edward and famed Henry warred in vain,
Subduing what they could not long retain,
Yet now, beyond our arms, the muse prevails,
And poets conquer, when the hero fails.
This does superior excellence betray:
O could I write in thy immortal way!
If Art be Nature’s scholar, and can make
Such great improvements, Nature must forsake
Her ancient style; and in some grand design, }
She must her own originals decline, }
And for the noblest copies follow thine. }
This all the world must offer to thy praise,
And this Thalia sang in rural lays.
As sleep to weary drovers on the plain,
As a sweet river to a thirsty swain,
Such divine Dryden’s charming verses show,
Please like the river, like the river flow.
When his first years in mighty order ran,
And cradled infancy bespoke the man,
Around his lips the waxen artists hung,
And breathed ambrosial odours as they sung.
In yellow clusters from their hives they flew,
And on his tongue distilled eternal dew:
Thence from his mouth harmonious numbers broke,
More sweet than honey from the knotted oak;
More smooth than streams, that from a mountain glide,
Yet lofty as the top from whence they slide.
Long he possest the hereditary plains,
Beloved by all the herdsmen, and the swains,
Till he resigned his flock, opprest with years,
And olden’d in his woe, as well as fears.
Yet still, like Etna’s mount, he kept his fire,
And look’d, like beauteous roses on a brier:
He smiled, like Phœbus in a stormy morn,
And sung, like Philomel against a thorn.