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And gives us hope, that having seen the days
When nothing flourish'd but fanatic bays,
All will at length in this opinion rest,
"A sober prince's government is best."
This is not all; your art the way has found
To make the improvement of the richest ground,
That soil which those immortal laurels bore,
That once the sacred Maro's temples wore.
Elisa's griefs are so express'd by you,
They are too eloquent to have been true.
Had she so spoke, Æneas had obey'd
What Dido, rather than what Jove had said.
If funeral rites can give a ghost repose,
Your muse so justly has discharged those,
Elisa's shade may now its wand'ring cease,
And claim a title to the fields of peace.
But if Eneas be obliged, no less
Your kindness great Achilles doth confess;
Who, dress'd by Statius in too bold a look,
Did ill become those virgin robes he took.
To understand how much we owe to you,
We must your numbers, with your author's
view :

Then we shall see his work was lamely rough,
Each figure stiff, as if design'd in buff:
His colours laid so thick on every place,
As only show'd the paint, but hid the face.
But as in perspective we beauties see,
Which in the glass, not in the picture, be;
So here our sight obligingly mistakes

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That wealth, which his your bounty only makes. So
Thus vulgar dishes are, by cooks disguised,
More for their dressing, than their substance
prized.

Your curious notes so search into that age,
When all was fable but the sacred page,

That, since in that dark night we needs must

TO MY HONOURED FRIEND,

DR. CHARLETON,

ON HIS LEARNED AND USEFUL WORKS; BUT MORE PARTICULARLY HIS TREATISE OF STONEHENGE, BY HIM RESTORED TO THE TRUE FOUNDER.

THE longest tyranny that ever sway'd, Was that wherein our ancestors betray'd

The book that occasioned this epistle made its appearance in quarto in 1663. It is dedicated to King Charles II. and entitled, "Chorea Gigantum; or, The most famous Antiquity of Great Britain, Stone-Henge, standing on Salisbury-plain, restored to the Danes, by Dr. Walter Charleton, M.D., and Physician in Ordinary to his Majesty." It was written in answer to a treatise of Inigo Jones's, which attributed this stupendous pile to the Romans, supposing it to be a temple, by them dedicated to the god Cœlum, or Coelus; and here that great architect let his imagination outrun his judgment, nay, his sense; for he described it not as it is, but as it ought to be, in order to make it consistent with what he delivered. Dr. Charleton, who will have this to be a Danish monument, was countenanced in his opinion by Olaus Wormius, who wrote him several letters upon the subject; yet, that he was mistaken, appears by the mention made of Stonehenge in Nennius's Hist. Britonum, a writer who lived two hundred years before the Danes came into England. Though his book was approved of by many men of great erudition, and is not only very learned, but abounds with curious observations, it was but indifferently received, and raised many clamours against the author.

Envy, however, could not prevent Dr. Charleton's merits from being seen, nor divide him from the intimacy of Mr. Hobbes, the philosopher; Sir George Ent, a celebrated physician; the noble family of the Boyles; and Dr. William Harvey, whose claim to the discovery of the circulation of the blood, he forcibly defended against the claim thereto set on foot by Father Paul. Thus he

From dark oblivion Harvey's name shall save. As that eminent physician was now dead, the doctor's behaviour upon this point was as generous an instance of gratitude and respect to his friend's memory, as it was a proof of his capacity and extensive learning. He was president of the college of physicians, from 1689 to 1691, when his affairs being not in the most flourishing state, he retired to the isle of Jersey, and died in 1707, aged eightyeight years. DERRICK.

Ver. 1. The longest tyranny] The rude magnitude of Stonehenge has rendered it the admiration of all ages; and as the enormous stones which compose it appear too big for land-carriage, and as Salisbury-plain, for many miles round, scarce affords any stones at all, it has been the opinion of some antiquaries, that these stones are artificial, and were made on the spot; but most authors are now agreed, that these stones are all natural, and that they were brought from a collection of stones called the Grey Wethers, growing out of the ground, about fifteen miles from Stonehenge.

The use and origin of this work have been the subjects of various conjectures and debates; and much it is to be lamented, that a tablet of tin, with an inscription, which was found here in the reign of Henry the Eighth, and might probably have set these points in a clear light, should not be preserved; for as the characters were not understood by such as were consulted upon the occasion, the plate was destroyed, or at least thrown by and lost. The common tradition is, that Stonehenge was built by Ambrosius Aurelianus. Some will have it to be a funeral monument raised to the memory of some brave commander; and others maintain that it was erected to the honour of Hengist, the Saxon general; but this structure is probably more ancient.

