For the cold dart you shot at me before.
For this last goodness, O my Athenais!
(For now, methinks, I ought to call you mine,)
I empty all my soul in thanks before you :
Yet oh! one fear remains, like death it chills me;
Why my relenting love did talk of parting!
Athen. Look there, and cease your wonder; I
have sworn

To obey my father, and he calls me hence.

Enter LEONTINE.

Vara. Ha, Leontine! by which of all my actions Have I so deeply injured thee, to merit The smartest wound revenge could form to end me? Leon. Answer me now, oh prince! for virtue

prompts me,

And honesty will dally now no longer : What can the end of all this passion be? Glory requires this strict account, and asks What you intend at last to Athenais.

Vara. How, Leontine ?

[loved her; Leon. You saw her, sir, at Athens; said you I charged her humbly to receive the honour, [me? And hear your passion: Has she not, sir, obey'd Vura. She has, I thank the gods! but whither would'st thou ?

Leon. Having resolved to visit Theodosius, You swore you would not go without my daughter, Whereon I gave command that she should follow. Vara. Yes, Leontine, my old remembrancer, Most learn'd of all philosophers, you did.

Leon. Thus long she has attended, you have seen her,

Sounded her virtues and her imperfections; Therefore, dread sir, forgive this bolder charge, Which honour sounds, and now let me demand

To satisfy the height of thy ambition.
Besides, old man, my love is too well grown,
To want a tutor for his good behaviour;
What he will do, he will do of himself,
And not be taught by you.-

Leon. I know he will not:

Fond tears, away! I know, I know he will not; But he would buy with his old man's preferment My daughter

*

*

*

*

Vara. Away, I say, my soul disdains the motion! Leon. The motion of a marriage; yes, I see it; Your angry looks and haughty words betray it: I found it at the first. I thank you, sir, You have at least rewarded your old tutor For all his cares, his watchings, services; Yet, let me tell you, sir, this humble maid, This daughter of a poor philosopher, Shall, if she please, be seated on a throne As high as that of the immortal Cyrus.

Vara. I think that age and deep philosophy Have crack'd thy brain: Farewell, old Leontine, Retire to rest; and when this brawling humour Is rock'd asleep, I'll meet my Athenais,

And clear the accounts of love, which thou hast blotted. [Erit.

Leon. Old Leontine ! perhaps I am mad indeed. But hold, my heart, and let that solid virtue, Which I so long adored, still keep the reins. O Athenais! But I will not chide thee: Fate is in all our actions, and, methinks, At least a father judges so, it has Rebuked thee smartly for thy easiness: There is a kind of mournful eloquence [sorrow. In thy dumb grief, which shames all clamorous Athen. Alas! my breast is full of death; methinks I fear even you

Leon. Why shouldst thou fear thy father? Athen. Because you have the figure of a man! Is there, O speak, a possibility

To be forgiven?

Leon. Thy father does forgive thee,
And honour will; but on this hard condition,
Never to see him more-

Athen. See him! Oh heavens!

Leon. Unless it be, my daughter, to upbraid him:

Not though he should repent and straight return,
Nay, proffer thee his crown-No more of that.
Honour too cries revenge, revenge thy wrongs;
Revenge thyself, revenge thy injured father;
For 'tis revenge so wise, so glorious too,
As all the world shall praise.

Athen. O give me leave,

For yet I am all tenderness: the woman,
The weak, the mild, the fond, the coward woman,
Dares not look forth; but runs about my breast,
And visits all the warmer mansions there,
Where she so oft has harbour'd false Varanes!
Cruel Varanes! false, forsworn Varanes!

Leon. Is this forgetting him? Is this the course Which honour bids thee take?

