On equal terms with ancient wit engage,

Nor mighty Homer fear, nor sacred Virgil's page;
Our English palace opens wide in state,
And without stooping they may pass the gate.

TO MY FRIEND MR. NORTHLEIGH,

AUTHOR OF THE PARALLEL,

75

ON HIS TRIUMPH OF THE BRITISH MONARCHY.*

So Joseph, yet a youth, expounded well
The boding dream, and did the event foretell,
Judged by the past, and drew the Parallel.
Thus early Solomon the truth explored,
The right awarded, and the babe restored. †
Thus Daniel, ere to prophecy he grew,
The perjured Presbyters did first subdue,
And freed Susanna from the canting crew.
Well may our monarchy triumphant stand,
While warlike James protects both sea and land ;
And, under covert of his sevenfold shield,
Thou sendst thy shafts to scour the distant field.
By law thy powerful pen has set us free;
Thou studiest that, and that may study thee.

ΙΟ

5

TO MY INGENIOUS FRIEND, HENRY HIGDEN, ESQ.‡

ON HIS TRANSLATION OF THE TENTH SATIRE OF JUVENAL.

THE Grecian wits, who Satire first began,
Were pleasant Pasquins § on the life of man;
At mighty villains who the State opprest

They durst not rail perhaps; they laughed at least,
And turned them out of office with a jest.

5

John Northleigh, a student of law, who afterwards became a physician, published in 1685 the political work to which this complimentary poem of Dryden was prefixed. It was entitled The Triumph of our Monarchy over the Plots and Principles of our Rebels and Republicans, being Remarks on their most eminent Libels, by John Northleigh, LL. B. author of the Parallel. 8vo. 1685. Northleigh was twenty-eight when he published this work. He had published in 1682"The Parallel, or the new specious Association, an old rebellious Covenant, closing with a disparity between a true Patriot and a factious Associator." Dryden's allusions to his youth may have been excited by his earlier publication.

This illustration is used by Dryden in "Annus Mirabilis," stanza 43.

1 Mr. Higden was a lawyer, a member of the Middle Temple His Translation of the Tenth Satire of Juvenal was published in 1687, having been licensed June 2, 1686; so this poem of Dryden was probably written in 1686. Derrick and Scott, neither of whom had seen Mr. Higden's work, have wrongly conjectured a later date for the poem.

Pasquins; jesters.

Laughed was improperly changed by Derrick into lashed, which appears in all following editions.

No fool could peep abroad, but ready stand
The drolls to clap a bauble in his hand.
Wise legislators never yet could draw

A fop within the reach of common law;
For posture, dress, grimace, and affectation,
Though foes to sense, are harmless to the nation.
Our last redress is dint of verse to try,
And Satire is our Court of Chancery.
This way took Horace to reform an age,
Not bad enough to need an author's rage:
But yours, who lived in more degenerate times,
Was forced to fasten deep, and worry crimes.
Yet you, my friend, have tempered him so well,
You make him smile in spite of all his zeal :
An art peculiar to yourself alone,

To join the virtues of two styles in one.

Oh! were your author's principle received,
Half of the labouring world would be relieved,
For not to wish is not to be deceived:
Revenge would into charity be changed,
Because it costs too dear to be revenged;
It costs our quiet and content of mind,

10.

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And when 'tis compassed leaves a sting behind.
Suppose I had the better end of the staff,

Why should I help the ill-natured world to laugh?

30

'Tis all alike to them who gets the day;

They love the spite and mischief of the fray.

No, I have cured myself of that disease,

Nor will I be provoked but when I please :
But let me half that cure to you restore;
You gave the salve, I laid it to the sore.

Our kind relief against a rainy day,
Beyond a tavern or a tedious play,

35

If all your tribe, too studious of debate,

We take your book, and laugh our spleen away.

Would cease false hopes and titles to create,

40

Led by the rare example you begun,

Clients would fail and lawyers be undone.

A LETTER TO SIR GEORGE ETHEREGE.†

Juvenal."

To you who live in chill degree,

As map informs, of fifty-three,
And do not much for cold atone
By bringing thither fifty-one,

+ Sir George Etherege, a man of wit and pleasure, and a writer of comedies, had obtained by his writings the favour of Mary, the Queen of James II., and was in James's reign appointed successively minister at Hamburg and to the Diet at Ratisbon. The exact date of this poem is not known, but it was written some time during the reign of James II. It appears to have been occasioned by a poetical epistle in the same style from Sir George Etherege to the Earl of Middleton,

Methinks all climes should be alike,
From tropic even to pole artique ;
Since you have such a constitution
As nowhere suffers diminution.
You can be old in grave debate,

And young in love-affairs of state;

And both to wives and husbands show

The vigour of a plenipo.

Like mighty missioner you come

Ad Partes Infidelium;

A work of wondrous merit sure,

So far to go, so much to endure ;
And all to preach to German dame,
Where sound of Cupid never came.
Less had you done, had you been sent
As far as Drake or Pinto went,
For cloves or nutmegs to the line-a,
Or even for oranges to China:
That had indeed been charity,
Where love-sick ladies helpless lie,
Chapped, and for want of liquor dry.
But you have made your zeal appear
Within the circle of the Bear.
What region of the earth's so dull,
That is not of your labours full?*
Triptolemus (so sung the Nine)

Strewed plenty from his cart divine; +

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Secretary of State, which is printed in the "Miscellany Poems" (vol. ii. ed. 1716). It would seem from the beginning of the poem, where latitude 53 is mentioned, that Etherege was at Hamburg when this letter was written to him; but in the body of the poem, Ratisbon, where the Diet assembled, is clearly indicated. The commencement of Etherege's letter to Middleton, to which the beginning of Dryden's letter seems to refer, is also difficult to explain geographically: as the change from London to Ratisbon, two degrees further south, would be rather a gain than a loss. Etherege begins:

"Since love and verse as well as wine

Are brisker where the sun does shine,
'Tis something to lose two degrees
Now age itself begins to freeze,

Yet this I patiently could bear,

If the rough Danube's beauties were

But only two degrees less fair

Than the bright nymphs of gentle Thames."

