Thus Israel sinned, impenitently hard,
And vainly thought the present ark their guard;[327]
But when the haughty Philistines appear, }
They fled, abandoned to their foes and fear; }
Their God was absent, though his ark was there.
And vainly thought the present ark their guard;[327]
But when the haughty Philistines appear, }
They fled, abandoned to their foes and fear; }
Their God was absent, though his ark was there.
Dryden - Complete
p.
1.
]
[Footnote 271: _Ergoteering_ was a phrase used by Dryden in his
"Defence of the Duchess's Paper," and which Stillingfleet harps upon
throughout his "Vindication. "]
[Footnote 272: Ralph's History, Vol. I. p. 933. --Secret Consults, &c.
of the Roman Party, p. 59. ]
[Footnote 273: "One Petre, descended from a noble family; a man of no
learning, nor any way famed for his virtue, but who made up all in
boldness and zeal, was the Jesuit of them all, that seemed animated
with the most courage. "--BURNET. ]
[Footnote 274: "We have," says one of the order, "a good while begun
to get footing in England. We teach humanity at Lincoln, Norwich, and
York. At Warwick, we have a public chapel secured from all injuries by
the king's soldiers; we have also bought some houses of the city of
Wiggorn, in the province of Lancaster. The Catholic cause very much
increaseth. In some Catholic churches, upon holidays, above 1500 are
always numbered present at the sermon. At London, likewise, things
succeed no worse. Every holiday, or preaching, people are so frequent,
that many of the chapels cannot contain them. Two of our fathers,
Darmes and Berfall, do constantly say mass before the king and queen.
Father Edmund Newill, before the queen-dowager, Father Alexander Regnes
in the chapel of the ambassador aforesaid, others in other places. Many
houses are bought for the college in the Savoy, as they call it, nigh
Somerset-house, London, the palace of the queen-dowager, to the value
of about eighteen thousand florins; in making of which, after the form
of a college, they labour very hard, that the schools may be opened
before Easter. " A Letter from a Jesuit at Liege. _Somers' Tracts_, p.
248. About this letter, see Burnet's History, Vol. I. p. 711. The king
also granted the manor of York to Lawson, a priest, for thirty years,
as a seminary for the education of youth in the Catholic faith; to the
great displeasure of Sir John Reresby, the governor of the city, who
had fitted it up for his own residence. See his _Memoirs_, pp. 245,
246. ]
[Footnote 275: So says the memorable "Test of the Church of England's
Loyalty. "]
[Footnote 276: New Test, &c. ]
[Footnote 277: Roman Catholic Principles, 1680. ]
[Footnote 278: There is a copy of this old caricature print in
Luttrell's Collection. ]
[Footnote 279: History of his Own Times, Vol. I. p. 280. ]
[Footnote 280: See Burnet's Life, by his Son, p. 686. ]
[Footnote 281: See Dr Flexman's catalogue of his works, under the head
"Tracts, Political, Polemical, and Miscellaneous. "]
[Footnote 282: Mr B--ty, vice-chamberlain. ]
[Footnote 283: Notes on the Phœnix Pastoral Letter, _Johnson's Works_,
pp. 317, 318. ]
[Footnote 284: The Declaration of Indulgence. See Vol. IX. p. 447. ]
BRITANNIA REDIVIVA:
A POEM
ON
THE BIRTH OF THE PRINCE,
(BORN 10TH JUNE, 1688. )
_Di patrii indigetes, et Romule, Vestaque mater,
Quæ Tuscum Tyberim et Romana palatia servas,
Hunc saltem everso puerum succurrere sæclo
Ne prohibete! satis jampridem sanguine nostro
Laomedonteæ luimus perjuria Trojæ. _
VIRG. GEORG. 1.
BRITANNIA REDIVIVA.
