While flattering crouds officiously appear

To give themselves, not you, an happy year,

And by the greatness of their presents prove

How much they hope, but not how well they love,--

The Muses, who your early courtship boast,

Though now your flames are with their beauty lost,

Yet watch their time, that, if you have forgot

They were your mistresses, the world may not.

Decayed by time and wars, they only prove

Their former beauty by their former love;

And now present, as ancient ladies do,

That, courted long, at length are forced to woo:

For still they look on you with such kind eyes,

As those, that see the Church's sovereign rise,

From their own order chose, in whose high state

They think themselves the second choice of fate.

When our great monarch into exile went,

Wit and religion suffered banishment.

Thus once, when Troy was wrapped in fire and smoke,

The helpless gods their burning shrines forsook;

They with the vanquished prince and party go,

And leave their temples empty to the foe.

At length the Muses stand, restored again

To that great charge which nature did ordain;

And their loved druids seem revived by fate,

While you dispense the laws, and guide the state.

The nation's soul, our monarch, does dispense,

Through you, to us his vital influence:

You are the channel, where those spirits flow,

And work them higher, as to us they go.

In open prospect nothing bounds our eye,

Until the earth seems joined unto the sky:

So in this hemisphere, our utmost view

Is only bounded by our king and you;

Our sight is limited where you are joined,

And beyond that no farther heaven can find.

So well your virtues do with his agree,

That, though your orbs of different greatness be,

Yet both are for each other's use disposed,

His to inclose, and yours to be inclosed:

Nor could another in your room have been,

Except an emptiness had come between.

Well may he, then, to you his cares impart,

And share his burden where he shares his heart.

In you his sleep still wakes; his pleasures find

Their share of business in your labouring mind.

So, when the weary sun his place resigns,

He leaves his light, and by reflection shines.

Justice, that sits and frowns where public laws

Exclude soft mercy from a private cause,

In your tribunal most herself does please;

There only smiles because she lives at ease;

And, like young David, finds her strength the more,

When disincumbered from those arms she wore.

Heaven would your royal master should exceed

Most in that virtue, which we most did need;

And his mild father (who too late did find

All mercy vain but what with power was joined)

His fatal goodness left to fitter times,

Not to increase, but to absolve our crimes:

But when the heir of this vast treasure knew

How large a legacy was left to you,

(Too great for any subject to retain)

He wisely tied it to the crown again;

Yet, passing through your hands, it gathers more,

As streams, through mines, bear tincture of their ore.

While emp'ric politicians use deceit,

Hide what they give, and cure but by a cheat;

You boldly shew that skill which they pretend,

And work by means as noble as your end;

Which should you veil, we might unwind the clue,

As men do nature, till we came to you.

And, as the Indies were not found before

Those rich perfumes, which, from the happy shore,

The winds upon their balmy wings conveyed,

Whose guilty sweetness first their world betrayed;

So, by your counsels, we are brought to view

A rich and undiscovered world in you.

By you our monarch does that fame assure,

Which kings must have, or cannot live secure:

For prosperous princes gain their subjects' heart,

Who love that praise in which themselves have part.

By you he fits those subjects to obey,

As heaven's eternal monarch does convey

His power unseen, and man, to his designs,

By his bright ministers, the stars, inclines.

Our setting sun, from his declining seat,

Shot beams of kindness on you, not of heat;

And, when his love was bounded in a few

That were unhappy, that they might be true,

Made you the favourite of his last sad times,

That is a sufferer in his subjects' crimes:

Thus, those first favours you received, were sent,

Like heaven's rewards, in earthly punishment:

Yet fortune, conscious of your destiny,

E'en then took care to lay you softly by,

And wrapped your fate among her precious things,

Kept fresh to be unfolded with your king's.

Shewn all at once, you dazzled so our eyes,

As new-born Pallas did the gods surprise,

When, springing forth from Jove's new-closing wound,

She struck the warlike spear into the ground;

Which sprouting leaves did suddenly inclose,

And peaceful olives shaded as they rose.

How strangely active are the arts of peace,

Whose restless motions less than war's do cease!

Peace is not freed from labour, but from noise;

And war more force, but not more pains employs.

Such is the mighty swiftness of your mind,

That, like the earth, it leaves our sense behind,

While you so smoothly turn and roll our sphere,

That rapid motion does but rest appear.

For, as in nature's swiftness, with the throng

Of flying orbs while ours is borne along,

All seems at rest to the deluded eye,

Moved by the soul of the same harmony;

So, carried on by your unwearied care,

We rest in peace, and yet in motion share.

Let envy, then, those crimes within you see,

From which the happy never must be free;

(Envy, that does with misery reside,

The joy and the revenge of ruined pride.)

Think it not hard, if, at so cheap a rate,

You can secure the constancy of fate,

Whose kindness sent what does their malice seem,

By lesser ills the greater to redeem;

Nor can we this weak shower a tempest call,

But drops of heat that in the sun-shine fall.

You have already wearied Fortune so,

She cannot farther be your friend or foe;

But sits all breathless, and admires to feel

A fate so weighty, that it stops our wheel.

In all things else above our humble fate,

Your equal mind yet swells not into state,

But, like some mountain in those happy isles,

Where in perpetual spring young nature smiles,

Your greatness shews; no horror to affright,

But trees for shade, and flowers to court the sight:

Sometimes the hill submits itself a while

In small descents, which do its height beguile;

And sometimes mounts, but so as billows play,

Whose rise not hinders, but makes short, our way.

Your brow, which does no fear of thunder know,

Sees rolling tempests vainly beat below;

And, like Olympus' top, the impression wears

Of love and friendship writ in former years.

Yet unimpaired with labours, or with time,

Your age but seems to a new youth to climb.

Thus heavenly bodies do our time beget,

And measure change, but share no part of it.

And still it shall without a weight increase,

Like this new-year, whose motions never cease:

For, since the glorious course you have begun

Is led by Charles, as that is by the sun,

It must both weightless and immortal prove,

Because the centre of it is above.

SATIRE ON THE DUTCH.

This Satire was, as the title informs us, written in 1662: probably

towards the latter end of the year, when Charles, having quarrelled

with De Wit, then at the head of the public affairs of Holland, was

endeavouring to patch up an union with France, to which kingdom he

was naturally partial, against the States, whom he hated, both as

a republic, and an association of vulgar merchants. This impolitic

alliance did not then take place, notwithstanding the sale of Dunkirk,

(conquered by the arms of Cromwell,) to France, for L.400,000. On the

contrary, in 1665 France armed in defence of Holland. But this was

contrary to the expectations and wishes of Charles; and accordingly

Dryden, in 1662, alludes to the union of the two crowns against the

States as a probable event.

The verses are adapted to the comprehension of the vulgar, whom they

were intended to inflame. Bold invective, and coarse raillery, supply

the place of the wit and argument, with which Dryden, when the time

fitted, knew so well how to arm his satire.

The verses, such as they are, appeared to the author well qualified

for the purpose intended; for, when, in 1672, his tragedy of "Amboyna"

was brought forward, to exasperate the nation against Holland, the

following verses were almost literally woven into the prologue and

epilogue of that piece. See Vol. V. pp. 10. 87. Nevertheless, as

forming a link in our author's poetical progress, the present Editor

has imitated his predecessors, in reprinting them among his satires and

political pieces.

SATIRE ON THE DUTCH.

WRITTEN IN THE YEAR 1662.

As needy gallants, in the scrivener's hands,

Court the rich knaves that gripe their mortgaged lands;

The first fat buck of all the season's sent,

And keeper takes no fee in compliment;

The dotage of some Englishmen is such,

To fawn on those who ruin them,--the Dutch.

They shall have all, rather than make a war

With those who of the same religion are.

The Straits, the Guinea-trade, the herrings too;

Nay, to keep friendship, they shall pickle you.

Some are resolved not to find out the cheat,

But, cuckold-like, love them that do the feat.

What injuries soe'er upon us fall,

Yet still the same religion answers all:--

Religion wheedled us to civil war,

Drew English blood, and Dutchmen's now would spare.

Be gulled no longer, for you'll find it true,

They have no more religion, faith! than you.

Interest's the god they worship in their state;

And we, I take it, have not much of that.

Well monarchies may own religion's name;

But states are atheists in their very frame.

They share a sin: and such proportions fall,

That, like a stink, 'tis nothing to them all.

Think on their rapine, falsehood, cruelty,

And that, what once they were they still would be.

To one well-born the affront is worse and more,

When he's abused and baffled by a boor.

With an ill grace the Dutch their mischiefs do;

They've both ill nature and ill manners too.

Well may they boast themselves an ancient nation;

For they were bred ere manners were in fashion:

And their new commonwealth hath set them free

Only from honour and civility.

Venetians do not more uncouthly ride,

Than did their lubber state mankind bestride;

Their sway became them with as ill a main,

As their own paunches swell above their chin.

Yet is their empire no true growth, but humour,

And only two kings' touch can cure the tumour.[77]

As Cato fruits of Afric did display,

Let us before our eyes their Indies lay:

All loyal English will like him conclude,--

Let Cæsar live, and Carthage be subdued.[78]

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 77: Alluding to the hoped for union between France and

England, and to the cure, by touching, for the Evil.]

[Footnote 78: Cato is said to have laid before the Senate the fine figs

of Africa, and to have reminded them, that the country which produced

these choice fruits was but three days sail from Rome. He used also

to conclude every speech with the famous expression, _Delenda est

Carthago_.]

TO

HER ROYAL HIGHNESS

THE DUCHESS OF YORK,

ON THE VICTORY GAINED BY THE DUKE OVER THE DUTCH, &c.

The Duchess, here addressed, was Anne Hyde, daughter of the Earl of

Clarendon, and first wife of James, Duke of York, afterwards James

II. She appears to have been a woman of first-rate talents, as well

as exemplary prudence. Of the last qualification she gave a singular

proof, when her marriage with the Duke was declared. She had admitted

James to her bed while abroad, under a solemn promise of marriage. Many

endeavoured to dissuade him from completing this unequal alliance; and

that a motive, at least an apology, might be supplied for a retreat

from his engagements, Lord Falmouth, Killigrew, and other courtiers,

did not hesitate to boast of favours received from the lady. When

the king's regard for his minister, and James's attachment to his

betrothed wife, occasioned the confirmation of the marriage, these

zealous witnesses found themselves in an unpleasing predicament, till

the Duchess took an opportunity of assuring them, that she was far

from harbouring the least resentment at the reports they had raised,

since they believed them calculated to promote the interest of their

master and her husband.[79] It may be presumed, that Dryden had already

attached himself to the fortunes of the Duke of York, since he so early

addressed the princess, whose posthumous avowal of the Catholic faith

he afterwards attempted to vindicate.

