"The goodly London in her gallant trim,
The phoenix-daughter of the vanquisht old,
Like a rich bride does on the ocean swim,
And on her shadow rides in floating gold.
Her flag aloft spread ruffling in the wind,
And sanguine streamers seem'd the flood to fire:
The weaver, charm'd with what his loom design'd,
Goes on to sea, and knows not to retire.
With roomy decks, her guns of mighty strength,
Whose low-laid mouths each mounting billow laves,
Deep in her draught, and warlike in her length,
She seems a sea-wasp flying on the waves.
"What a wonderful pother is here, to make all these poetical beautifications of a ship! that is a phoenix in the first stanza, and but a wasp in the last: nay, to make his humble comparison of a wasp more ridiculous, he does not say it flies upon the waves as nimbly as a wasp, or the like, but it seemed a wasp. But our author at the writing of this was not in his altitudes, to compare ships to floating palaces: a comparison to the purpose, was a perfection he did not arrive to till his Indian Emperor's days. But, perhaps, his similitude has more in it than we imagine; this ship had a great many guns in her, and they, put all together, made the sting in the wasp's tail; for this is all the reason I can guess, why it seem'd a wasp. But, because we will allow him all we can to help out, let it be a phoenix sea-wasp, and the rarity of such an animal may do much towards heightening the fancy.
"It had been much more to his purpose, if he had designed to render the senseless play little, to have searched for some such pedantry as this:
"Two ifs scarce make one possibility.
If justice will take all and nothing give,
Justice, methinks, is not distributive.
To die or kill you, is the alternative.
Rather than take your life, I will not live.
"Observe how prettily our author chops logick in heroick verse. Three such fustian canting words as distributive, alternative, and two ifs, no man but himself would have come within the noise of. But he's a man of general learning, and all comes into his play.
"'Twould have done well too if he could have met with a rant or two, worth the observation; such as,
"Move swiftly, sun, and fly a lover's pace,
Leave months and weeks behind thee in thy race.
"But surely the sun, whether he flies a lover's or not a lover's pace, leaves weeks and months, nay, years too, behind him in his race.
"Poor Robin, or any other of the philo-mathematicks, would have given him satisfaction in the point:
"If I could kill thee now, thy fate's so low,
That I must stoop, ere I can give the blow.
But mine is fixt so far above thy crown,
That all thy men,
Piled on thy back, can never pull it down.