The remarkable incident, which gave rise to the following poem, was
hailed by the Catholics with the most unbounded joy. That party,
whose transient prosperity depended upon the declining life of James
II. , could hardly enjoy their present power, embittered as it was by
the reflection, that it must end with the reign of the king and the
succession of the Princess of Orange. Many circumstances seemed to
render the hopes of the king having a male heir of his body extremely
precarious. His system was said to have been injured by early
dissipation, and he was now advanced in life. The queen, also, had been
in a bad state of health; had lost all her children soon after they
were born; and had now, for several years, ceased to have any. Amidst
these discouraging considerations, the queen's pregnancy was announced
in 1687; and even before his birth, addressers and panegyrists in verse
hailed the future prince, as a pledge for the maintenance of liberty of
conscience, and the security of the royal line. [285]
But the Catholics were so transported with this unexpected happiness,
that they could not refrain from spreading an hundred follies, tending
to connect the queen's pregnancy with the efficacy of the king's faith.
Some said, that the queen's conception took place at the very time
when her mother made a vow to the Lady of Loretto, that her daughter
might by her means have a son: Others attributed it to the queen's
personal influence with Saint Xavier: Others to the intercessions of
the Jesuits, among whom the king had enrolled himself: All ascribed
so happy and unhoped an event to something more than mere natural
causes, and ventured to presage, that the joyful fruit of the queen's
conception would prove a son, since otherwise, it was said, God would
have done his work by halves. [286] It is dangerous for a religious
sect to cry, a miracle! for it is always echoed by their adversaries,
shouting out, an imposture! The same circumstances which induced the
Catholics to believe that this happy event was owing to a peculiar
divine interposition, led the nation to ascribe so unexpected and
opportune an occurrence to artifice and imposition; and they were
prepared to pronounce a birth spurious, which their adversaries had
incautiously pushed to the verge of miraculous.
On the 10th of June, 1688, the prince was born, under circumstances
which ought to have removed all suspicion of imposture. But these
suspicions were too deeply rooted in party prejudices and fears; and it
became a distinguishing mark of a true Protestant, to hold for spurious
the birth of a prince, which took place in the presence of more people
than is either consistent with custom or decency.
In the mean while, public rejoicings, of the most splendid kind,
were solemnized at home and abroad;[287] and the poets flocked with
their addresses of congratulation[288] on the birth of a Prince of
Wales, who was doomed shortly to be distinguished through the English
dominions by the ignominious appellation of Pretender, and abroad, by
the dubious title of Chevalier de St George. It was peculiarly the part
of our author, as poet-laureat, and a good Catholic, to solemnize an
event of so much importance to the king, and those of his religion, and
to bear down, if possible, the popular prejudice by the exertion of his
poetical powers. "Britannia Rediviva" was written, nine days after the
event celebrated, and published accordingly. It is licensed on the 19th
of June.
In this poem, our author assumes the tone and feeling which we
have described as general among the Catholics, upon this happy and
unexpected event. It is less an address of congratulation than a solemn
devotional hymn; and, even considered as such, abounds with expressions
of awful gratitude, rather for a miraculous interposition of heaven
and the blessed saints, than for a blessing conferred through the
ordinary course of nature. Dryden, who knew how to assume every style
that fitted the occasion, writes here in the character of a devout and
grateful Catholic, with much of the _unction_ which marks the hymns of
the Roman church. In English poetry, we have hardly another example of
the peculiar tone which the invocation of saints, and an enthusiastic
faith in the mystic doctrines of the Catholic faith, can give to
poetry. To me, I confess, that communion seems to offer the same
facilities to the poet, which it has been long famous for affording
to the painter; and the "Britannia Rediviva," while it celebrates the
mystic influence of the sacred festivals of the Paraclete and the
Trinity, and introduces the warlike forms of St Michael and St George,
has often reminded me of one of the ancient altar pieces, which it is
impossible to regard without reverence, though presenting miracles
which never happened, or saints who never existed. These subordinate
divinities are something upon which the imagination, dazzled and
overwhelmed by the contemplation of a single Omnipotent Being, can
fairly rest and expand itself. They approach nearer to humanity and
to comprehension; yet are sufficiently removed from both, to have
the full effect of sublime obscurity. Dryden has undoubtedly reaped
considerable advantage from religion in the present poem. It must,
however, be owned, that the effect of these passages is much injured
by the frequent allusion to the deities of classical mythology; and
that Dryden has ranked the gods and goddesses of ancient Rome with the
saints of her modern church, in the same indiscriminate order in which
they are classed in the Pantheon. We have the Giants' War immediately
preceding the miracle wrought on the Shunamite's son; and the serpents
of the infant Hercules are classed in the very sentence with the
dragons of the Apocalypse. On one occasion he has stooped yet lower,
and condescended to pun upon the child's being born on Trinity Sunday,
as promising at least a _trine_ of infant princes.