The victory of the 23d June, 1665, was gained by the British fleet,

commanded by the Duke of York, over the Dutch, under the famous Opdam.

It was, like all naval actions between the English and the Dutch, a

fierce, obstinate, and bloody conflict. The fleets met near Harwich

on the 2d June; but the Dutch declined action upon that day, from a

superstitious recollection that it was the anniversary of a dreadful

defeat, received from Blake and Monk in 1653, in which they lost their

famous Admiral, Von Tromp. But on the morning of the third, the fleets

joined battle so near the shore, that the thunder of the combat was

heard all along the English coast. York and Opdam singled each other

out, and lay alongside in close action, till the Dutch vessel (a second

rate) was blown up, and all on board perished. The Dutch fleet then

dispersed and fled, losing nineteen ships sunk and taken, while the

English lost only one. During this dreadful battle the Duke of York

displayed the greatest personal courage. He was in the thickest of the

fire, when one cannon-shot killed Lord Falmouth, Lord Muskerry, and Mr

Boyle, by his side, and covered him with the gore of the most faithful

and attached companions of his fortune. Yet this day, the brightest

which ever shone on him, was not without a cloud. When the Dutch fleet

were scattered, and an active pursuit was all that remained to the

victors, Brounker, a gentleman of the Duke's bed-chamber, commanded

Sir John Harman, in the Duke's name, to slacken sail. James was then

asleep, and the flimsy pretext of not disturbing his repose was set

up as a reason for this most untimely interference. The affair was

never well explained. The Duke dismissed Brounker from his service,

and a parliamentary investigation of his conduct took place.[80]

But no adequate punishment was inflicted, and the nation saw, with

displeasure, the fruits of a dear-bought and splendid victory lost by

the unauthorized interference of an officious minion.

The Duchess, as we learn, amongst other authorities, from an old libel,

came down to Harwich to see her husband embark, and afterwards made

the triumphant progress to the north, which is here commemorated. The

splendour of her reception at Harwich is thus censured by the Satirist:

One thrifty ferry-boat, of mother-pearl,

Sufficed of old the Citherean girl;

Yet navies are but fopperies, when here

A small sea mask, and built to court your dear:

Three goddesses in one, Pallas for art,

Venus for sport, but Juno in your heart.

O Duchess, if thy nuptial pomp was mean,

'Tis paid with interest in thy naval scene.

Never did Roman Mark, within the Nile,

So feast the fair Egyptian crocodile;

Nor the Venetian Duke, with such a state,

The Adriatic marry at that rate.

The poem itself is adapted to the capacity and taste of a lady; and, if

we compare it with that which Dryden had two years before addressed to

the Chancellor, it strengthens, I think, very strongly the supposition,

that the old taste of extravagant and over-laboured conceits, with

which the latter abounds, was a stile purposely adapted to gratify the

great Statesman to whom it was addressed, whose taste must necessarily

have been formed upon the ancient standard. The address, which follows,

is throughout easy and complimentary, much in the stile of Waller, as

appears from comparing it with that veteran bard's poem on the same

subject. Although upon a sublime subject, Dryden treats it in the light

most capable of giving pleasure to a fair lady; and the journey of the

duchess to the north is proposed as a theme, nearly as important as the

celebrated victory of her husband.

Accordingly Dryden himself tells us, in the introductory letter to the

"Annus Mirabilis," that, in these lines, he only affected smoothness

of measure and softness of expression; and the verses themselves were

originally introduced in that letter, to vindicate the character there

given of them.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 79: See Memoires de Grammont, Chapitre VIII. for the

Duchess's conduct towards these _temoins a bonne fortune_, as Hamilton

happily calls them.]

[Footnote 80: Even Harman did not escape suspicion on this occasion.

Marvell gives the following account of his examination before

Parliament:

"Yesterday Harman was brought to the house, to give an account of

slackening sail in the first victory. He had a very good reputation at

his coming in; but when he said, that Mr Bronkard only used arguments,

and justified the thing himself, saying, 'That he had been a madman

had he not done it;' and other witnesses clearly contradicting this,

and proving, that Bronkard brought him orders in the Duke's name, he

lost all credit with us; and yet more, when, upon recollection, he

confessed that Mr Bronkard did bring orders as from the Duke: so he is

committed to the sergeant, and will doubtless be impeached. Both he and

Mr Bronkard, who was also heard, will probably, on Tuesday next, taste

the utmost severity of the house." ANDREW MARVELL _to the_ MAYOR OF

HULL. _See his Works_, Vol. I. p. 104.]

TO

HER ROYAL HIGHNESS

THE DUCHESS,

ON THE

MEMORABLE VICTORY GAINED BY THE DUKE OVER

THE HOLLANDERS, JUNE THE 3. 1665.

AND ON

HER JOURNEY AFTERWARDS INTO THE NORTH.

MADAM,

When, for our sakes, your hero you resigned

To swelling seas, and every faithless wind;

When you released his courage, and set free

A valour fatal to the enemy;

You lodged your country's cares within your breast,

(The mansion where soft love should only rest,)

And, ere our foes abroad were overcome,

The noblest conquest you had gained at home.

Ah, what concerns did both your souls divide!

Your honour gave us what your love denied;

And 'twas for him much easier to subdue

Those foes he fought with, than to part from you.

That glorious day, which two such navies saw,

As each unmatched might to the world give law,

Neptune, yet doubtful whom he should obey,

Held to them both the trident of the sea:

The winds were hushed, the waves in ranks were cast,

As awfully as when God's people past:

Those, yet uncertain on whose sails to blow,

These, where the wealth of nations ought to flow.

Then with the duke your Highness ruled the day: }

While all the brave did his command obey, }

The fair and pious under you did pray. }

How powerful are chaste vows! the wind and tide

You bribed to combat on the English side.

Thus to your much-loved lord you did convey

An unknown succour, sent the nearest way.

New vigour to his wearied arms you brought,

(So Moses was upheld while Israel fought)[81]

While, from afar, we heard the cannon play,

Like distant thunder on a shiny day.[82]

For absent friends we were ashamed to fear,

When we considered what you ventured there.

Ships, men, and arms, our country might restore,

But such a leader could supply no more.

With generous thoughts of conquest he did burn,

Yet fought not more to vanquish than return.

Fortune and victory he did pursue,

To bring them, as his slaves, to wait on you:

Thus beauty ravished the rewards of fame,

And the fair triumphed, when the brave o'ercame.

Then, as you meant to spread another way

By land your conquests, far as his by sea,

Leaving our southern clime, you marched along

The stubborn north, ten thousand Cupids strong.

Like commons the nobility resort,

In crowding heaps, to fill your moving court:

To welcome your approach the vulgar run,

Like some new envoy from the distant sun;

And country beauties by their lovers go,

Blessing themselves, and wondering at the show.

So, when the new-born Phœnix first is seen,

Her feathered subjects all adore their queen,

And, while she makes her progress through the east,

From every grove her numerous train's increased:

Each poet of the air her glory sings,

And round him the pleased audience clap their wings.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 81: Note I.]

[Footnote 82: Note II.]

NOTES

ON

THE PRECEDING POEM.

Note I.

_So Moses was upheld while Israel fought._

"And it came to pass, when Moses held up his hand, that Israel

prevailed; and when he let down his hand, Amalek prevailed.

"But Moses' hands were heavy, and they took a stone, and put it under

him, and he sat thereon: and Aaron and Hur stayed up his hands, the one

on the one side, and the other on the other side, and his hands were

steady until the going down of the sun.

"And Joshua discomfited Amalek and his people with the edge of the

sword." Exodus, chap. xvii. 11, 12, 13th verses.

Note II.

_While, from afar, we heard the cannon play,

Like distant thunder on a shiny day._

The noise of the battle was distinctly heard at London, as appears from

the Introduction to our author's "Essay on Dramatic Poetry," where the

dialogue is supposed to pass in a barge, in which the speakers had

embarked to hear more distinctly, "those undulations of sound, which,

though almost vanishing before they reached them, seemed yet to retain

somewhat of their first horror which they had betwixt the fleets." And,

by the sound seeming to retire from them, Eugenius draws an omen of the

enemy's defeat. This whole scene is imagined with so much liveliness,

that we can hardly doubt Dryden was actually an ear-witness of the

combat.

ANNUS MIRABILIS;

THE

YEAR OF WONDERS,

1666,

AN HISTORICAL POEM.

ANNUS MIRABILIS.

This is the first poem of any length which Dryden gave to the public.

Formerly he had only launched out in occasional verses, and, in some

instances, on subjects of no prominent importance. He now spread a

broader canvas, and prepared to depict a more extensive and magnificent

scene. The various incidents of an eventful war between two powerful

nations, who disputed the trident of the ocean, and the tremendous

fire, which had laid London in ashes, were subjects which still

continued to agitate the bosoms of his countrymen. These, therefore,

he ventured to assume as the theme of his poem; and his choice is

justified by the effects which it yet produces upon the reader.

There would have been no doubt, even had the author himself been

silent, that he followed D'Avenant in the choice of the elegiac

stanza, in which the _Annus Mirabilis_ is composed. It is sounding and

harmonious to the ear; and perhaps Dryden still annexed to the couplet

the idea of that harshness, which was so long its characteristick in

the hands of our early English writers. But the four-lined stanza has

also its peculiar disadvantages; and they are admirably stated by the

judicious critic, who first turned the Editor's eyes, and probably

those of many others, on the neglected poem of "Gondibert."--"The

necessity of comprising a sentence within the limits of the measure, is

the tyranny of Procrustes to thought. For the sake of a disagreeable

uniformity, expression must constantly be cramped or extenuated.

In general, the latter expedient will be practised as the easiest;

and thus both sentiment and language will be enfeebled by unmeaning

expletives."[83] It is nevertheless true, that Dryden has very seldom

suffered his poem to languish. Every stanza presents us either with

vivid description, or with some strong thought, which is seldom

suffered to glide into tenuity. But this structure of verse has often

laid him under an odd and rather unpleasing necessity, of filling up

his stanza, by coupling a simile, or a moral, expressed in the two

last lines, along with the fact, which had been announced in the

two first. When these comments, or illustrations, however good in

themselves, appear to be intruded upon the narrative or description,

and not naturally to flow out of either, they must be considered as

defects in composition; and a kind of versification, which compels

frequent recurrence to such expedients for filling up the measure, has

a disadvantage, for which mere harmony can hardly compensate. In the

passages which follow, there is produced a stiff and awkward kind of

balance between the story and the poet's reflections and illustrations.