Athen. Ah, sir, allow

A little time for love to make his way;
Hardly he won the place, and many sighs,
And many tears, and thousand oaths it cost him;

And, oh! I find he will not be dislodged
Without a groan at parting hence for ever.
No, no! he vows he will not yet be razed
Without whole floods of grief at his farewell,
Which thus I sacrifice! and oh, I swear,
Had he proved true, I would as easily

Have emptied all my blood, and died to serve him,

As now I shed these drops, or vent these sighs, To show how well, how perfectly I loved him. Leon. No woman sure, but thou, so low in fortune,

Therefore the nobler is thy fair example,

When Zerah, Nahor, Haran, Abram, Lot,
The youthful world's gray fathers, in one knot
For thy new light, and trembled at each shower!
Did with intentive looks watch every hour
When thou dost shine, darkness looks white and
fair;

Forms turn to music, clouds to smiles and air;
Rain gently spends his honey-drops, and pours
Balm on the cleft earth, milk on grass and flowers.
Bright pledge of peace and sunshine, the sure tie
Of thy Lord's hand, the object* of his eye!
When I behold thee, though my light be dim,
Distant and low, I can in thine see him,
Who looks upon thee from his glorious throne,
And minds the covenant betwixt all and One.

THE WREATH. (TO THE REDEEMER.)

FROM THE SAME.

SINCE I in storms most used to be,
And seldom yielded flowers,
How shall I get a wreath for thee
From those rude barren hours?
The softer dressings of the spring,
Or summer's later store,

I will not for thy temples bring,
Which thorns, not roses, wore:

But a twined wreath of grief and praise
Praise soil'd with tears, and tears again
Shining with joy, like dewy days,

This day I bring for all thy pain,
Thy causeless pain; and as sad death,
Which sadness breeds in the most vain,
O not in vain! now beg thy breath,
Thy quick'ning breath, which gladly bears

Through saddest clouds to that glad place Where cloudless quires sing without tears, Sing thy just praise, and see thy face.

CHARACTER OF SHAFTESBURY.
FROM "ABSALOM AND ACHITOPHEL."

Or these the false Achitophel was first,
A name to all succeeding ages curst:
For close designs, and crooked counsels fit;
Sagacious, bold, and turbulent of wit;
Restless, unfix'd, in principles and place;
In power unpleased, impatient of disgrace:
A fiery soul, which working out its way,
Fretted the pigmy body to decay,
And o'er inform'd the tenement of clay.
A daring pilot in extremity;

Pleased with the danger when the waves went [high,

He sought the storms; but for a calm unfit, Would steer too nigh the sands to boast his wit. Great wits are sure to madness near allied, And thin partitions do their bounds divide; Else why should he, with wealth and honour Refuse his age the needful hours of rest? [blest, Punish a body which he could not please; Bankrupt of life, yet prodigal of ease? And all to leave what with his toil he won, To that unfeather'd two-legg'd thing, a son; Got while his soul did huddled notions try, And born a shapeless lump, like anarchy.

Gen. ch. ix. ver. 16.

18

In friendship false, implacable in hate;
Resolved to ruin, or to rule the state.
To compass this the triple bond he broke,
The pillars of the public safety shook,
And fitted Israel for a foreign yoke;
Then sezied with fear, yet still affecting fame,
Usurp'd a patriot's all-atoning name.
So easy still it proves in factious times,
With public zeal to cancel private crimes.
How safe is treason, and how sacred ill,

Where none can sin against the people's will!
Where crowds can wink, and no offence be known,
Since in another's guilt they find their own!
Yet fame deserved no enemy can grudge;
The statesman we abhor, but praise the judge.
In Israel's courts ne'er sat an Abethdin

With more discerning eyes, or hands more clean,
Unbribed, unsought, the wretched to redress;
Swift of despatch, and easy of access.
Oh! had he been content to serve the crown,
With virtues only proper to the gown;
Or had the rankness of the soil been freed
From cockle, that oppress'd the noble seed;
David for him his tuneful harp had strung,
And heaven had wanted one immortal song.
But wild ambition loves to slide, not stand,
And fortune's ice prefers to virtue's land.*
Achitophel, grown weary to possess
A lawful fame, and lazy happiness,
Disdain'd the golden fruit to gather free,
And lent the crowd his arm to shake the tree.

CHARACTER OF GEORGE VILLIERS, THE SECOND DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM.

FROM THE SAME.