Still, however, the strain of the poem is, upon the whole, grave and
exalted. Besides the general tone of "Britannia Rediviva," there are
many passages in it deserving the reader's attention. The address
to the queen, beginning, "But you, propitious queen," has all the
smoothness with which Dryden could vary the masculine character of his
general poetry, when he addressed the female sex, and forms a marked
contrast to the more majestic tone of the rest of the piece. It may
indeed be said of Dryden, as he himself says of Virgil, that though he
is smooth where smoothness is required, yet he is so far from affecting
that general character, that he seems rather to disdain it.
The original edition of the "Britannia Rediviva" is in quarto, printed,
as usual, for Tonson, with a motto from the first book of the Georgics,
which is now restored. The concluding lines refer to the death of so
many Catholics by the perjured evidences of Oates and Bedlow:
---- _satis jampridem sanguine nostro
Laomedonteæ luimus_ perjuria _Trojæ. _
The word _perjuria_, as well as _Puerum_, in the preceding passage,
are marked by a difference of type; a mode of soliciting the attention
of the reader to a pointed remark or inuendo, which was first used in
Charles II. 's time, and seems to have been introduced by L'Estrange,
who carried it to a most extravagant degree, chequering his Observators
with all manner of characters, from the Roman to the Anglo-Saxon.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 285: The addresses of the grand juries of the counties of
Monmouth, Stafford, Glocester, Yorkshire, &c. &c. , all pressed forward
upon this occasion, and are all positive that the blessed hope of the
queen's womb must necessarily prove a son, since the king seemed to
have very little occasion for more daughters. Edmund Arwaker is of the
same opinion, in his poem humbly dedicated to the queen, on occasion of
her majesty's happy conception. ]
[Footnote 286: "That which does us most harm with the lords and great
men, is the apprehension of a heretic successor: For as a lord told me
lately, assure me of a Catholic successor, and I assure you I and my
family will be so too. To this purpose the queen's happy delivery will
be of very great moment. Our zealous Catholics do already lay two to
one that it will be a prince. God does nothing by halves, and every
day masses are said upon this very occasion. "--_Letter from Father
Petre to Father La Chaise. _ This letter is a forgery, but it distinctly
expresses the hopes and apprehensions of both parties. ]
[Footnote 287: The most remarkable were celebrated at the Hague, by
the Marquis of Abbeville, his majesty's ambassador there. On one side
of a triumphal arch were the figures of Truth and Justice, with this
inscription: _Veritas et Justitia fulcimentum throni Patris et erunt
mei_: On the other side were Religion and Liberty embracing, with
this motto, _Religio et Libertas amplexatæ erant_. On the portico was
painted the conquest of the dragon by St George, and the delivery
of St Margaret, explained to allude to the liberty of conscience
procured by James's abolition of the test and penal laws. These
decorations, remarkable for their import, and the place in which they
were exhibited, were accompanied with the discharge of fire-works, and
other public rejoicings. There are particular accounts of the splendid
rejoicings at Ratisbon and Paris, &c. &c. in the Gazettes of the
period. ]
[Footnote 288: As for example, the poets of Isis, in a collection
called "_Strenæ Natalitiæ in Celsissimum principem. --Oxoni; E Theatro
Shedoniano, 1688_. " Consisting of Latin, Greek, Arabic, and Turkish,
pastoral, heroic, and lyrical pieces, on this happy topic.