Lawson among the foremost met his fate,

Whom sea-green Sirens from the rocks lament:

Thus as an offering for the Grecian state,

He first was killed, who first to battle went.

* * * * *

To nearest ports their shattered ships repair,

Where by our dreadful cannon they lay awed

So reverently men quit the open air,

Where thunder speaks the angry gods abroad.

* * * * *

Like hunted castors, conscious of their store,

Their way-laid wealth to Norway's coasts they bring;

There first the North's cold bosom spices bore,

And winter brooded on the eastern spring.

When, after such verses, we find one in which the author expresses

a single idea so happily, as just to fill up the _quatrain_, the

difference is immediately visible, betwixt a simile easily and

naturally introduced, and stanzas made up and levelled with what a

poet of those times would perhaps have ventured to call the _travelled

earth_ of versification:

And now four days the sun had seen our woes;

Four nights the moon beheld the incessant fire;

It seemed as if the stars more sickly rose,

And farther from the feverish north retire.

Of all these difficulties our author seems to have been aware, from

his preliminary epistle to Sir Robert Howard; and it was probably the

experimental conviction, that they were occasionally invincible, which

induced him thenceforward to desert the _quatrain_; although he has

decided that stanza to be more noble, and of greater dignity, both for

the sound and number, than any other verse in use among us.

The turn of composition, as well as the structure of the verse, is

adopted from "Gondibert." But Dryden, more completely master of the

English language, and a writer of much more lively imagination and

expression, has, in general, greatly exceeded his master in conceiving

and bringing out the far-fetched ideas and images, with which each

has graced his poem. D'Avenant is often harsh and turgid, and the

construction of his sentences extremely involved. Dryden has his

obscure, and even unintelligible, passages; but they arise from the

extravagance of the idea, not from the want of power to express it. For

example, D'Avenant says,

Near her seems crucified that lucky thief,

In heaven's dark lottery prosperous more than wise,

Who groped at last by chance for heaven's relief,

And throngs undoes with hopes by one drawn prize.

We here perfectly understand the author's meaning, through his

lumbering and unpoetical expression; but, in the following stanza,

Dryden is unintelligible, because he had conceived an idea approaching

to nonsense, while the words themselves are both poetical and

expressive:

Then we upon our globe's last verge shall go,

And view the ocean leaning on the sky;

From thence our rolling neighbours we shall know,

And on the lunar world securely pry.

In short, Dryden never fails in the power of elegant expression, till

he ventures upon something which it is impossible to express.

The love of conceit and point, that inveterate though decaying disease

of the literature of the time, has not failed to infect the _Annus

Mirabilis_. That monstrous verse, in which the extinction of the

fire is described, cannot be too often quoted, both to expose the

meanness of the image, and the confusion of the metaphor; for it will

be noticed, that the extinguisher, so unhappily conceived, is not

even employed in its own mean office. The flames of London are first

a tallow candle; and secondly hawks, which, while pouncing on their

quarry, are hooded with an extinguisher:

An hollow crystal pyramid he takes,

In firmamental waters dipt above;

Of it a broad extinguisher he makes,

And hoods the flames that to their quarry drove.

Passages also occur, in which, from the author's zealous desire to

be technically minute, the style becomes low and vulgar. There is no

doubt, that, as Dryden has observed, the proper terms of art may be not

only justly, but with the highest advantage, employed in poetry; but

such technical phrases require to be selected with great judgment:

they must bear relation to some striking and important object, or they

are mean and trivial; and they must be at once generally intelligible,

and more expressive in themselves than ordinary language, or they are

unnecessarily obscure and pedantic. Dryden has failed in both these

points, in his account of the repairs of the fleet.[84] Stanza 148, in

particular, combines the faults of meanness and unnecessary obscurity,

from the affected use of the dialect of the dock-yard:

Some the galled ropes with dawby marline bind,

Or searcloth masts with strong tarpawling coats:

To try new shrouds one mounts into the wind,

And one below their ease or stiffness notes.

Other examples might be produced of the faults of this remarkable

poem; but it is time to say, that they are much overbalanced by its

beauties. If Dryden is sometimes obscure, from the extravagance of

his imagination, or the far-fetched labour of his similes, and if his

desire to use appropriate language has occasionally led him into low

and affected minuteness, this poem exhibits a far greater number of

instances of happy and judicious illustration, beautiful description,

and sublime morality. The comparison of the secret rise of the fire of

London to the obscure birth of an usurper, is doubly striking, when we

consider how closely the passage may be understood to bear reference

to the recent domination of the Protector.[85] I will not load these

preliminary observations, by inserting the whole of the striking

passage, on the different manner in which the night, after the battle

of the first of June, was passed on board the English and Dutch fleets;

but certainly the 71st stanza will not lose, by being an hundred times

quoted:

In dreams they fearful precipices tread;

Or, shipwrecked, labour to some distant shore;

Or in dark churches walk among the dead;

They wake with horror, and dare sleep no more.

The verses, in which Prince Rupert and his enemy are compared to a

greyhound and hare, after a course so desperate as totally to exhaust

both, have been always considered as exquisitely beautiful.[86] The

description of the Loyal London partakes of the beauties and faults

which are dispersed through the poem. Nothing can be more majestic than

her description, "firing the air with her sanguine streamers," and

"riding upon her shadow in floating gold." We lament, that the weaver

should have been so fascinated with his labours as to commence seaman;

and still more, that, after describing her "roomy decks," and "depth of

draught," she should furnish no grander simile than that of

----a sea-wasp floating on the waves.

More unqualified approbation may be justly afforded to the whole

description of the Dutch homeward-bound fleet, captured in sight of

their desired haven; and the fine moral lessons which the poet takes

the opportunity to inculcate, from so unexpected an incident. The 34th

stanza has a tenderness and simplicity, which every lover of true

poetry must admire:

This careful husband had been long away,

Whom his chaste wife and little children mourn;

Who on their fingers learned to tell the day

On which their father promised to return.

I will only point out to attention the beautiful and happily expressed

simile of the eagle in stanzas 107 and 108, and then, in imitation of

honest John Bunyan,

No more detain the readers in the porch,

Or keep them from the day-light with a torch.

The title of _Annus Mirabilis_ did not, according to Mr Malone,

originate with Dryden; a prose tract, so intitled, being published

in 1662.[87] Neither was he the last that used it; for, the learned

editor of "Predictions and Observations, collected from Mr J.

Partridge's Almanacks for 1687 and 1688," has so entitled his

astrological lucubrations.

The _Annus Mirabilis_ was first printed in octavo, in 1667, the year

succeeding that which was the subject of the poem. The quarto edition

of 1688, which seems very correct, has been employed in correcting that

of Derrick in a few trifling instances.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 83: Essay by Dr Aikin on the Heroic Poem of "Gondibert."]

[Footnote 84: See stanza 146, and those which follow.]

[Footnote 85: Stanzas 213, 214.]

[Footnote 86: See stanzas 131, 132. I wish, however, our author had

spared avouching himself to have been eye-witness to so marvellous a

chase. The "so have I seen" should be confined to things which are

not only possible, but, in a certain degree, of ordinary occurrence.

Dryden's ocular testimony is not, however, so incredible as that of the

bard, who averred,

_So have I seen_, in Araby the blest,

A Phœnix couched upon her funeral nest.

Such chaces, if not frequent, have sometimes happened. In the north

of England, in ancient days, a stag and a famous greyhound, called

Hercules, after a desperate course, were found dead within a few paces

of each other, and interred with this inscription:

Hercules killed Hart of grece,

And Hart of grece killed Hercules.

]

[Footnote 87: MALONE's _Prose Works of Dryden_, Vol. III. p. 250.]

TO THE

METROPOLIS OF GREAT-BRITAIN,

THE MOST RENOWNED AND LATE FLOURISHING

CITY OF LONDON,

IN ITS

REPRESENTATIVES,

THE LORD-MAYOR AND COURT OF ALDERMEN, THE SHERIFFS, AND COMMON-COUNCIL

OF IT.

As, perhaps, I am the first who ever presented a work of this nature to

the metropolis of any nation, so it is likewise consonant to justice,

that he, who was to give the first example of such a dedication, should

begin it with that city, which has set a pattern to all others, of true

loyalty, invincible courage, and unshaken constancy. Other cities have

been praised for the same virtues, but I am much deceived if any have

so dearly purchased their reputation: their fame has been won them by

cheaper trials than an expensive, though necessary war, a consuming

pestilence, and a more consuming fire. To submit yourselves with that

humility to the judgments of heaven, and, at the same time, to raise

yourselves with that vigour above all human enemies; to be combated at

once from above, and from below; to be struck down, and to triumph,--I

know not whether such trials have been ever paralleled in any nation:

the resolution and successes of them never can be. Never had prince

or people more mutual reason to love each other, if suffering for

each other can endear affection. You have come together a pair of

matchless lovers, through many difficulties; he, through a long exile,

various traverses of fortune, and the interposition of many rivals, who

violently ravished and with-held you from him; and certainly you have

had your share in sufferings. But providence has cast upon you want of

trade, that you might appear bountiful to your country's necessities;

and the rest of your afflictions are not more the effects of God's

displeasure (frequent examples of them having been in the reign of the

most excellent princes) than occasions for the manifesting of your

christian and civil virtues. To you, therefore, this Year of Wonders

is justly dedicated, because you have made it so; you, who are to

stand a wonder to all years and ages; and who have built yourselves an

immortal monument on your own ruins. You are now a Phœnix in her

ashes, and, as far as humanity can approach, a great emblem of the

suffering Deity; but heaven never made so much piety and virtue to

leave it miserable. I have heard, indeed, of some virtuous persons who

have ended unfortunately, but never of any virtuous nation: Providence

is engaged too deeply, when the cause becomes so general; and I cannot

imagine it has resolved that ruin of the people at home, which it has

blessed abroad with such successes. I am therefore to conclude, that

your sufferings are at an end; and that one part of my poem has not

been more an history of your destruction, than the other a prophecy

of your restoration. The accomplishment of which happiness, as it is

the wish of all true Englishmen, so is it by none more passionately

desired, than by

The greatest of your admirers,

And most humble of your servants,

JOHN DRYDEN.