SOME of their chiefs were princes of the land;
In the first rank of these did Zimri stand:
A man so various, that he seem'd to be
Not one, but all mankind's epitome:
Stiff in opinions, always in the wrong;
Was every thing by starts, and nothing long;
But, in the course of one revolving moon,
Was chemist, fiddler, statesman, and buffoon:
Then all for women, painting, rhyming, drinking,
Besides ten thousand freaks that died in thinking.
Blest madman, who could every hour employ
With something new to wish, or to enjoy!
Raising and praising were his usual themes,
And both to show his judgment, in extremes;
So over violent, or over civil,

That every man with him was God or Devil.
In squandering wealth was his peculiar art;
Nothing went unrewarded but desert.

[* This last couplet is borrowed from some lines under a portrait of the Sultan Mustapha I., before Knolles' History of the Turks:

Greatnesse on goodnesse loves to slide, not stand,
And fortune's ice prefers to virtue's land.]

[† The character of Zimri in my Absalom is in my opinion worth the whole poem: it is not bloody, but it is ridiculous enough: and he for whom it was intended was too witty to resent it as an injury. If I had railed, I might have suffered for it justly: but I managed my own

Beggar'd by fools, whom still he found too late;
He had his jest, and they had his estate.
He laugh'd himself from court, then sought relief
By forming parties, but could ne'er be chief;
For spite of him the weight of business fell
On Absalom and wise Achitophel :
Thus, wicked but in will, of means bereft,
He left not faction, but of that was left.

CHARACTER OF DOEG, OR ELKANAH SETTLE.

FROM THE SAME.

DOEG, though without knowing how or why,
Made still a blundering kind of melody; [thin,
Spurr'd boldly on, and dash'd through thick and
Through sense and nonsense, never out nor in;
Free from all meaning, whether good or bad,
And, in one word, heroically mad:

He was too warm on picking-work to dwell,
But fagoted his notions as they fell,
And if they rhymed and rattled, all was well.
Spiteful he is not, though he wrote a satire :
For still there goes some thinking to ill nature:
He needs no more than birds and beasts to think,
All his occasions are to eat and drink.
If he call rogue and rascal from a garret,
He means you no more mischief than a parrot:
The words for friend and foe alike were made,
To fetter them in verse is all his trade.
For almonds he'll cry whore to his own mother,
And call young Absalom king David's brother.
Let him be gallows-free by my consent,
And nothing suffer, since he nothing meant;
Hanging supposes human soul and reason,
This animal's below committing treason:
Shall he be hang`d who never could rebel?
That's a preferment for Achitophel.

CHARACTER OF OG, OR SHADWELLI

FROM THE SAME.

OG from a treason-tavern rolling home,
Round as a globe, and liquor'd every chink,
Goodly and great he sails behind his link;
With all this bulk there's nothing lost in Og,
For every inch that is not fool is rogue:
A monstrous mass of foul corrupted matter,
As all the devils had spew'd to make the batter.
When wine has given him courage to blaspheme,
He curses God-but God before cursed him;
And, if man could have reason, none has more,
That made his paunch so rich, and him so poor.
With wealth he was not trusted, for Heaven knew
What 'twas of old to pamper up a Jew;

work more happily, perhaps more dexterously. I avoided the mention of great crimes, and applied myself to the representing of blind-sides and little extravagancies: to which the wittier a man is, he is generally the more obnoxious. It succeeded as I wished; the jest went round, and he was laughed at in his turn, who began the frolic.DRYDEN.]

[Shadwell was very fat-"more fat than bard beseems;" and hence the ludicrous propriety of the name. Og is the Scripture King that ruled over the fat bulls of Basan.]

To what would he on quail and pheasant swell,
That e'en on tripe and carrion could rebel?
But though Heaven made him poor, with reve-
rence speaking,

He never was a poet of God's making;
The midwife laid her hand on his thick skull,
With this prophetic blessing-Be thou dull:
Drink, swear, and roar, forbear no lewd delight
Fit for thy bulk, do any thing but write:
Thou art of lasting make, like thoughtless men,
A strong nativity-but for the pen!
Eat opium, mingle arsenic in thy drink,
Still thou mayst live, avoiding pen and ink.
I see, I see, 'tis counsel given in vain,
For treason botch'd in rhyme will be thy bane;
Rhyme is the rock on which thou art to wreck,
"Tis fatal to thy fame and to thy neck:
Why should thy metre good king David blast?
A psalm of his will surely be thy last.