The following poems are in the Luttrell Collection:
"_Votum pro Principe. _
"To the King, upon the Queen's being delivered of a Son; by John Baber,
Esq.
"To the King, on ditto; by William Niven, late master of the music
school of Inverness, in Scotland. " Surely the very _ultima_ Thule
of poetry.
"A Congratulatory Poem on ditto, by Mrs Behn.
"A Pindarique Ode on ditto, by Calib Calle. "
]
BRITANNIA REDIVIVA.
Our vows are heard betimes, and heaven takes care
To grant, before we can conclude the prayer;
Preventing angels met it half the way,
And sent us back to praise, who came to pray.
Just on the day, when the high-mounted sun
Did farthest in its northern progress run,[289]
He bended forward, and even stretched the sphere
Beyond the limits of the lengthened year,
To view a brighter sun in Britain born; }
That was the business of his longest morn; }
The glorious object seen, 'twas time to turn. }
Departing spring could only stay to shed}
Her gloomy beauties on the genial bed, }
But left the manly summer in her stead, }
With timely fruit the longing land to cheer,
And to fulfil the promise of the year.
Betwixt two seasons comes the auspicious heir,
This age to blossom, and the next to bear.
Last solemn Sabbath[290] saw the church attend,
The Paraclete in fiery pomp descend;
But when his wonderous octave[291] rolled again,
He brought a royal infant in his train:
So great a blessing to so good a king,
None but the Eternal Comforter could bring.
Or did the mighty Trinity conspire,
As once in council to create our sire?
It seems as if they sent the new-born guest,
To wait on the procession of their feast;
And on their sacred anniverse decreed
To stamp their image on the promised seed.
Three realms united, and on one bestowed,
An emblem of their mystic union showed;
The Mighty Trine the triple empire shared,
As every person would have one to guard.
Hail, son of prayers! by holy violence
Drawn down from heaven;[292] but long be banished thence,
And late to thy paternal skies retire!
To mend our crimes, whole ages would require;
To change the inveterate habit of our sins,
And finish what thy godlike sire begins.
Kind heaven, to make us Englishmen again,
No less can give us than a patriarch's reign.
The sacred cradle to your charge receive,
Ye seraphs, and by turns the guard relieve;
Thy father's angel, and thy father join,
To keep possession, and secure the line;
But long defer the honours of thy fate;
Great may they be like his, like his be late,
That James this running century may view,
And give this son an auspice to the new.
Our wants exact at least that moderate stay; }
For, see the dragon[293] winged on his way, }
To watch the travail,[294] and devour the prey: }
Or, if allusions may not rise so high, }
Thus, when Alcides raised his infant cry,}
The snakes besieged his young divinity; }
But vainly with their forked tongues they threat,
For opposition makes a hero great.
To needful succour all the good will run,
And Jove assert the godhead of his son.
O still repining at your present state,
Grudging yourselves the benefits of fate;
Look up, and read in characters of light
A blessing sent you in your own despite!
The manna falls, yet that celestial bread,
Like Jews, you munch, and murmur while you feed.
May not your fortune be, like theirs, exiled,
Yet forty years to wander in the wild!
Or, if it be, may Moses live at least,
To lead you to the verge of promised rest!
Though poets are not prophets, to foreknow
What plants will take the blight, and what will grow,
By tracing heaven, his footsteps may be found;
Behold, how awfully he walks the round!
God is abroad, and, wondrous in his ways,
The rise of empires, and their fall, surveys;
More, might I say, than with an usual eye, }
He sees his bleeding church in ruins lie, }
And hears the souls of saints beneath his altar cry. }
Already has he lifted high the sign,
Which crowned the conquering arms of Constantine. [295]
The moon[296] grows pale at that presaging sight,
And half her train of stars have lost their light.
