[47] By a letter to Mrs. Steward, dated the 11th April 1700, it appears they were then only in his contemplation, and the poet died upon the first of the succeeding month. Vol. xviii.
[48]
"Quick Maurus, though he never took degrees
In either of our universities,
Yet to be shown by Rome kind wit he looks,
Because he played the fool, and writ three books.
But if he would be worth a poet's pen,
He must be more a fool, and write again:
For all the former fustian stuff he wrote
Was dead-born doggrel, or is quite forgot;
His man of Uz, stript of his Hebrew robe,
Is just the proverb, and 'As poor as Job.'
One would have thought he could no longer jog;
But Arthur was a level, Job's a bog.
There though he crept, yet still he kept in sight;
But here he founders in, and sinks downright.
Had he prepared us, and been dull by rule,
Tobit had first been turned to ridicule;
But our bold Briton, without fear or awe,
O'erleaps at once the whole Apocrypha;
Invades the Psalms with rhymes, and leaves no room
For any Vandal Hopkins yet to come.
But when, if, after all, this godly gear
Is not so senseless as it would appear,
Our mountebank has laid a deeper train;
His cant, like Merry Andrew's noble vein,
Cat-calls the sects to draw them in again.
At leisure hours in epic song he deals,
Writes to the rumbling of his coach's wheels;
Prescribes in haste, and seldom kills by rule,
But rides triumphant between stool and stool.
Well, let him go,—'tis yet too early day
To get himself a place in farce or play;
We know not by what name we should arraign him,
For no one category can contain him.
A pedant,—canting preacher,—and a quack,
Are load enough to break an ass's back.
At last, grown wanton, he presumed to write,
Traduced two kings, their kindness to requite;
One made the doctor, and one dubbed the knight."
[49] One of these well-meaning persons insulted the ashes of Dryden while they were still warm, in "An Epistle to Sir Richard Blackmore, occasioned by the New Session of the Poets." Marked by Mr. Luttrell, 1st November 1700.
"His mighty Dryden to the shades is gone,
And Congreve leaves successor of his throne:
Though long before his final exit hence,
He was himself an abdicated Prince;
Disrobed of all regalities of state,
Drawn by a hind and panther from his seat.
Heir to his plays, his fables, and his tales,
Congreve is the poetic prince of Wales;
Not at St. Germains, but at Will's, his court,
Whither the subjects of his dad resort;
Where plots are hatched, and councils yet unknown,
How young Ascanius may ascend the throne,
That in despite of all the Muses' laws,
He may revenge his injured father's cause,
Go, nauseous rhymers, into darkness go,
And view your monarch in the shades below,
Who takes not now from Helicon his drink,
But sips from Styx a liquor black as ink;
Like Sisyphus a restless stone he turns,
And in a pile of his own labours burns;
Whose curling flames most ghastly fiends do raise,
Supplied with fuel from his impious plays;
And when he fain would puff away the flame,
One stops his mouth with bawdy Limberham;
There, to augment the terrors of the place,
His Hind and Panther stare him in the face;
They grin like devils at the cursed toad,
Who made [them] draw on earth so vile a load.
Could some infernal painter draw the sight,
And once transmit it to the realms of light,
It might our poets from their sins affright;
Or could they hear, how there the sons of verse
In dismal yells their tortures do express;
How scorched with ballads on the Stygian shore,
They horrors in a dismal chorus roar;
Or see how the laureate does his grandeur bear,
Crowned with a wreath of flaming sulphur there.
This, sir, 's your fate, cursed critics you oppose,
The most tyrannical and cruel foes;
Dryden, their huntsman dead, no more he wounds,
But now you must engage his pack of hounds."
[50] According to Ward, his expressions were, "that he was an old man, and had not long to live by course of nature, and therefore did not care to part with one limb, at such an age, to preserve an uncomfortable life on the rest."—London Spy, Part xviii.
[51] "I come now from Mr. Dryden's funeral, where we had an Ode in Horace sung, instead of David's Psalms; whence you may find, that we don't think a poet worth Christian burial. The pomp of the ceremony was a kind of rhapsody, and fitter, I think, for Hudibras, than him; because the cavalcade was mostly burlesque: but he was an extraordinary man, and buried after an extraordinary fashion; for I do believe there was never such another burial seen. The oration, indeed, was great and ingenious, worthy the subject, and like the author; whose prescriptions can restore the living, and his pen embalm the dead. And so much for Mr. Dryden; whose burial was the same as his life,—variety, and not of a piece:— the quality and mob, farce and heroics; the sublime and ridicule mixed in a piece;—great Cleopatra in a hackney coach."
[52] Those who wish to peruse this memorable romance may find it in vol. xviii. It was first published in Wilson's "Life of Congreve," 1730. Mr. Malone has successfully shown that it is false in almost all its parts; for, independently of the extreme improbability of the whole story, it is clear, from Ward's account, written at the time, that Lord Jefferies, who it is pretended interrupted the funeral, did, in fact, largely contribute to it. This also appears from a paragraph, in a letter from Doctor afterwards Bishop Tanner, dated May 6th, 1700, and thus given by Mr. Malone:—"Mr. Dryden died a papist, if at all a Christian. Mr. Montague had given orders to bury him; but some lords (my Lord Dorset, Jefferies, etc.), thinking it would not be splendid enough, ordered him to be carried to Russel's: there he was embalmed; and now lies in state at the Physicians' College, and is to be buried with Chaucer, Cowley, etc., at Westminster Abbey, on Monday next."—MSS. Ballard. in Bibl. Bodl. vol. iv. p. 29.
[53] The following lines are given by Mr. Malone as a specimen:—
"Before the hearse the mourning hautboys go,
And screech a dismal sound of grief and woe:
More dismal notes from bog-trotters may fall,
More dismal plaints at Irish funeral;
But no such floods of tears e'er stopped our tide,
Since Charles, the martyr and the monarch, died.
The decency and order first describe,
Without regard to either sex or tribe.
The sable coaches led the dismal van,
But by their side, I think, few footmen ran;
Nor needed these; the rabble fill the streets,
And mob with mob in great disorder meets.
See next the coaches, how they are accouter'd,
Both in the inside, eke and on the outward:
One p——y spark, one sound as any roach,
One poet and two fiddlers in a coach:
The playhouse drab, that beats the beggar's bush,
* * * * *
By everybody kissed, good truth,—but such is
Now her good fate, to ride with mistress Duchess.
Was e'er immortal poet thus buffooned!
In a long line of coaches thus lampooned!"
[54] [Transcriber's note: "Page 73" in original. See Footnote 14, Section II.]