ODE TO THE MEMORY OF MRS. ANNE
KILLIGREW.*

THOU youngest virgin-daughter of the skies,
Made in the last promotion of the blest;
Whose palms, new pluck'd from paradise,
In spreading branches more sublimely rise,
Rich with immortal green, above the rest:
Whether, adopted to some neighbouring star
Thou roll'st above us, in thy wand'ring race,
Or, in procession fix'd and regular,
Mov'st with the heaven's majestic pace;
Or, call'd to more superior bliss,
Thou tread'st, with seraphims, the vast abyss:
Whatever happy region is thy place,
Cease thy celestial song a little space;
Thou wilt have time enough for hymns divine,
Since heaven's eternal year is thine.
Hear then a mortal Muse thy praise rehearse,
In no ignoble verse;

But such as thy own voice did practise here,
When thy first fruits of poesy were given;
To make thyself a welcome inmate there:
While yet a young probationer,
And candidate of heaven.

If by traduction came thy mind,
Our wonder is the less to find

A soul so charming from a stock so good;
Thy father was transfused into thy blood:
So wert thou born into a tuneful strain,
An early, rich, and inexhausted vein.

But if thy pre-existing soul

Was form'd, at first, with myriads more, It did through all the mighty poets roll, Who Greek or Latin laurels wore, [before. And was that Sappho last, which once it was If so, then cease thy flight, O heaven-born mind! Thou hast no dross to purge from thy rich ore:

[* When Dryden wrote, the word Miss was applied to ladies of loose character: at a later time Sir Joshua Reynolds's sister, though unmarried, was Mrs. Reynolds; and Parnell's virgin-bride is called, by Dr. Johnson, Mrs. Anne Minchin.]

?

*

O gracious God! how far have we Profaned thy heavenly gift of poesy Made prostitute and profligate the Muse, Debased to each obscene and impious use, Whose harmony was first ordain'd above For tongues of angels, and for hymns of love? O wretched we! why were we hurried down This lubrique and adulterate age, (Nay, added fat pollutions of our own) T'increase the streaming ordures of the stage?† What can we say t' excuse our second fall? Let this thy vestal, Heaven, atone for all: Her Arethusian stream remains unsoil'd, Unmix'd with foreign filth, and undefiled; Her wit was more than man, her innocence a child.

When in mid-air the golden trump shall sound,
To raise the nations under ground;
When in the valley of Jehoshaphat,
The judging God shall close the book of fate;
And there the last assizes keep,

For those who wake, and those who sleep:
The sacred poets first shall hear the sound,

And foremost from the tomb shall bound, For they are cover'd with the lightest ground; And straight, with in-born vigour, on the wing, Like mounting larks, to the new morning sing. There thou, sweet Saint, before the quire shall go, As harbinger of heaven, the way to show, The way which thou so well hast learnt below.

DESCRIPTION OF LYCURGUS KING OF THRACE,
AND OF EMETRIUS KING OF INDE,
FROM THE FABLE OF "PALAMON AND ARCITE.”

A HUNDRED knights with Palamon there came,
Approved in fight, and men of mighty name;
Their arms were several, as their nations were,
But furnish'd all alike with sword and spear.
Some wore coat armour, imitating scale;
And next their skins were stubborn shirts of mail.
Some wore a breast-plate and a light juppon,
Their horses clothed with rich caparison:
Some for defence would leathern bucklers use,
Of folded hides; and other shields of pruce.
One hung a pole-axe at his saddle-bow,
And one a heavy mace to shun the foe;
One for his legs and knees provided well,

With jambeux arm'd, and double plates of steel:
This on his helmet wore a lady's glove,
And that a sleeve embroider'd by his love.
With Palamon above the rest in place,
Lycurgus came, the surly king of Thrace;
Black was his beard, and manly was his face;

["I know not," says Southey in his Life of Cowper, "that Dryden ever regarded the licentiousness of his Dramatic Works as a sin to be repented of." This beautiful passage, which was written before Collier exposed the obscenities of the stage, has been unnoticed by the poet's biographers; he express is regret too fervently to be insincere.]