Behold another Sylvester,[297] to bless
The sacred standard, and secure success;
Large of his treasures, of a soul so great,
As fills and crowds his universal seat.
Now view at home a second Constantine;[298]
(The former too was of the British line,)
Has not his healing balm your breaches closed,
Whose exile many sought, and few opposed? [299]
O, did not heaven, by its eternal doom,
Permit those evils, that this good might come?
So manifest, that even the moon-eyed sects
See whom and what this Providence protects.
Methinks, had we within our minds no more
Than that one shipwreck on the fatal Ore,[300]
That only thought may make us think again,
What wonders God reserves for such a reign.
To dream, that chance his preservation wrought,
Were to think Noah was preserved for nought;
Or the surviving eight were not designed
To people earth, and to restore their kind.
When humbly on the royal babe we gaze,
The manly lines of a majestic face
Give awful joy; 'tis paradise to look
On the fair frontispiece of nature's book:
If the first opening page so charms the sight,
Think how the unfolded volume will delight!
See how the venerable[301] infant lies
In early pomp; how through the mother's eyes
The father's soul, with an undaunted view,
Looks out, and takes our homage as his due!
See on his future subjects how he smiles,
Nor meanly flatters, nor with craft beguiles;
But with an open face, as on his throne,
Assures our birthrights, and assumes his own
Born in broad day-light, that the ungrateful rout
May find no room for a remaining doubt;[302]
Truth, which itself is light, does darkness shun,
And the true eaglet safely dares the sun.
Fain[303] would the fiends have made a dubious birth,
Loth to confess the godhead clothed in earth;
But, sickened, after all their baffled lies,
To find an heir apparent in the skies,
Abandoned to despair, still may they grudge,
And, owning not the Saviour, prove the judge.
Not great Æneas stood in plainer day,[304]
When the dark mantling mist dissolved away;
He to the Tyrians showed his sudden face,
Shining with all his goddess mother's grace;
For she herself had made his countenance bright,
Breathed honour on his eyes, and her own purple light.
If our victorious Edward,[305] as they say,
Gave Wales a prince on that propitious day,
Why may not years revolving with his fate
Produce his like, but with a longer date;
One, who may carry to a distant shore
The terror that his famed forefather bore?
But why should James, or his young hero, stay
For slight presages of a name or day?
We need no Edward's fortune to adorn
That happy moment when our prince was born;
Our prince adorns this day, and ages hence
Shall wish his birth-day for some future prince.
Great Michael,[306] prince of all the etherial hosts,
And whate'er inborn saints our Britain boasts;
And thou, the adopted patron[307] of our isle,
With cheerful aspects on this infant smile!
The pledge of heaven, which, dropping from above,
Secures our bliss, and reconciles his love.
Enough of ills our dire rebellion wrought,[308]
When to the dregs we drank the bitter draught;
Then airy atoms did in plagues conspire, }
Nor did the avenging angel yet retire, }
But purged our still-increasing crimes with fire. [309]}
Then perjured plots,[310] the still impending test,[311]
And worse--[312] but charity conceals the rest.
Here stop the current of the sanguine flood;
Require not, gracious God! thy martyrs' blood;
But let their dying pangs, their living toil,
Spread a rich harvest through their native soil;
A harvest ripening for another reign,
Of which this royal babe may reap the grain.
Enough of early Saints one womb has given,
Enough increased the family of heaven;[313]
Let them for his and our atonement go,
And, reigning blest above, leave him to rule below.
Enough already has the year foreslowed
His wonted course, the sea has overflowed,
The meads were floated with a weeping spring,
And frightened birds in woods forgot to sing;
The strong-limbed steed beneath his harness faints,
And the same shivering sweat his lord attaints. [314]
When will the minister of wrath give o'er?
Behold him at Araunah's threshing-floor!