AN

ACCOUNT OF THE ENSUING POEM,

IN A LETTER TO THE

HON. SIR ROBERT HOWARD.[88]

SIR,

I am so many ways obliged to you, and so little able to return your

favours, that, like those who owe too much, I can only live by getting

farther into your debt. You have not only been careful of my fortune,

which was the effect of your nobleness, but you have been solicitous

of my reputation, which is that of your kindness. It is not long since

I gave you the trouble of perusing a play for me,[89] and now, instead

of an acknowledgment, I have given you a greater, in the correction of

a poem. But since you are to bear this persecution, I will at least

give you the encouragement of a martyr,--you could never suffer in

a nobler cause; for I have chosen the most heroic subject, which any

poet could desire. I have taken upon me to describe the motives, the

beginning, progress, and successes, of a most just and necessary war;

in it, the care, management, and prudence of our king; the conduct

and valour of a royal admiral, and of two incomparable generals; the

invincible courage of our captains and seamen; and three glorious

victories, the result of all. After this, I have, in the Fire, the most

deplorable, but withal the greatest, argument that can be imagined;

the destruction being so swift, so sudden, so vast and miserable, as

nothing can parallel in story. The former part of this poem, relating

to the war, is but a due expiation for my not serving my king and

country in it. All gentlemen are almost obliged to it; and I know no

reason we should give that advantage to the commonalty of England, to

be foremost in brave actions, which the nobles of France would never

suffer in their peasants. I should not have written this but to a

person, who has been ever forward to appear in all employments, whither

his honour and generosity have called him. The latter part of my poem,

which describes the Fire, I owe, first, to the piety and fatherly

affection of our monarch to his suffering subjects; and, in the second

place, to the courage, loyalty, and magnanimity of the city; both which

were so conspicuous, that I have wanted words to celebrate them as they

deserve. I have called my poem historical, not epic, though both the

actions and actors are as much heroic as any poem can contain. But,

since the action is not properly one, nor that accomplished in the

last successes, I have judged it too bold a title for a few stanzas,

which are little more in number than a single Iliad, or the longest

of the Æneids. For this reason, (I mean not of length, but broken

action, tied too severely to the laws of history) I am apt to agree

with those, who rank Lucan rather among historians in verse, than Epic

poets; in whose room, if I am not deceived, Silius Italicus, though a

worse writer, may more justly be admitted. I have chosen to write my

poem in quatrains, or stanzas of four in alternate rhyme, because I

have ever judged them more noble, and of greater dignity, both for the

sound and number, than any other verse in use amongst us; in which I am

sure I have your approbation. The learned languages have certainly a

great advantage of us, in not being tied to the slavery of any rhyme;

and were less constrained in the quantity of every syllable, which

they might vary with spondees or dactyls, besides so many other helps

of grammatical figures, for the lengthening or abbreviation of them,

than the modern are in the close of that one syllable, which often

confines, and more often corrupts, the sense of all the rest. But in

this necessity of our rhymes, I have always found the couplet verse

most easy, (though not so proper for this occasion,) for there the work

is sooner at an end, every two lines concluding the labour of the poet;

but in quatrains he is to carry it farther on, and not only so, but to

bear along in his head the troublesome sense of four lines together.

For, those, who write correctly in this kind, must needs acknowledge,

that the last line of the stanza is to be considered in the composition

of the first. Neither can we give ourselves the liberty of making any

part of a verse for the sake of rhyme, or concluding with a word which

is not current English, or using the variety of female rhymes,[90] all

which our fathers practised; and for the female rhymes, they are still

in use amongst other nations; with the Italian in every line, with

the Spaniard promiscuously, with the French alternately, as those who

have read the Alaric, the Pucelle, or any of their later poems, will

agree with me. And besides this, they write in Alexandrines, or verses

of six feet; such as, amongst us, is the old translation of Homer by

Chapman:[91] all which, by lengthening of their chain, makes the sphere

of their activity the larger.

I have dwelt too long upon the choice of my stanza, which you may

remember is much better defended in the preface to "Gondibert;"

and therefore I will hasten to acquaint you with my endeavours in

the writing. In general I will only say, I have never yet seen the

description of any naval fight in the proper terms which are used at

sea; and if there be any such, in another language, as that of Lucan

in the third of his Pharsalia, yet I could not avail myself of it in

the English; the terms of art in every tongue bearing more of the idiom

of it than any other words. We hear indeed among our poets, of the

thundering of guns, the smoke, the disorder, and the slaughter; but all

these are common notions. And certainly, as those, who in a logical

dispute keep in general terms, would hide a fallacy; so those, who do

it in any poetical description, would veil their ignorance:[92]

_Descriptas servare vices, operumque colores,

Cur ego, si nequeo ignoroque, poeta salutor?_

For my own part, if I had little knowledge of the sea, yet I have

thought it no shame to learn; and if I have made some few mistakes, it

is only, as you can bear me witness, because I have wanted opportunity

to correct them; the whole poem being first written, and now sent

you from a place, where I have not so much as the converse of any

seaman. Yet though the trouble I had in writing it was great, it was

more than recompensed by the pleasure. I found myself so warm in

celebrating the praises of military men, two such especially as the

prince and general, that it is no wonder if they inspired me with

thoughts above my ordinary level. And I am well satisfied, that, as

they are incomparably the best subject I ever had, excepting only the

royal family, so also, that this I have written of them is much better

than what I have performed on any other. I have been forced to help

out other arguments, but this has been bountiful to me; they have

been low and barren of praise,[93] and I have exalted them, and made

them fruitful; but here--_Omnia sponte suà reddit justissima tellus_.

I have had a large, a fair, and a pleasant field; so fertile, that,

without my cultivating, it has given me two harvests in a summer, and

in both oppressed the reaper. All other greatness in subjects is only

counterfeit; it will not endure the test of danger; the greatness of

arms is only real. Other greatness burdens a nation with its weight;

this supports it with its strength. And as it is the happiness of the

age, so it is the peculiar goodness of the best of kings, that we may

praise his subjects without offending him. Doubtless it proceeds from

a just confidence of his own virtue, which the lustre of no other can

be so great as to darken in him; for the good or the valiant are never

safely praised under a bad or a degenerate prince.

But to return from this digression to a farther account of my poem;

I must crave leave to tell you, that as I have endeavoured to adorn

it with noble thoughts, so much more to express those thoughts with

elocution. The composition of all poems is, or ought to be, of wit;[94]

and wit in the poet, or wit-writing, (if you will give me leave to

use a school-distinction) is no other than the faculty of imagination

in the writer, which, like a nimble spaniel, beats over and ranges

through the field of memory, 'till it springs the quarry it hunted

after; or, without metaphor, which searches over all the memory for the

species or ideas of those things, which it designs to represent. Wit

written is that which is well defined, the happy result of thought, or

product of imagination. But to proceed from wit, in the general notion

of it, to the proper wit of an Heroic or Historical Poem, I judge it

chiefly to consist in the delightful imagining of persons, actions,

passions, or things. It is not the jerk or sting of an epigram, nor

the seeming contradiction of a poor antithesis, (the delight of an

ill-judging audience in a play of rhyme,) nor the gingle of a more

poor paronomasia;[95] neither is it so much the morality of a grave

sentence, affected by Lucan, but more sparingly used by Virgil; but

it is some lively and apt description, dressed in such colours of

speech, that it sets before your eyes the absent object, as perfectly,

and more delightfully than nature. So then the first happiness of the

poet's imagination is properly invention, or finding of the thought;

the second is fancy, or the variation, deriving, or moulding, of that

thought, as the judgment represents it proper to the subject; the

third is elocution, or the art of clothing and adorning that thought,

so found and varied, in apt, significant, and sounding words. The

quickness of the imagination is seen in the invention, the fertility

in the fancy, and the accuracy in the expression. For the two first of

these, Ovid is famous amongst the poets; for the latter, Virgil. Ovid

images more often the movements and affections of the mind, either

combating between two contrary passions, or extremely discomposed

by one. His words therefore are the least part of his care; for he

pictures nature in disorder, with which the study and choice of words

is inconsistent. This is the proper wit of dialogue or discourse, and

consequently of the drama, where all that is said is supposed to be the

effect of sudden thought; which, though it excludes not the quickness

of wit in repartees, yet admits not a too curious election of words,

too frequent allusions, or use of tropes, or, in fine, any thing that

shews remoteness of thought, or labour in the writer. On the other

side, Virgil speaks not so often to us in the person of another, like

Ovid, but in his own: he relates almost all things as from himself,

and thereby gains more liberty than the other, to express his thoughts

with all the graces of elocution, to write more figuratively, and to

confess as well the labour as the force of his imagination. Though he

describes his Dido well and naturally, in the violence of her passions,

yet he must yield in that to the Myrrha, the Biblis, the Althæa, of

Ovid; for, as great an admirer of him as I am, I must acknowledge,

that if I see not more of their souls than I see of Dido's, at least I

have a greater concernment for them: and that convinces me, that Ovid

has touched those tender strokes more delicately than Virgil could. But

when action or persons are to be described, when any such image is to

be set before us, how bold, how masterly, are the strokes of Virgil!

We see the objects he presents us with in their native figures, in

their proper motions; but so we see them, as our own eyes could never

have beheld them so beautiful in themselves. We see the soul of the

poet, like that universal one of which he speaks, informing and moving

through all his pictures:

----_Totamque infusa per artus

Mens agitat molem, et magno se corpore miscet._

We behold him embellishing his images, as he makes Venus breathing

beauty upon her son Æneas:

---- ----_lumenque juventæ

Purpureum, & lætos oculis afflârat honores:

Quale manus addunt ebori decus, aut ubi flavo

Argentum, Pariusve lapis, circundatur auro._

See his Tempest, his Funeral Sports, his Combat of Turnus and Æneas:

and in his "Georgics," which I esteem the divinest part of all his

writings, the Plague, the Country, the Battle of the Bulls, the labour

of the Bees; and those many other excellent images of nature, most of

which are neither great in themselves, nor have any natural ornament

to bear them up; but the words wherewith he describes them are so

excellent, that it might be well applied to him, which was said by

Ovid, _Materium superabat opus_: the very sound of his words has often

somewhat that is connatural to the subject; and while we read him,

we sit, as in a play, beholding the scenes of what he represents. To

perform this, he made frequent use of tropes, which you know change

the nature of a known word, by applying it to some other signification;

and this is it which Horace means in his Epistle to the Piso's:

