tell them they are, and their own interest to believe, and after that, they cannot dip into the Bible, but one text or another will turn up for their purpose: if they are under persecution, as they call it, then that is a mark of their election; if they flourish, then God works miracles for their deliverance, and the saints are to possess the earth.

They may think themselves to be too roughly handled in this paper; but I, who know best how far I could have gone on this subject, must be bold to tell them, they are spared; though, at the same time, I am not ignorant, that they interpret the mildness of a writer to them, as they do the mercy of the government; in the one they think it fear, and conclude it weakness in the other. The best way for them to confute me is, as I before advised the Papists, to disclaim their principles, and renounce their practices. We shall all be glad to think them true Englishmen, when they obey the king; and true Protestants, when they conform to the church-discipline.

It remains that I acquaint the reader, that the verses were written for an ingenious young gentleman, my friend, upon his translation of "The Critical History of the Old Testament," composed by the learned father Simon:* the verses, therefore, are addressed to the translator of that work, and the style of them is, what it ought to be, epistolary. †

* Pere Richard Simon was an excellent Orientalist. He was an oratorian priest, and published, besides the work here mentioned, "A critical History of the New Testament," and a new Version of it, which was censured by Cardinal de Noailles, Archbishop of Paris, and opposed by Bossuet, the learned Bishop of Meaux. Pere Simon was an able biblical critic, an excellent scholar, and one of the most learned divines of his age.

+ Derrick erroneously states this young gentleman to have

7

If any one be so lamentable a critic as to require the smoothness, the numbers, and the turn of heroic poetry in this poem, I must tell him, that if he has not read Horace, I have studied him, and hope the style of his epistles is not ill imitated here. The expressions of a poem, designed purely for instruction, ought to be plain and natural, and yet majestic; for here the poet is presumed to be a kind of lawgiver, and those three qualities, which I have named, are proper to the legislative style. The florid, elevated, and figurative way, is for the passions; for love and hatred, fear and anger, are begotten in the soul, by shewing their objects out of their true proportion, either greater than the life, or less; but instruction is to be given by shewing them what they naturally are. A man is to be cheated into passion, but to be reasoned into truth.

been Hampden, son of the famous parliamentary leader, who was deeply engaged in the Rye-house Plot, and some years afterwards killed himself. Dryden was not likely, in the very hottest of his political controversy, to be on very intimate habits with a leader of the Whigs, much less to inscribe to him a poem, the preface of which, at least, is levelled against the most zealous of that party. Besides, the translation of Pere Simon's Critical History, which was published in 1682, bears to have been made by H. D. which initials can hardly stand for John Hampden. Mr Malone conjectures he may have been of the Digby family, or perhaps Mr Dodswell, who translated one of Plutarch's Lives. But it appears, from a poem addressed to the Translator by Duke, that his name was Henry Dickinson, probably a son of Edmund Dickinson, a physician, and author of the Delphi Phenecizantes, and other learned pieces. Athena Oxon. Vol. II. p. 946. There is another copy of verses, addressed to the Translator of the "Critical History" in Dryden's "Miscellanies." So that Dickinson's work seems to have attracted much notice at the time of its publication.

RECOMMENDATORY VERSES.

ON

MR DRYDEN'S

RELIGIO LAICI

BEGONE, you slaves, you idle vermin, go,
Fly from the scourges, and your master know;
Let free, impartial men from Dryden learn
Mysterious secrets of high concern,

And weighty truths, solid convincing sense,
Explained by unaffected eloquence.

What can you, Reverend Levi, here take ill?
Men still had faults, and men will have them still;
He that hath none, and lives as angels do,

Must be an angel;-but what's that to you?

