And may that soul the Church's blessing want,
May his content be short, his comforts scant,
Whose bosom-altar does no incense burn,
In thankful sacrifice for Your return.
Upon the King's happy return, &c.] Hannah notes that this appears with variants, but signed, in MS. Ashm. 38, fol. 51. I have not thought it necessary to collate this version from a work described by good authorities as 'a bad MS.'. The piece itself, however, with others of King's, may well have been in Dryden's mind when he composed his own batch of Restoration welcome-poems to Charles II and Clarendon, within three or four years of the publication of these. There is no plagiarism: Heaven forbid that I should take part in plagiarism-hunting. But there is a sort of resemblance in form and tone (especially in the use of 'You' and 'Your' as pivots), and (though with great improvement) in versification.—The capital Y's here are almost complete in the original, and I have completed them.
To the Queen at Oxford.
Great Lady! that thus, quite against our use,
We speak your welcome by an English Muse,