Sammes, in the Antiquities of Britain, conjectures it to have been a work of the Phoenicians; and the famous Inigo Jones, in a treatise called "Stonehenge restored," attempts to prove, that it was a temple of the Tuscan order, built by the Romans, and dedicated to the god Coelum, or Terminus, in which he is confirmed by its having been open at top. Dr. Charleton, physician in ordinary to King Charles the Second, wrote a treatise called "Stonehenge restored to the Danes," attempting to prove that this was a Danish monument, erected either for a burial-place

15

Fresh as their groves, and happy as their clime.
Had we still paid that homage to a name,
Which only God and nature justly claim;
The western seas had been our utmost bound,
Where poets still might dream the sun was
drown'd:

And all the stars that shine in southern skies,
Had been admired by none but savage eyes.

Among the asserters of free reason's claim,
Our nation's not the least in worth or fame.
The world to Bacon does not only owe
Its present knowledge, but its future too.
Gilbert shall live, till loadstones

draw,

cease

Or British fleets the boundless ocean awe;
And noble Boyle, not less in nature seen,
Than his great brother read in states and men.

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to

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as a trophy for some victory, or for the election and coronation of their kings. And soon after the publication of Dr. Charleton's treatise, Mr. Webb, son-in-law of Inigo Jones, published a vindication of the opinions of his fatherin-law upon this subject. But antiquaries have since agreed, that it was an ancient temple of the Druids, built, as Dr. Stukely thinks, before the Belgæ came to Britain, and not long after Cambyses invaded Egypt, where he committed such horrid outrages among the priests and inhabitants in general, that they dispersed themselves to all quarters of the world, and some, no doubt, came into Britain. At this time, the Doctor conjectures the Egyptians introduced their arts, learning, and religion, among the Druids, and probably had a hand in this very work, being the only one of the Druids where the stones are chiselled: all their other works consisting of rude stones, not touched by any tool. Dr. J. WARTON.

Ver. 25. Gilbert shall live,] Dr. William Gilbert was physician both to Queen Elizabeth and King James. In the year 1600, he published a very curious dissertation on the magnet. Antiquarians are much divided in opinion concerning the era of the first discovery of the loadstone. The Chinese boast of having discovered it many centuries ago, but did not apply it to any useful purposes. It is remarkable that Dante mentions it in the Inferno. But the Abbé Tiraboschi, in his excellent History of Italian Literature, vol. viii. p. 180, observes, that the most ancient work, after the poem of Guyot de Provins, in which any mention is made of the loadstone in Europe, is in the Eastern History of the Cardinal Jaques de Vitry, who died in 1224. It may be found in the 89th chapter of the Collection of Bongars. "Adamas in Indiâ reperitur-ferrum occultâ quâdam naturâ ad se trahit. Acus ferrea postquam adamantem contigerit, ad stellam septentrionalem semper convertitur, unde valde necessarius est navigantibus in mari." We may observe, that this author attributes to the diamond the virtues of the loadstone. Dr. J. WARTON.

Ver. 27. And noble Boyle,] Every lover of science, religion and virtue, will perpetually venerate the name of the Hon. Robert Boyle, seventh son of Richard, Earl of Cork and Burlington, born in 1677, not only as being the founder of the Royal Society, for which he is here celebrated, but also for being the founder of a lecture, which has produced a series of discourses in defence of natural and revealed religion, which, for learning and argument, cannot be paralleled in any age or country. His brother, mentioned in the next line, Earl of Orrery, was a soldier and statesman, and wrote eight tragedies in rhyme, now totally forgotten. Dr. J. WARTON.