_Dixeris egregiè, notum si callida verbum

Reddiderit junctura novum._----

But I am sensible I have presumed too far to entertain you with a

rude discourse of that art, which you both know so well, and put into

practice with so much happiness. Yet before I leave Virgil, I must

own the vanity to tell you, and by you the world, that he has been

my master in this poem. I have followed him every where, I know not

with what success, but I am sure with diligence enough; my images are

many of them copied from him, and the rest are imitations of him. My

expressions also are as near as the idioms of the two languages would

admit of in translation. And this, sir, I have done with that boldness,

for which I will stand accountable to any of our little critics, who,

perhaps, are no better acquainted with him than I am. Upon your first

perusal of this poem, you have taken notice of some words, which I have

innovated (if it be too bold for me to say refined) upon his Latin;

which, as I offer not to introduce into English prose, so I hope they

are neither improper, nor altogether inelegant in verse; and, in this,

Horace will again defend me:

_Et nova, fictaque nuper, habebunt verba fidem, si

Græco fonte cadunt, parcè detorta._----

The inference is exceeding plain; for, if a Roman poet might have

liberty to coin a word, supposing only that it was derived from the

Greek, was put into a Latin termination, and that he used this liberty

but seldom, and with modesty; how much more justly may I challenge

that privilege to do it with the same prerequisites, from the best

and most judicious of Latin writers? In some places, where either

the fancy or the words were his, or any other's, I have noted it in

the margin, that I might not seem a plagiary;[96] in others I have

neglected it, to avoid as well tediousness, as the affectation of

doing it too often. Such descriptions or images well wrought, which

I promise not for mine, are, as I have said, the adequate delight of

heroic poesy; for they beget admiration, which is its proper object;

as the images of the burlesque, which is contrary to this, by the

same reason beget laughter: for, the one shews nature beautified, as

in the picture of a fair woman, which we all admire; the other shews

her deformed, as in that of a lazar, or of a fool with distorted face

and antique gestures, at which we cannot forbear to laugh, because it

is a deviation from nature. But though the same images serve equally

for the Epic poesy, and for the Historic and Panegyric, which are

branches of it, yet a several sort of sculpture is to be used in them.

If some of them are to be like those of Juvenal, _stantes in curribus

Æmiliani_, heroes drawn in their triumphal chariots, and in their full

proportion; others are to be like that of Virgil, _spirantia mollius

æra_: there is somewhat more of softness and tenderness to be shewn in

them. You will soon find I write not this without concern. Some, who

have seen a paper of verses, which I wrote last year to her highness

the Duchess, have accused them of that only thing I could defend in

them. They said, I did _humi serpere_,--that I wanted not only height

of fancy, but dignity of words, to set it off. I might well answer

with that of Horace, _Nunc non erat his locus_; I knew I addressed

them to a lady, and accordingly I affected the softness of expression,

and the smoothness of measure, rather than the height of thought; and

in what I did endeavour, it is no vanity to say I have succeeded. I

detest arrogance; but there is some difference betwixt that and a just

defence. But I will not farther bribe your candour, or the reader's.

I leave them to speak for me; and, if they can, to make out that

character, not pretending to a greater, which I have given them.[97]

And now, sir, it is time I should relieve you from the tedious length

of this account. You have better and more profitable employment for

your hours, and I wrong the public to detain you longer. In conclusion,

I must leave my poem to you with all its faults, which I hope to find

fewer in the printing by your emendations. I know you are not of the

number of those, of whom the younger Pliny speaks; _Nec sunt parum

multi, qui carpere amicos suos judicium vocant_: I am rather too secure

of you on that side. Your candour in pardoning my errors may make

you more remiss in correcting them; if you will not withal consider,

that they come into the world with your approbation, and through your

hands. I beg from you the greatest favour you can confer upon an absent

person, since I repose upon your management what is dearest to me, my

fame and reputation; and therefore I hope it will stir you up to make

my poem fairer by many of your blots: if not, you know the story of

the gamester who married the rich man's daughter, and when her father

denied the portion, christened all the children by his sirname, that

if, in conclusion, they must beg, they should do so by one name,

as well as by the other. But, since the reproach of my faults will

light on you, it is but reason I should do you that justice to the

readers, to let them know, that, if there be any thing tolerable in

this poem, they owe the argument to your choice, the writing to your

encouragement, the correction to your judgment, and the care of it to

your friendship, to which he must ever acknowledge himself to owe all

things, who is,

SIR,

The most obedient, and most

Faithful of your servants,

JOHN DRYDEN.

From Charlton, in Wiltshire,

Nov. 10, 1666.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 88: Sir Robert Howard was son to the Earl of Berkshire, and

brother to Lady Elizabeth Dryden, our author's wife. This epistle is

dated from Charlton, the seat of Lord Berkshire.]

[Footnote 89: Probably "The Indian Queen," which was a joint production

of Dryden and Howard.]

[Footnote 90: The author alludes to the privilege, anciently used,

of throwing an accentuation on the last syllable, of such a word as

_noble_, so as to make it sound _nobley_. An instance may be produced

from our author's poem on the Coronation:

Some lazy ages, lost in sleep and ease,

No action have to busy chronicles.

]

[Footnote 91: These translations are, however, in fourteen, not twelve

syllables; a vile hobbling sort of measure, used also by Phayr, and

other old translators.]

[Footnote 92: This is one of Dryden's hasty and inaccurate averments.

The ancient dramatic authors were particularly well acquainted with

nautical terms, and applied them with great accuracy. See a note in

Gifford's excellent edition of Massinger, vol. II. p. 229.]

[Footnote 93: We need not here suppose, that Dryden speaks particularly

of those to whom he had offered panygyricks: undoubtedly, he had

written poems on many subjects, which, remaining unpublished, have not

descended to us.]

[Footnote 94: Understood in the large sense, of the regulated exercise

of the imagination.]

[Footnote 95: Commonly called a pun.]

[Footnote 96: These notes are all retained in this edition, as well as

the smaller foot notes, by which the poet thought proper to explain

difficult passages. They are distinguished by the addition of his name.]

[Footnote 97: In the early editions of the _Annus Mirabilis_, the

verses to the Duchess are here inserted.]

ANNUS MIRABILIS;

THE

YEAR OF WONDERS,

1666.

1.

In thriving arts long time had Holland grown,

Crouching at home and cruel when abroad;

Scarce leaving us the means to claim our own;

Our king they courted, and our merchants awed.[98]

2.

Trade, which like blood should circularly flow,

Stopped in their channels, found its freedom lost;

Thither the wealth of all the world did go,

And seemed but shipwrecked on so base a coast.

3.

For them alone the heavens had kindly heat,

In eastern quarries ripening precious dew;[99]

For them the Idumæan balm did sweat,

And in hot Ceylon spicy forests grew.

4.

The sun but seemed the labourer of the year;

Each waxing moon supplied her watery store,[100]

To swell those tides, which from the Line did bear

Their brim-full vessels to the Belgian shore.

5.

Thus, mighty in her ships, stood Carthage long,

And swept the riches of the world from far;

Yet stooped to Rome, less wealthy, but more strong;

And this may prove our second Punic war.[101]

6.

What peace can be, where both to one pretend?

(But they more diligent, and we more strong,)

Or if a peace, it soon must have an end;

For they would grow too powerful, were it long.

7.

Behold two nations then, engaged so far,

That each seven years the fit must shake each land;

Where France will side to weaken us by war,

Who only can his vast designs withstand.

8.

See how he feeds the Iberian[102] with delays,

To render us his timely friendship vain;

And while his secret soul on Flanders preys,

He rocks the cradle of the babe of Spain.[103]

9.

Such deep designs of empire does he lay

O'er them, whose cause he seems to take in hand;

And prudently would make them lords at sea,

To whom with ease he can give laws by land.

10.

This saw our king; and long within his breast

His pensive counsels balanced to and fro;

He grieved the land he freed should be oppressed,

And he less for it than usurpers do.[104]

11.

His generous mind the fair ideas drew

Of fame and honour, which in dangers lay;

Where wealth, like fruit on precipices, grew,

Not to be gathered but by birds of prey.

12.

The loss and gain each fatally were great;

And still his subjects called aloud for war:

But peaceful kings, o'er martial people set,

Each other's poize and counterbalance are.

13.

He first surveyed the charge with careful eyes,

Which none but mighty monarchs could maintain;

Yet judged, like vapours that from limbecks rise,

It would in richer showers descend again.

14.

At length resolved to assert the watery ball,

He in himself did whole Armadas bring;

Him aged seamen might their master call,

And chuse for general, were he not their king.[105]

15.

It seems as every ship their sovereign knows,

His awful summons they so soon obey;--

So hear the scaly herd when Proteus blows,

And so to pasture follow through the sea.[106]

16.

To see this fleet upon the ocean move,

Angels drew wide the curtains of the skies;

And heaven, as if there wanted lights above,

For tapers made two glaring comets rise.[107]

17.

Whether they unctuous exhalations are,

Fired by the sun, or seeming so alone;

Or each some more remote and slippery star,

Which loses footing when to mortals shewn;

18.

Or one, that bright companion of the sun,[108]

Whose glorious aspect sealed our new-born king;

And now, a round of greater years begun,

New influence from his walks of light did bring.

19.

Victorious York did first, with famed success,

To his known valour make the Dutch give place;[109]

Thus heaven our monarch's fortune did confess,

Beginning conquest from his royal race.

20.

But since it was decreed, auspicious king,

In Britain's right that thou shouldst wed the main,

Heaven, as a gage, would cast some precious thing,

And therefore doomed that Lawson should be slain.[110]

21.

Lawson amongst the foremost met his fate,

Whom sea-green Sirens from the rocks lament;

Thus, as an offering for the Grecian state,

He first was killed, who first to battle went.[111]

22.

Their chief blown up, in air, not waves, expired,

To which his pride presumed to give the law;[112]

The Dutch confessed heaven present, and retired,

And all was Britain the wide ocean saw.

23.

To nearest ports their shattered ships repair,

Where by our dreadful cannon they lay awed;

So reverently men quit the open air,

Where thunder speaks the angry gods abroad.

24.

And now approached their fleet from India, fraught

With all the riches of the rising sun;

And precious sand from southern climates brought,

The fatal regions where the war begun.[113]

25.

Like hunted castors, conscious of their store,[114]

Their way-laid wealth to Norway's coast they bring;

There first the North's cold bosom spices bore,

And winter brooded on the eastern spring.

26.

By the rich scent we found our perfumed prey,

Which, flanked with rocks, did close in covert lie;

And round about their murdering cannon lay,

At once to threaten and invite the eye.

27.

Fiercer than cannon, and than rocks more hard,

The English undertake the unequal war;

Seven ships alone, by which the port is barred,

Besiege the Indies, and all Denmark dare.

28.

These fight like husbands, but like lovers those;

These fain would keep, and those more fain enjoy;

And to such height their frantic passion grows,

That what both love, both hazard to destroy.

29.

