In the first poem, on the danger of the Prince on the coast of Spain, there is a puerile and ridiculous mention of Arion, at the beginning; and the last paragraph, on the Cable, is, in part, ridiculously mean, and in part, ridiculously tumid. The poem, however, is such as may be justly praised, without much allowance for the state of our poetry and language at that time.
The two next poems are upon the king's behaviour at the death of
Buckingham, and upon his navy.
He has, in the first, used the pagan deities with great propriety:
'Twas want of such a precedent as this,
Made the old heathen frame their gods amiss.
In the poem on the Navy, those lines are very noble, which suppose the king's power secure against a second deluge; so noble, that it were almost criminal to remark the mistake of centre for surface, or to say that the empire of the sea would be worth little, if it were not that the waters terminate in land.
The poem upon Sallee has forcible sentiments; but the conclusion is feeble. That on the Repairs of St. Paul's has something vulgar and obvious; such as the mention of Amphion; and something violent and harsh; as,
So all our minds with his conspire to grace
The Gentiles' great apostle, and deface
Those state-obscuring sheds, that, like a chain,
Seem'd to confine, and fetter him again:
Which the glad saint shakes off at his command,
As once the viper from his sacred hand.
So joys the aged oak, when we divide
The creeping ivy from his injur'd side.
Of the two last couplets, the first is extravagant, and the second mean.
His praise of the queen is too much exaggerated; and the thought, that she "saves lovers, by cutting off hope, as gangrenes are cured by lopping the limb," presents nothing to the mind but disgust and horrour.