The circling streams, once thought but pools, of blood

30

(Whether life's fuel, or the body's food)
From dark oblivion Harvey's name shall save;
While Ent keeps all the honour that he gave.
Nor are you, learned friend, the least renown'd;
Whose fame, not circumscribed with English
ground,

Flies like the nimble journeys of the light;
And is, like that, unspent too in its flight.
Whatever truths have been, by art or chance,
Redeem'd from error, or from ignorance,
Thin in their authors, like rich veins of ore,
Your works unite, and still discover more.
Such is the healing virtue of your pen,
To perfect cures on books, as well as men.
Nor is this work the least: you well may give
To men new vigour, who make stones to live.
Through you, the Danes, their short dominion
lost,

45

A longer conquest than the Saxons boast. Stonehenge, once thought a temple, you have found

A throne, where kings, our earthly gods, were crown'd;

Where by their wond'ring subjects they were

Ver. 30. Whether life's fuel,] The merit of the very important discovery of the circulation of the blood, has been denied to our illustrious countryman, Dr. Harvey. It has been by some ascribed to the famous Father Paul. Dr. Wotton gives it to Servetus, who was so inhumanly burnt by Calvin. Sir George Ent, a celebrated physician, is the person mentioned, verse 32. Dr. J. WARTON.

Ver. 53. These ruins shelter'd once, &c.] In the dedication, made by Dr. Charleton, of his book, concerning Stonehenge, to king Charles II., there is the following memorable passage, which gave occasion to the six concluding lines of this poem. "I have had the honour to hear from that oracle of truth and wisdom, your majesty's own month: you were pleased to visit that monument, and, for many hours together, entertain yourself with the delightful view thereof, when, after the defeat of your loyal army at Wor cester, Almighty God, in infinite mercy to your three kingdoms, miraculously delivered you out of the bloody jaws of those ministers of sin and cruelty." DERRICK.

Ver. 55. Watch'd by] In surveying this stupendons work of the most remote antiquity, the mind is seized with that religious awe and superstition, most adapted to awaken and excite poetical enthusiasm:

His refuge then was for a temple shown: But, he restored, 'tis now become a throne.

ΤΟ

THE LADY CASTLEMAIN,*

UPON HER ENCOURAGING HIS FIRST PLAY.

As seamen, shipwreck'd on some happy shore, Discover wealth in lands unknown before; And, what their art had labour'd long in vain, By their misfortunes happily obtain:

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15

So my much-envied muse, by storms long toss'd, 5
Is thrown upon your hospitable coast,
And finds more favour by her ill success,
Than she could hope for by her happiness.
Once Cato's virtue did the gods oppose;
While they the victor, he the vanquish'd chose :
But you have done what Cato could not do,
To choose the vanquish'd, and restore him too.
Let others still triumph, and gain their cause
By their deserts, or by the world's applause ;
Let merit crowns, and justice laurels give,
But let me happy by your pity live.
True poets empty fame and praise despise,
Fame is the trumpet, but your smile the prize.
You sit above, and see vain men below
Contend for what you only can bestow :
But those great actions others do by chance,
Are, like your beauty, your inheritance :
So great a soul, such sweetness join'd in one,
Could only spring from noble Grandison.
You, like the stars, not by reflection bright,
Are born to your own heaven, and your own light;
Like them are good, but from a nobler cause,
From your own knowledge, not from nature's laws.

Or Danish chiefs, enrich'd with savage spoil,
To victory's idol vast, an unhewn shrine,
Rear'd the rude heap; or, in thy hallow'd round,
Repose the kings of Brutus' genuine line;
Or here those kings in solemn state were crown'd;
Studious to trace thy wond'rous origine,
We muse on many an ancient tale renown'd.

Dr. J. WARTON.

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* Mr. Dryden's first play, called the Wild Gallant, was exhibited with but indifferent success. The lady, whose patronage he acknowledges in this epistle, was Barbara, daughter of William Villiers Lord Grandison, who was killed in the king's service at the battle of Edge-hill, in 1642, and buried in Christ Church, in Oxford. This lady was one of Charles the Second's favourite mistresses for many years, and she bore him several children:-1. Charles Fitzroy, Duke of Southampton; 2. Henry Fitzroy, Earl of Euston and Duke of Grafton; 3. George Fitzroy, Earl of Northumberland; 4. Charlotta, married to Sir Edward Henry Lee, of Ditchley, in Oxfordshire, afterwards Earl of Lichfield, and brother to Eleonora, Countess of Abingdon, on whom Dryden has written a beautiful elegy; 5. A daughter, whom the king denied to be his.

This lady was, before she was known to his majesty, married to Roger Palmer, Esq., who was created Earl of Castlemain, by whom she had a daughter, whom the king adopted, and who married with Thomas Lord Dacres, Earl

of Sussex.

The Countess of Castlemain was afterwards created Duchess of Cleveland. DERRICK.