Amidst whole heaps of spices lights a ball,

And now their odours armed against them fly;

Some preciously by shattered porcelain fall,

And some by aromatic splinters die.

30.

And though by tempests of the prize bereft,

In heaven's inclemency some ease we find;

Our foes we vanquished by our valour left,

And only yielded to the seas and wind.

31.

Nor wholly lost we so deserved a prey;

For storms, repenting, part of it restored;

Which as a tribute from the Baltic sea,

The British ocean sent her mighty lord.[115]

32.

Go, mortals, now, and vex yourselves in vain

For wealth, which so uncertainly must come;

When what was brought so far, and with such pain,

Was only kept to lose it nearer home.

33.

The son, who twice three months on th' ocean tost,

Prepared to tell what he had passed before,

Now sees in English ships the Holland coast,

And parents' arms, in vain, stretched from the shore.

34.

This careful husband had been long away,

Whom his chaste wife and little children mourn;

Who on their fingers learned to tell the day,

On which their father promised to return.

35.

Such are the proud designs of human-kind,

And so we suffer shipwreck every where![116]

Alas, what port can such a pilot find,

Who in the night of fate must blindly steer!

36.

The undistinguished seeds of good and ill,

Heaven in his bosom from our knowledge hides;

And draws them in contempt of human skill,

Which oft, for friends mistaken, foes provides.

37.

Let Munster's prelate ever be accurst,

In whom we seek the German faith in vain;[117]

Alas, that he should teach the English first,

That fraud and avarice in the church could reign!

38.

Happy, who never trust a stranger's will,

Whose friendship's in his interest understood;

Since money given but tempts him to be ill,

When power is too remote to make him good.

39.

Till now, alone the mighty nations strove;

The rest, at gaze, without the lists did stand;

And threatening France, placed like a painted Jove,

Kept idle thunder in his lifted hand.

40.

That eunuch guardian of rich Holland's trade,

Who envies us what he wants power to enjoy;

Whose noiseful valour does no foe invade,

And weak assistance will his friends destroy.

41.

Offended that we fought without his leave,

He takes this time his secret hate to shew;

Which Charles does with a mind so calm receive,

As one that neither seeks nor shuns his foe.

42.

With France, to aid the Dutch, the Danes unite;

France as their tyrant, Denmark as their slave.[118]

But when with one three nations join to fight,

They silently confess that one more brave.

43.

Lewis had chased the English from his shore,

But Charles the French as subjects does invite;[119]

Would heaven for each some Solomon restore,

Who, by their mercy, may decide their right.

44.

Were subjects so but only by their choice,

And not from birth did forced dominion take,

Our prince alone would have the public voice,

And all his neighbours' realms would deserts make.

45.

He without fear a dangerous war pursues,

Which without rashness he began before;

As honour made him first the danger chuse,

So still he makes it good on virtue's score.

46.

The doubled charge his subjects' love supplies,

Who in that bounty to themselves are kind:

So glad Egyptians see their Nilus rise,

And in his plenty their abundance find.[120]

47.

With equal power he does two chiefs create,

Two such as each seemed worthiest when alone;[121]

Each able to sustain a nation's fate,

Since both had found a greater in their own.

48.

Both great in courage, conduct, and in fame,

Yet neither envious of the other's praise;

Their duty, faith, and interest too the same,

Like mighty partners equally they raise.

49.

The Prince long time had courted fortune's love,

But once possessed did absolutely reign;

Thus with their Amazons the heroes strove,

And conquered first those beauties they would gain.

50.

The Duke beheld, like Scipio, with disdain,

That Carthage, which he ruined, rise once more;

And shook aloft the fasces of the main,

To fright those slaves with what they felt before.

51.

Together to the watery camp they haste,

Whom matrons passing to their children show;

Infants first vows for them to heaven are cast,

And future people bless them as they go.[122]

52.

With them no riotous pomp, nor Asian train,

To infect a navy with their gaudy fears;

To make slow fights, and victories but vain;

But war severely, like itself, appears.

53.

Diffusive of themselves, where'er they pass,

They make that warmth in others they expect;

Their valour works like bodies on a glass,

And does its image on their main project.

54.

Our fleet divides, and straight the Dutch appear,

In number, and a famed commander, bold;[123]

The narrow seas can scarce their navy bear,

Or crowded vessels can their soldiers hold.

55.

The Duke, less numerous, but in courage more,

On wings of all the winds to combat flies;

His murdering guns a loud defiance roar,

And bloody crosses on his flag-staffs rise.

56.

Both furl their sails, and strip them for the fight;

Their folded sheets dismiss the useless air;

The Elean plains could boast no nobler sight,[124]

When struggling champions did their bodies bare.

57.

Born each by other in a distant line,

The sea-built forts in dreadful order move;

So vast the noise, as if not fleets did join,

But lands unfixed, and floating nations strove.[125]

58.

Now passed, on either side they nimbly tack;

Both strive to intercept and guide the wind;

And, in its eye, more closely they come back,[126]

To finish all the deaths they left behind.

59.

On high-raised decks the haughty Belgians ride,

Beneath whose shade our humble frigates go;

Such port the elephant bears, and so defied

By the rhinoceros, her unequal foe.

60.

And as the built,[127] so different is the fight,

Their mounting shot is on our sails designed;

Deep in their hulls our deadly bullets light,

And through the yielding planks a passage find.[128]

61.

Our dreaded admiral from far they threat,

Whose battered rigging their whole war receives;

All bare, like some old oak which tempests beat,

He stands, and sees below his scattered leaves.

62.

Heroes of old, when wounded, shelter sought;

But he, who meets all danger with disdain,

Even in their face his ship to anchor brought,

And steeple-high stood propt upon the main.[129]

63.

At this excess of courage, all amazed,

The foremost of his foes awhile withdraw;

With such respect in entered Rome they gazed,

Who on high chairs the god-like Fathers saw.[130]

64.

And now, as where Patroclus' body lay,

Here Trojan chiefs advanced, and there the Greek;

Ours o'er the Duke their pious wings display,

And theirs the noblest spoils of Britain seek.

65.

Meantime his busy mariners he hastes,

His shattered sails with rigging to restore;

And willing pines ascend his broken masts,

Whose lofty heads rise higher than before.

66.

Straight to the Dutch he turns his dreadful prow,

More fierce the important quarrel to decide;

Like swans, in long array, his vessels show,

Whose crests advancing do the waves divide.

67.

They charge, recharge, and all along the sea

They drive, and squander the huge Belgian fleet;

Berkley alone, who nearest danger lay,

Did a like fate with lost Creusa meet.[131]

68.

The night comes on, we eager to pursue

The combat still, and they ashamed to leave;

Till the last streaks of dying day withdrew,

And doubtful moonlight did our rage deceive.

69.

In the English fleet each ship resounds with joy,

And loud applause of their great leader's fame;

In fiery dreams the Dutch they still destroy,

And, slumbering, smile at the imagined flame.

70.

Not so the Holland fleet, who, tired and done,

Stretched on their decks, like weary oxen, lie;

Faint sweats all down their mighty members run,

Vast bulks, which little souls but ill supply.

71.

In dreams they fearful precipices tread;

Or, shipwrecked, labour to some distant shore;

Or in dark churches walk among the dead;

They wake with horror, and dare sleep no more,

72.

The morn they look on with unwilling eyes,

Till from their main-top joyful news they hear

Of ships, which, by their mould, bring new supplies,

And in their colours Belgian lions bear.[132]

73.

Our watchful general had discerned from far

This mighty succour, which made glad the foe;

He sighed, but, like a father of the war,

His face spake hope, while deep his sorrows flow.[133]

74.

His wounded men he first sends off to shore,

Never, till now, unwilling to obey;

They, not their wounds, but want of strength, deplore,

And think them happy, who with him can stay.

75.

Then to the rest, "Rejoice," said he, "to-day;

In you the fortune of Great Britain lies;

Among so brave a people, you are they,

Whom heaven has chose to fight for such a prize.

76.

"If number English courages could quell,

We should at first have shun'd, not met, our foes,

Whose numerous sails the fearful only tell;[134]

Courage from hearts, and not from numbers grows."[135]

77.

He said, nor needed more to say; with haste,

To their known stations, cheerfully they go;

And, all at once, disdaining to be last,

Solicit every gale to meet the foe.

78.

Nor did the encouraged Belgians long delay,

But, bold in others, not themselves, they stood;

So thick, our navy scarce could steer their way,

But seemed to wander in a moving wood.

79.

Our little fleet was now engaged so far,

That, like the sword-fish in the whale they fought;[136]

The combat only seemed a civil war,

Till through their bowels we our passage wrought.

80.

Never had valour, no not ours before

Done aught like this upon the land or main;

Where, not to be o'ercome, was to do more

Than all the conquests former kings did gain.

81.

The mighty ghosts of our great Harries rose,

And armed Edwards looked with anxious eyes,

To see this fleet among unequal foes,

By which fate promised them their Charles should rise.

82.

Meantime the Belgians tack upon our rear,

And raking chase-guns through our sterns they send;

Close by their fire-ships, like jackals, appear,

Who on their lions for the prey attend.[137]

83.

Silent, in smoke of cannon, they come on;

Such vapours once did fiery Cacus hide:[138]

In these, the height of pleased revenge is shewn,

Who burn contented by another's side.

84.

Sometimes from fighting squadrons of each fleet,

Deceived themselves, or to preserve some friend,

Two grappling Ætnas on the ocean meet,

And English fires with Belgian flames contend.

85.

Now, at each tack, our little fleet grows less;

And, like maimed fowl, swim lagging on the main.

Their greater loss their numbers scarce confess,

While they lose cheaper than the English gain.

86.

Have you not seen, when whistled from the fist,

Some falcon stoops at what her eye designed,

And with her eagerness the quarry missed,

Straight flies at check, and clips it down the wind?[139]

87.

The dastard crow, that to the wood made wing,

And sees the groves no shelter can afford,

With her loud caws her craven kind does bring,

Who, safe in numbers, cuff the noble bird.

88.

Among the Dutch thus Albemarle did fare:

He could not conquer, and disdained to fly;

Past hope of safety, 'twas his latest care,

Like falling Cæsar, decently to die.

89.

Yet pity did his manly spirit move,

To see those perish who so well had fought;

And generously with his despair he strove,

Resolved to live till he their safety wrought.

90.

Let other muses write his prosperous fate,

Of conquered nations tell, and kings restored;

But mine shall sing of his eclipsed estate,

Which, like the sun's, more wonders does afford.

91.