While mighty Lewis finds the Pope too great,

And dreads the yoke of his imposing seat,
Our sects a more tyrannic power assume,

And would for scorpions change the rods of Rome.
That church detained the legacy divine;
Fanatics cast the pearls of heaven to swine:
What, then, have honest thinking men to do,
But chuse a mean between the usurping two?
Nor can the Egyptian patriarch blame a muse,
Which for his firmness does his heat excuse;
Whatever counsels have approved his creed,
The preface, sure, was his own act and deed.
Our church will have the preface read, you'll say:
'Tis true, but so she will the Apocrypha;
And such as can believe them freely may.
But did that God, so little understood,

Whose darling attribute is being good,
From the dark womb of the rude chaos bring
Such various creatures, and make man their king,

Yet leave his favourite, man, his chiefest care,
More wretched than the vilest insects are?

O! how much happier and more safe are they,
If helpless millions inust be doom'd a prey
To yelling furies, and for ever burn

In that sad place, from whence is no return,
For unbelief in one they never knew,
Or for not doing what they could not do!

The very fiends know for what crime they fell,
And so do all their followers that rebell;

It then a blind, well-meaning Indian stray,
Shall the great gulph be shewed him for the way?
For better ends our kind Redeemer died,
Or the fallen angels' rooms will be but ill supplied.
That Christ, who at the great deciding day,
(For he declares what he resolves to say,)
Will damn the goats for their illi-natured faults,
And save the sheep for actions, not for thoughts,
Hath too much mercy to send them to hell,
For humble charity, and hoping well.

To what stupidity are zealots grown,
Whose inhumanity, profusely shewn

In damning crowds of souls, may damn their own
I'll err, at least, on the securer side,

A convert free from malice and from pride.

ROSCOMMON.

ΤΟ

MR DRYDEN,

ON HIS POEM CALLED

RELIGIO LAICI.

GREAT is the task, and worthy such a muse,
To do faith right, yet reason disabuse.
How cheerfully the soul does take its flight
Ou faith's strong wings, guided by reason's light?
But reason does in vain her beams display,

Shewing to th' place, whence first she came, the way,
If Peter's heirs must still hold fast the key.

The house, which many mansions should contain,
Formed by the great wise Architect in vain,
Of disproportion justly we accuse,
If the strait gate still entrance must refuse.

The only free enriching port God made,
What shameful monopoly did invade ?
One factious company engrossed the trade.
Thou to the distant shore hast safely sailed,
Where the best pilots have so often failed.
Freely we now may buy the pearl of price;
The happy land abounds with fragrant spice,
And nothing is forbidden there but vice.

Thou best Columbus to the unknown world!
Mountains of doubt, that in thy way were hurled,
Thy generous faith has bravely overcome,
And made heaven truly our familiar home.
Let crowds impossibilities receive;

Who cannot think, ought not to disbelieve.

Let them pay tithes, and hood-winked go to heaven:
But sure the quaker could not be forgiven,
Had not the clerk, who hates lay-policy,
Found out, to countervail the injury,
Swearing, a trade of which they are not free.
Too long has captive reason been enslaved,
By visions scared, and airy phantasms braved,
List'ning to each proud enthusiastic fool,
Pretending conscience, but designing rule;
Whilst law, form, interest, ignorance, design,
Did in the holy cheat together join.
Like vain astrologers, gazing on the skies,
We fall, and did not dare to trust our eyes.
'Tis time at last to fix the trembling soul,
And by thy compass to point out the pole;
All men agree in what is to be done,

And each man's heart his table is of stone,
Where he the god-writ character may view;
Were it as needful, faith had been so too.
Oh, that our greatest fault were humble doubt,
And that we were more just, though less devout!
What reverence should we pay thy sacred rhymes,
Who, in these factious too-believing times,
Has taught us to obey, and to distrust;
Yet, to ourselves, our king, and God, prove just.
Thou want'st not praise from an insuring friend;
The poor to thee on double interest lend.
So strong thy reasons, and so clear thy sense,
They bring, like day, their own bright evidence;
Yet, whilst mysterious truths to light you bring,
And heavenly things in heavenly numbers sing,
The Joyful younger choir may clap the wing.