Ver. 9. Once Cato's virtue did the gods oppose;

While they the victor, he the vanquish'd chose:] "Victrix causa deis placuit sed victa Catone." JOHN WARTON.

30

Your power you never use, but for defence,
To guard your own, or others' innocence:
Your foes are such, as they, not you, have made,
And virtue may repel, though not invade.
Such courage did the ancient heroes show,
Who, when they might prevent, would wait the
blow:

With such assurance as they meant to say,
We will o'ercome, but scorn the safest way.
What further fear of danger can there be?
Beauty, which captives all things, sets me free.
Posterity will judge by my success,

I had the Grecian poet's happiness,
Who, waiving plots, found out a better way;
Some God descended, and preserved the play.
When first the triumphs of your sex were sung
By those old poets, beauty was but young,
And few admired the native red and white,
Till poets dress'd them up to charm the sight;
So beauty took on trust, and did engage
For sums of praises till she came to age.
But this long-growing debt to poetry
You justly, madam, have discharged to me,
When your applause and favour did infuse
New life to my condemn'd and dying muse.

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50

Ver. 1. The blast of common] Every reader of taste must agree with Addison, from whose opinions it is always hazardous to dissent, that none of our poets had a genius more strongly turned for tragedy than Lee. Notwithstanding his many rants and extravagancies, for which Dryden skilfully and elegantly apologizes in ten admirable lines of this epistle, from verse 45, yet are there many beautiful touches of nature and passion in his Alexander, his Lucius J. Brutus, and Theodosius. So true was what he himself once replied to a puny objector: "It is not an easy thing to write like a madman, but it is very easy to write like a fool." When Lord Rochester objected,

"That Lee makes temperate Scipio fret and rave,
And Annibal a whining amorous slave:"

it ought to be remembered, that this is a fault into which the most applauded tragedians have frequently fallen, and none more so than Corneille and Racine, though the latter was so correct a scholar. Lee lost his life in a lamentable manner returning home at midnight, in one of his fits of intoxication, he stumbled and fell down in the street, and perished in a deep snow, 1692. DR. J. WARTON.

20

Such merit I must envy or commend.
So many candidates there stand for wit,
A place at court is scarce so hard to get:
In vain they crowd each other at the door;
For e'en reversions are all begg'd before:
Desert, how known soe'er, is long delay'd;
And then too fools and knaves are better paid.
Yet, as some actions bear so great a name,
That courts themselves are just, for fear of shame;
So has the mighty merit of your play
Extorted praise, and forced itself away.
"Tis here as 'tis at sea; who farthest goes,

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30

Or dares the most, makes all the rest his foes.
Yet when some virtue much outgrows the rest,
It shoots too fast, and high, to be express'd;
As his heroic worth struck envy dumb,
Who took the Dutchman, and who cut the boom.
Such praise is your's, while you the passions move,
That 'tis no longer feign'd, 'tis real love,

In manly sweetness all the rest surpass'd.
The wit of Greece, the gravity of Rome,
Appear exalted in the British loom :
The Muse's empire is restored again,

In Charles his reign, and by Roscommon's pen.
Yet modestly he does his work survey,
And calls a finish'd Poem an Essay;

35

For all the needful rules are scatter'd here;
Truth smoothly told, and pleasantly severe;
So well is art disguised, for nature to appear.
Nor need those rules to give translation light:
His own example is a flame so bright,
That he who but arrives to copy well,
Unguided will advance, unknowing will excel.
Scarce his own Horace could such rules ordain.
Or his own Virgil sing a nobler strain.
How much in him may rising Ireland boast,
How much in gaining him has Britain lost!
Their island in revenge has ours reclaim'd;
The more instructed we, the more we still are
shamed.

'Tis well for us his generous blood did flow,
Derived from British channels long ago,

45

TODD.

"Well might'st thou scorn thy readers to allure With tinkling rhime, of thy own sense secure." Ver. 19. Dante's polish'd page] There is a very ancient Italian poem, entitled, Aspromonte, containing an account of the war of king Guarnieri and Agolante against Rome and Charlemagne; which, from the circumstance of the style being a mixture of the Tuscan with other Italian dialects, appears to be prior to Dante. There was an edition of it at Venice, 1615. It is become extremely rare, and is a great curiosity. It is mentioned by Quadrio in his History of Italian Poetry. Dr. J. WAETON,