The latitude of London is 51° 15' N., that of Ratisbon 48° 58', the difference 2° 17'. Dryden has made a mistake in speaking of latitude 53; which would indeed have done for Hamburg, whose latitude is 53. Etherege is said to have been born about 1636; and if his age were now fifty-one, as Dryden says, this poem would have been written in 1687, which is probably the date of its composition. A second poetical epistle from Etherege to Middleton in the same style is also printed in the Miscellany Poems" (vol. ii. of ed. 1716). The diplomatist and his chief, the Secretary of State, seem to have been on very pleasant familiar terms; and it may be concluded that Dryden was a friend of Middleton. Etherege is called 'gentle George" in "Mac Flecknoe," 151, and see the compliment to him in the Poem to Congreve, 29.

It is fabled that Ceres gave Triptolemus her chariot, drawn by two dragons, and that he travelled in it all over the earth, distributing corn to all the inhabitants of the world.

But spite of all these fable-makers,
He never sowed on Almain* acres.
No, that was left by Fate's decree

To be performed and sung by thee.

Thou breakst through forms with as much ease
As the French king through articles.

In grand affairs thy days are spent,
In waging weighty compliment
With such as monarchs represent.
They, whom such vast fatigues attend,
Want some soft minutes to unbend,
To show the world that now and then
Great ministers are mortal men.
Then Rhenish rummers walk the round,
In bumpers every king is crowned;
Besides three holy mitred Hectors,
And the whole college of Electors. +
No health of potentate is sunk
That pays to make his envoy drunk.
These Dutch delights I mentioned last
Suit not, I know, your English taste:
For wine to leave a whore or play
Was ne'er your Excellency's way.
Nor need this title give offence,
For here you were your Excellence;

For gaming, writing, speaking, keeping,
His Excellence for all but sleeping.
Now if you tope in form, and treat,
'Tis the sour sauce to the sweet meat,
The fine you pay for being great.
Nay, here's a harder imposition,
Which is indeed the Court's petition,
That setting worldly pomp aside,
Which poet has at font denied,

You would be pleased in humble way
To write a trifle called a Play.
This truly is a degradation,

But would oblige the crown and nation

Next to your wise negotiation.

70

If you pretend, as well you may,

Your high degree, your friends will say,

The Duke St. Aignon made a play.‡

If Gallic wit convince you scarce,

His Grace of Bucks has made a farce;
And you, whose comic wit is terse all,
Can hardly fall below Rehearsal.

75

*Almain, the old English form of Allemagne. It occurs in Dryden's play of "The Assignation." "The old Almain recreation." (Act 2, sc. 1.)

There were three bishops among the Electors, the Bishops of Treves, Cologne, and Mentz. François de Beauvillier. Duc de St. Aignon, a distinguished French soldier and patron of literature, wrote a tragi-comedy called "Bradamante.'

Then finish what you have began,
But scribble faster if you can :

For yet no George, to our discerning,
Has writ without a ten years' warning.*

30

TO MR. SOUTHERN,

ON HIS COMEDY CALLED THE WIVES' EXCUSE.t

SURE there's a fate in plays, and 'tis in vain
To write while these malignant planets reign.
Some very foolish influence rules the pit,
Not always kind to sense or just to wit;
And whilst it lasts, let buffoonry succeed
To make us laugh, for never was more need.
Farce in itself of a nasty scent,

But the gain smells not of the excrement.
The Spanish nymph, a wit and beauty too,
With all her charms bore but a single show;
But let a monster Muscovite appear,

He draws a crowded audience round the year.‡
May be thou hast not pleased the box and pit,
Yet those who blame thy tale commend thy wit;

So Terence plotted, but so Terence writ.

Like his, thy thoughts are true, thy language clean;
Even lewdness is made moral in thy scene.

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The hearers may for want of Nokes repine, §

But rest secure, the readers will be thine.

Nor was thy laboured drama damned or hissed,
But with a kind civility dismissed ;

20

"The

The Duke of Buckingham was taunted with having been ten years employed on Rehearsal." A similar taunt occurs in a poem on the Duke in the "State Poems," there ascribed, but probably wrongly, to Dryden :

"I come to his farce, which must needs be well done,

For Troy was no longer before it was won,

Since 'tis more than ten years since this farce was begun "

"The Wives' Excuse, or Cuckolds make Themselves," produced in 1692, was Southern's third comedy, and was ill received. Dryden had written the Prologue to Southern's first play, the tragedy of "The Loyal Brother," which had appeared ten years before, when the author was only in his twenty-third year, and which had had immense success. Two comedies by Southern, "The Disappointment, or the Mother in Fashion," and "Sir Anthony Love," had also had great success; and for the first of these Dryden had also furnished the Prologue. In this poem Dryden consoles his friend under his failure, and ascribes the want of success to the bad taste of the audience, and to anything but want of merit in the play. Southern printed the play, prefixing this poem; and he announced that Dryden, in speaking of it, had said that the public had been kind to "Sir Anthony Love," and were only required to be just to this play. He further stated that, on the strength of the merits of this play, Dryden had submitted to him the completion of his own "Cleomenes." Southern was born in 1659; he died in his eighty-seventh year, in 1746. 1 Compare the poem addressed to Mr. Granville, line 13.

Nokes was a favourite actor, skilled in parts of low humour.