He drew his mighty frigates all before,

On which the foe his fruitless force employs;

His weak ones deep into his rear he bore,

Remote from guns, as sick men from the noise.[140]

92.

His fiery cannon did their passage guide,

And following smoke obscured them from the foe:

Thus Israel, safe from the Egyptians' pride.

By flaming pillars, and by clouds did go.

93.

Elsewhere the Belgian force we did defeat,

But here our courages did theirs subdue;

So Xenophon once led that famed retreat,

Which first the Asian empire overthrew.

94.

The foe approached; and one for his bold sin

Was sunk, as he that touched the ark was slain:[141]

The wild waves mastered him, and sucked him in,

And smiling eddies dimpled on the main.

95.

This seen, the rest at awful distance stood;

As if they had been there as servants set,

To stay, or to go on, as he thought good,

And not pursue, but wait on his retreat.

96.

So Libyan huntsmen, on some sandy plain,

From shady coverts roused, the lion chace;

The kingly beast roars out with loud disdain,

And slowly moves, unknowing to give place.[142]

97.

But if some one approach to dare his force,

He swings his tail, and swiftly turns him round:

With one paw seizes on his trembling horse,

And with the other tears him to the ground.

98.

Amidst these toils succeeds the balmy night;

Now hissing waters the quenched guns restore;

And weary waves, withdrawing from the fight,

Lie lulled and panting on the silent shore.[143]

99.

The moon shone clear on the becalmed flood,

Where, while her beams like glittering silver play,

Upon the deck our careful general stood,

And deeply mused on the succeeding day.[144]

100.

"That happy sun," said he, "will rise again,

Who twice victorious did our navy see;

And I alone must view him rise in vain,

Without one ray of all his star for me.

101.

"Yet, like an English general will I die,

And all the ocean make my spacious grave:

Women and cowards on the land may lie;

The sea's a tomb that's proper for the brave."

102.

Restless he passed the remnant of the night,

Till the fresh air proclaimed the morning nigh;

And burning ships, the martyrs of the fight,

With paler fires beheld the eastern sky.

103.

But now his stores of ammunition spent,

His naked valour is his only guard;

Rare thunders are from his dumb cannon sent,

And solitary guns are scarcely heard.

104.

Thus far had fortune power, here forced to stay,

No longer durst with fortune be at strife;

This as a ransom Albemarle did pay,

For all the glories of so great a life.

105.

For now brave Rupert from afar appears,

Whose waving streamers the glad general knows;

With full-spread sails his eager navy steers,

And every ship in swift proportion grows.[145]

106.

The anxious prince had heard the cannon long,

And, from that length of time, dire omens drew

Of English overmatched, and Dutch too strong,

Who never fought three days, but to pursue.

107.

Then, as an eagle, who with pious care

Was beating widely on the wing for prey,

To her now silent eiry does repair,

And finds her callow infants forced away;

108.

Stung with her love, she stoops upon the plain,

The broken air loud whistling as she flies;

She stops and listens, and shoots forth again,

And guides her pinions by her young ones cries.

109.

With such kind passion hastes the prince to fight,

And spreads his flying canvas to the sound;

Him, whom no danger, were he there, could fright,

Now absent, every little noise can wound.

110.

As in a drought the thirsty creatures cry,

And gape upon the gathered clouds for rain;

And first the martlet meets it in the sky,

And with wet wings joys all the feathered train;

111.

With such glad hearts did our despairing men

Salute the appearance of the prince's fleet;

And each ambitiously would claim the ken,

That with first eyes did distant safety meet.

112.

The Dutch, who came like greedy hinds before,

To reap the harvest their ripe ears did yield,

Now look like those, when rolling thunders roar,

And sheets of lightning blast the standing field.

113.

Full in the prince's passage, hills of sand,

And dangerous flats, in secret ambush lay;

Where the false tides skim o'er the covered land,

And seamen, with dissembled depths, betray.

114.

The wily Dutch, who, like fallen angels, feared

This new Messiah's coming, there did wait,

And round the verge their braving vessels steered,

To tempt his courage with so fair a bait.

115.

But he, unmoved, contemns their idle threat,

Secure of fame whene'er he please to fight;

His cold experience tempers all his heat,

And inbred worth doth boasting valour slight.

116.

Heroic virtue did his actions guide,

And he the substance, not the appearance, chose;

To rescue one such friend he took more pride,

Than to destroy whole thousands of such foes.

117.

But when approached, in strict embraces bound,

Rupert and Albemarle together grow;

He joys to have his friend in safety found,

Which he to none but to that friend would owe.

118.

The cheerful soldiers, with new stores supplied,

Now long to execute their spleenful will;

And, in revenge for those three days they tried,

Wish one, like Joshua's, when the sun stood still.

119.

Thus reinforced, against the adverse fleet,[146]

Still doubling ours, brave Rupert leads the way;

With the first blushes of the morn they meet,

And bring night back upon the new-born day.

120.

His presence soon blows up the kindling fight,

And his loud guns speak thick like angry men;

It seemed as slaughter had been breathed all night,

And death new-pointed his dull dart agen.

121.

The Dutch too well his mighty conduct knew,

And matchless courage, since the former fight;

Whose navy like a stiff-stretched cord did shew,

Till he bore in, and bent them into flight.

122.

The wind he shares, while half their fleet offends

His open side, and high above him shows;

Upon the rest at pleasure he descends,

And, doubly harmed, he double harms bestows.

123.

Behind, the general mends his weary pace,

And sullenly to his revenge he sails;

So glides some trodden serpent on the grass,

And long behind his wounded volume trails.[147]

124.

The increasing sound is borne to either shore,

And for their stakes the throwing nations fear;

Their passions double with the cannons' roar,

And with warm wishes each man combats there.

125.

Plied thick and close as when the fight begun,

Their huge unwieldy navy wastes away:

So sicken waneing moons too near the sun,

And blunt their crescents on the edge of day.

126.

And now, reduced on equal terms to fight,

Their ships like wasted patrimonies show;

Where the thin scattering trees admit the light,

And shun each other's shadows as they grow.

127.

The warlike prince had sever'd from the rest

Two giant ships, the pride of all the main;

Which with his one so vigorously he pressed,

And flew so home, they could not rise again.

128.

Already battered, by his lee they lay;

In vain upon the passing winds they call;

The passing winds through their torn canvas play,

And flagging sails on heartless sailors fall.

129.

Their opened sides receive a gloomy light,

Dreadful as day let into shades below;

Without, grim death rides barefaced in their sight,

And urges entering billows as they flow.

130.

When one dire shot, the last they could supply,

Close by the board the prince's main-mast bore:

All three, now helpless, by each other lie,

And this offends not, and those fear no more.

131.

So have I seen some fearful hare maintain

A course, till tired before the dog she lay;

Who, stretched behind her, pants upon the plain,

Past power to kill, as she to get away.

132.

With his loll'd tongue he faintly licks his prey;

His warm breath blows her flix[148] up as she lies;

She, trembling, creeps upon the ground away,

And looks back to him with beseeching eyes.

133.

The prince unjustly does his stars accuse,

Which hindered him to push his fortune on;

For what they to his courage did refuse,

By mortal valour never must be done.

134.

This lucky hour the wise Batavian takes,

And warns his tattered fleet to follow home;

Proud to have so got off with equal stakes,

Where 'twas a triumph not to be o'ercome.[149]

135.

The general's force, as kept alive by fight,

Now not opposed, no longer can pursue;

Lasting till heaven had done his courage right;

When he had conquered, he his weakness knew.

136.

He casts a frown on the departing foe,

And sighs to see him quit the watery field;

His stern fixed eyes no satisfaction show,

For all the glories which the fight did yield.

137.

Though, as when fiends did miracles avow,

He stands confessed e'en by the boastful Dutch;

He only does his conquest disavow,

And thinks too little what they found too much.

138.

Returned, he with the fleet resolved to stay;

No tender thoughts of home his heart divide;

Domestic joys and cares he puts away,

For realms are households which the great must guide.[150]

139.

As those, who unripe veins in mines explore,

On the rich bed again the warm turf lay,

Till time digests the yet imperfect ore,

And know it will be gold another day;[151]

140.

So looks our monarch on this early fight,

Th' essay and rudiments of great success;

Which all-maturing time must bring to light,

While he, like heaven, does each day's labour bless.

141.

Heaven ended not the first or second day,

Yet each was perfect to the work designed:

God and kings work, when they their work survey,

A passive aptness in all subjects find.

142.

In burdened vessels first, with speedy care,

His plenteous stores do season'd timber send;

Thither the brawny carpenters repair,

And as the surgeons of maimed ships attend.

143.

With cord and canvas from rich Hamburgh sent,

His navy's molted wings he imps[152] once more;

Tall Norway fir, their masts in battle spent,

And English oak, sprung leaks and planks restore.

144.

All hands employed, the royal work grows warm;

Like labouring bees on a long summer's day,

Some sound the trumpet for the rest to swarm,

And some on bells of tasted lilies play.

145.

With glewy wax some new foundations lay,

Of virgin-combs, which from the roof are hung;

Some armed within doors, upon duty stay,

Or tend the sick, or educate the young.[153]

146.

So here some pick out bullets from the sides,

Some drive old oakum through each seam and rift;

Their left hand does the caulking-iron guide,

The rattling mallet with the right they lift.

147.

With boiling pitch another near at hand,

From friendly Sweden[154] brought, the seams in-stops;

Which well paid o'er, the salt sea waves withstand,

And shakes them from the rising beak in drops.

148.

Some the galled ropes with dawby marline[155] bind,

Or searcloth masts with strong tarpawling[156] coats;

To try new shrouds, one mounts into the wind,

And one below their ease or stiffness notes.

149.

Our careful monarch stands in person by,

His new-cast cannons' firmness to explore;

The strength of big-corn'd powder loves to try,

And ball and cartridge sorts for every bore.

150.

Each day brings fresh supplies of arms and men,

And ships which all last winter were abroad;

And such as fitted since the fight had been,

Or new from stocks, were fallen into the road.

151.

The goodly London, in her gallant trim,

The Phœnix-daughter of the vanished old,[157]

Like a rich bride does to the ocean swim,

And on her shadow rides in floating gold.

152.

Her flag aloft, spread ruffling to the wind,

And sanguine streamers, seem the flood to fire;

The weaver, charmed with what his loom designed,

Goes on to sea, and knows not to retire.

153.

With roomy decks, her guns of mighty strength,

Whose low-laid mouths each mounting billow laves;

Deep in her draught, and warlike in her length,

She seems a sea-wasp flying on the waves.

154.