Few

Ver. 21. Then Petrarch follow'd,] It was on the sixth of April, 1327, that Petrarch fell in love with Laura, in the twenty-third year of his age. Paul Jovius reports, that it was a common saying in Italy, that Petrarch did not sueceed in writing prose, nor Boccacio in writing verse. books are so entertaining as the Abbé Sade's circumstantial Life of Petrarch, which contains also a curious picture of the manners and opinions of that age. It is pleasant to observe, that Petrarch's Laura was allegorized to mean the Christian Religion by one commentator; the Soul by another; and the Virgin Mary by a third. Dr. J. WARTON,

Ibid. Then Petrarch follow'd] No reasoning from the Italian language to the English about rhyme and blank verse. One language (says Johnson) cannot communicate its rules to another. JOHN WARTON.

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That here his conqu'ring ancestors were nursed;
And Ireland but translated England first:
By this reprisal we regain our right,
Fise must the two contending nations fight;
A nobler quarrel for his native earth,
Than what divided Greece for Homer's birth.
To what perfection will our tongue arrive,
How will invention and translation thrive,
When authors nobly born will bear their part,
And not disdain the inglorious praise of art!
Great generals thus, descending from command,
With their own toil provoke the soldier's hand.
How will sweet Ovid's ghost be pleased to hear
His fame augmented by an English peer;
How he embellishes his Helen's loves,
Outdoes his softness, and his sense improves ?
When these translate, and teach translators too,
Nor firstling kid, nor any vulgar vow,
Should at Apollo's grateful altar stand:
Roscommon writes: to that auspicious hand,
Muse, feed the bull that spurns the yellow sand.
Roscommon, whom both court and camps com-
mend,

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65

The wond'ring Nereids, though they raised no storm,

15

Foreslow'd her passage, to behold her form:
Some cried, A Venus; some, A Thetis pass'd;
But this was not so fair, nor that so chaste.
Far from her sight flew Faction, Strife, and
Pride;

And Envy did but look on her, and died.
Whate'er we suffer'd from our sullen fate,
Her sight is purchased at an easy rate.
Three gloomy years against this day were set;
But this one mighty sum has clear'd the debt:
Like Joseph's dream, but with a better doom,
The famine past, the plenty still to come.
For her the weeping heavens become serene;
For her the ground is clad in cheerful green :
For her the nightingales are taught to sing,
And Nature has for her delay'd the spring.
The Muse resumes her long-forgotten lays,
And Love restored his ancient realm surveys,
Recals our beauties, and revives our plays;
His waste dominions peoples once again,
And from her presence dates his second reign.
But awful charms on her fair forehead sit,
Dispensing what she never will admit:
Pleasing, yet cold, like Cynthia's silver beam,
The people's wonder, and the poet's theme.
Distemper'd Zeal, Sedition, canker'd Hate,

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ΤΟ

THE DUCHESS OF YORK,*

ON HER RETURN FROM SCOTLAND IN THE YEAR 1682.

A LETTER TO

SIR GEORGE ETHEREGE.

WHEN factious rage to cruel exile drove
The queen of beauty, and the court of love,
The Muses droop'd, with their forsaken arts,
And the sad Cupids broke their useless darts:
Our fruitful plains to wilds and deserts turn'd, 5
Like Eden's face, when banish'd man it mourn'd.
Love was no more, when loyalty was gone,
The great supporter of his awful throne.
Love could no longer after beauty stay,
But wander'd northward to the verge of day,
As if the sun and he had lost their way.
But now the illustrious nymph, return'd again,
Brings every grace triumphant in her train.

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*On the twenty-first of November 1673, the duke of York was married to the princess Mary d'Este, then about fifteen years of age, and extremely handsome. The ceremony was performed at Dover by the Bishop of Oxford. It was against the rules of policy for him at that time to wed a Roman Catholic; and the Parliament addressed against it. DERRICK.

Ver. 1. To you who live] Sir George Etherege gained great reputation by his three comedies, The Comical Re venge, 1664, She Would if She Could, 1668, The Man of Mode, 1676. The last has been deemed one of our most elegant comedies, and contains a most just and lively picture of the manners of persons in high life in the age of Charles II. Having dedicated this comedy to the duchess of York, she procured his being sent ambassador to Ratisbon, where he resided when Dryden addressed this epistle to him, and where, in a fit of intoxication, to which he was too much habituated, he tumbled down stairs and broke his neck. He had a daughter by Mrs. Barry, to whom he left six thousand pounds. Dr. J. WARTON.