This martial present, piously designed,

The loyal city give their best-loved king;

And, with a bounty ample as the wind,

Built, fitted, and maintained, to aid him bring.

155.

By viewing nature, nature's handmaid, art,

Makes mighty things from small beginnings grow:

Thus fishes first to shipping did impart,

Their tail the rudder, and their head the prow.

156.

Some log, perhaps, upon the waters swam,

An useless drift, which, rudely cut within;

And hollow'd, first a floating trough became,

And cross some rivulet passage did begin.

157.

In shipping such as this, the Irish kern,

And untaught Indian, on the stream did glide;

Ere sharp-keel'd boats to stem the flood did learn,

Or fin-like oars did spread from either side.

158.

Add but a sail, and Saturn so appeared,

When from lost empire he to exile went,

And with the golden age to Tyber steer'd,

Where coin and commerce first he did invent.

159.

Rude as their ships was navigation then;

No useful compass or meridian known;

Coasting, they kept the land within their ken,

And knew no north but when the Pole-star shone.

160.

Of all, who since have used the open sea,

Than the bold English none more fame have won;

Beyond the year, and out of heaven's high way,[158]

They make discoveries where they see no sun.

161.

But what so long in vain, and yet unknown,

By poor mankind's benighted wit is sought,

Shall in this age to Britain first be shewn,

And hence be to admiring nations taught.

162.

The ebbs of tides, and their mysterious flow,

We, as art's elements, shall understand;

And as by line upon the ocean go,

Whose paths shall be familiar as the land.

163.

Instructed ships shall sail to quick commerce,[159]

By which remotest regions are allied;

Which makes one city of the universe,

Where some may gain, and all may be supplied.

164.

Then we upon our globe's last verge shall go,

And view the ocean leaning on the sky:

From thence our rolling neighbours we shall know,

And on the lunar world securely pry.

165.

This I foretel from your auspicious care,[160]

Who great in search of God and nature grow;

Who best your wise Creator's praise declare,

Since best to praise His works is best to know.

166.

O truly royal! who behold the law,

And rule of beings in your Maker's mind;[161]

And thence, like limbecs, rich ideas draw,

To fit the levelled use of human-kind.

167.

But first the toils of war we must endure,

And from the injurious Dutch redeem the seas;

War makes the valiant of his right secure,

And gives up fraud to be chastised with ease.

168.

Already were the Belgians on our coast,[162]

Whose fleet more mighty every day became

By late success, which they did falsely boast,

And now, by first appearing, seemed to claim.

169.

Designing, subtile, diligent, and close,

They knew to manage war with wise delay;

Yet all those arts their vanity did cross,

And by their pride their prudence did betray.

170.

Nor staid the English long; but, well supplied,

Appear as numerous as the insulting foe;

The combat now by courage must be tried,

And the success the braver nation show.

171.

There was the Plymouth squadron now come in,

Which in the Straits last winter was abroad;

Which twice on Biscay's working bay had been,

And on the midland sea the French had awed.

172.

Old expert Allen, loyal all along,

Famed for his action on the Smyrna fleet;[163]

And Holmes, whose name shall live in epic song,

While music numbers, or while verse has feet.[164]

173.

Holmes, the Achates of the general's fight,

Who first bewitched our eyes with Guinea gold;

As once old Cato, in the Roman sight,

The tempting fruits of Afric did unfold.

174.

With him went Spragge, as bountiful as brave,

Whom his high courage to command had brought;[165]

Harman, who did the twice-fired Harry save,

And in his burning ship undaunted fought.[166]

175.

Young Hollis on a muse by Mars begot,

Born, Cæsar-like, to write and act great deeds;

Impatient to revenge his fatal shot,

His right hand doubly to his left succeeds.[167]

176.

Thousands were there in darker fame that dwell,

Whose deeds some nobler poem shall adorn;

And, though to me unknown, they sure fought well,

Whom Rupert led, and who were British born.

177.

Of every size an hundred fighting sail;

So vast the navy now at anchor rides,

That underneath it the pressed waters fail,

And with its weight it shoulders off the tides.

178.

Now, anchors weighed, the seamen shout so shrill,

That heaven and earth, and the wide ocean, rings;

A breeze from westward waits their sails to fill,

And rests in those high beds his downy wings.

179.

The wary Dutch this gathering storm foresaw,

And durst not bide it on the English coast;

Behind their treacherous shallows they withdraw,

And there lay snares to catch the British host.

180.

So the false spider, when her nets are spread,

Deep ambushed in her silent den does lie,

And feels far off the trembling of her thread,

Whose filmy cord should bind the struggling fly;

181.

Then, if at last she find him fast beset,

She issues forth, and runs along her loom;

She joys to touch the captive in her net,

And drag the little wretch in triumph home.

182.

The Belgians hoped, that, with disordered haste,

Our deep-cut keels upon the sands might run;

Or, if with caution leisurely were past,

Their numerous gross[168] might charge us one by one.

183.

But with a fore-wind pushing them above,

And swelling tide that heaved them from below,

O'er the blind flats our warlike squadrons move,

And with spread sails to welcome battle go.

184.

It seemed as there the British Neptune stood,

With all his hosts of waters at command;

Beneath them to submit the officious flood,

And with his trident shoved them off the sand.[169]

185.

To the pale foes they suddenly draw near,

And summon them to unexpected fight:

They start like murderers when ghosts appear,

And draw their curtains in the dead of night.

186.

Now van to van the foremost squadrons meet,

The midmost battles hastening up behind;[170]

Who view far off the storm of falling sleet,

And hear their thunder rattling in the wind.

187.

At length the adverse admirals appear,

The two bold champions of each country's right;

Their eyes describe the lists as they come near,

And draw the lines of death before they fight.

188.

The distance judged for shot of every size,

The linstocks touch, the ponderous ball expires:[171]

The vigorous seaman every port-hole plies,

And adds his heart to every gun he fires!

189.

Fierce was the fight on the proud Belgians' side,

For honour, which they seldom sought before;

But now they by their own vain boasts were tied,

And forced, at least in shew, to prize it more.

190.

But sharp remembrance on the English part,

And shame of being matched by such a foe,

Rouse conscious virtue up in every heart,

And seeming to be stronger, makes them so.[172]

191.

Nor long the Belgians could that fleet sustain,

Which did two generals' fates, and Cæsar's bear;

Each several ship a victory did gain,

As Rupert or as Albemarle were there.

192.

Their battered admiral too soon withdrew,

Unthanked by ours for his unfinished fight;

But he the minds of his Dutch masters knew,

Who called that providence, which we called flight.

193.

Never did men more joyfully obey,

Or sooner understood the sign to fly;

With such alacrity they bore away,

As if, to praise them, all the States stood by.

194.

O famous leader of the Belgian fleet,

Thy monument inscribed such praise shall wear,

As Varro, timely flying, once did meet,

Because he did not of his Rome despair.[173]

195.

Behold that navy, which, a while before,

Provoked the tardy English close to fight;

Now draw their beaten vessels close to shore,

As larks lie dared, to shun the hobbies'[174] flight.

196.

Whoe'er would English monuments survey,

In other records may our courage know;

But let them hide the story of this day,

Whose fame was blemished by too base a foe.

197.

Or if too busily they will inquire

Into a victory, which we disdain;

Then let them know, the Belgians did retire,

Before the patron saint of injured Spain.[175]

198.

Repenting England this revengeful day

To Philip's manes[176] did an offering bring;

England, which first, by leading them astray,

Hatched up rebellion to destroy her king.

199.

Our fathers bent their baneful industry,

To check a monarchy that slowly grew;

But did not France or Holland's fate foresee,

Whose rising power to swift dominion flew.

200.

In fortune's empire blindly thus we go,

And wander after pathless destiny;

Whose dark resorts since prudence cannot know,

In vain it would provide for what shall be.

201.

But whate'er English to the blessed shall go,

And the fourth Harry or first Orange meet;

Find him disowning of a Bourbon foe,

And him detesting a Batavian fleet.[177]

202.

Now on their coasts our conquering navy rides,

Way-lays their merchants, and their land besets;

Each day new wealth without their care provides;

They lie asleep with prizes in their nets.

203.

So close behind some promontory lie

The huge leviathans to attend their prey;

And give no chace, but swallow in the fry,

Which through their gaping jaws mistake the way.

204.

Nor was this all; in ports and roads remote,

Destructive fires among whole fleets we send;

Triumphant flames upon the water float,

And out-bound ships at home their voyage end.[178]

205.

Those various squadrons, variously designed,

Each vessel freighted with a several load,

Each squadron waiting for a several wind,

All find but one,--to burn them in the road.

206.

Some bound for Guinea, golden sand to find,

Bore all the gauds the simple natives wear;

Some for the pride of Turkish courts designed,

For folded turbans finest Holland bear.

207.

Some English wool vexed in a Belgian loom,

And into cloth of spongy softness made,

Did into France, or colder Denmark, doom,

To ruin with worse ware our staple trade.

208.

Our greedy seamen rummage every hold,

Smile on the booty of each wealthier chest;

And, as the priests who with their gods make bold,

Take what they like, and sacrifice the rest.

209.

But ah! how insincere are all our joys!

Which sent from heaven, like lightning, make no stay;

Their palling taste the journey's length destroys,

Or grief, sent post, o'ertakes them on the way.

210.

Swelled with our late successes on the foe,

Which France and Holland wanted power to cross,

We urge an unseen fate to lay us low,

And feed their envious eyes with English loss.

211.

Each element his dread command obeys,

Who makes or ruins with a smile or frown;

Who, as by one he did our nation raise,

So now he with another pulls us down.

212.

Yet London, empress of the northern clime,

By an high fate thou greatly didst expire;

Great as the world's, which, at the death of time,

Must fall, and rise a nobler frame by fire.[179]

213.

As when some dire usurper heaven provides,

To scourge his country with a lawless sway;

His birth, perhaps, some petty village hides,

And sets his cradle out of fortune's way:

214.

Till fully ripe his swelling fate breaks out,

And hurries him to mighty mischiefs on;

His prince, surprised at first, no ill could doubt,

And wants the power to meet it when 'tis known:

215.

Such was the rise of this prodigious fire,

Which in mean buildings first obscurely bred,

From thence did soon to open streets aspire,

And straight to palaces and temples spread.

216.

The diligence of trades and noiseful gain,

And luxury more late, asleep were laid;

All was the night's; and, in her silent reign,

No sound the rest of nature did invade.

217.

In this deep quiet, from what source unknown,

Those seeds of fire their fatal birth disclose;

And, first, few scattering sparks about were blown,

Big with the flames that to our ruin rose.

218.