He stops, and seems to sheath his flaming brand,
Pleased with burnt incense from our David's hand;[315]
David has bought the Jebusite's abode,
And raised an altar to the living God.
Heaven, to reward him, makes his joys sincere;}
No future ills nor accidents appear, }
To sully and pollute the sacred infant's year. }
Five months to discord and debate were given;[316]
He sanctifies the yet remaining seven.
Sabbath of months! henceforth in him be blest,
And prelude to the realms perpetual rest!
Let his baptismal drops for us atone;[317]
Lustrations for offences not his own:
Let conscience, which is interest ill disguised,[318]
In the same font be cleansed, and all the land baptized.
Unnamed[319] as yet; at least unknown to fame;
Is there a strife in heaven about his name,
Where every famous predecessor vies,
And makes a faction for it in the skies?
Or must it be reserved to thought alone?
Such was the sacred Tetragrammaton. [320]
Things worthy silence must not be revealed;
Thus the true name of Rome[321] was kept concealed,
To shun the spells and sorceries of those,
Who durst her infant majesty oppose.
But when his tender strength in time shall rise
To dare ill tongues, and fascinating eyes,
This isle, which hides the little Thunderer's fame,
Shall be too narrow to contain his name:
The artillery of heaven shall make him known;
Crete[322] could not hold the god, when Jove was grown.
As Jove's increase,[323] who from his brain was born,
Whom arms and arts did equally adorn,
Free of the breast was bred, whose milky taste
Minerva's name to Venus had debased;
So this imperial babe rejects the food,
That mixes monarch's with plebeian blood:[324]
Food that his inborn courage might controul,
Extinguish all the father in his soul,
And for his Estian race, and Saxon strain,
Might reproduce some second Richard's reign.
Mildness he shares from both his parents' blood;
But kings too tame are despicably good:
Be this the mixture of this regal child,
By nature manly, but by virtue mild.
Thus far the furious transport of the news
Had to prophetic madness fired the muse;
Madness ungovernable, uninspired,
Swift to foretel whatever she desired.
Was it for me the dark abyss to tread,
And read the book which angels cannot read?
How was I punished, when the sudden blast[325]
The face of heaven, and our young sun, o'ercast!
Fame, the swift ill increasing as she rolled,
Disease, despair, and death, at three reprises told:
At three insulting strides she stalked the town,
And, like contagion, struck the loyal down.
Down fell the winnowed wheat; but, mounted high,
The whirlwind bore the chaff, and hid the sky.
Here black rebellion shooting from below, }
(As earth's gigantic brood by moments grow,) }
And here the sons of God are petrified with woe:}
An apoplex of grief! so low were driven
The saints, as hardly to defend their heaven.
As, when pent vapours run their hollow round,
Earthquakes, which are convulsions of the ground,
Break bellowing forth, and no confinement brook,
Till the third settles what the former shook;
Such heavings had our souls, till, slow and late,
Our life with his returned, and faith prevailed on fate.
By prayers the mighty blessing was implored,
To prayers was granted, and by prayers restored.
So, ere the Shunamite a son conceived,
The prophet promised, and the wife believed;
A son was sent, the son so much desired,
But soon upon the mother's knees expired.
The troubled seer approached the mournful door,
Ran, prayed, and sent his pastoral staff before,
Then stretched his limbs upon the child, and mourned,
Till warmth, and breath, and a new soul returned. [326]
Thus mercy stretches out her hand, and saves
Desponding Peter, sinking in the waves.
As when a sudden storm of hail and rain
Beats to the ground the yet unbearded grain,
Think not the hopes of harvest are destroyed
On the flat field, and on the naked void;
The light, unloaded stem, from tempest freed,
Will raise the youthful honours of his head;
And, soon restored by native vigour, bear
The timely product of the bounteous year.
Nor yet conclude all fiery trials past,
For heaven will exercise us to the last;
Sometimes will check us in our full career,
With doubtful blessings, and with mingled fear,
That, still depending on his daily grace,
His every mercy for an alms may pass;
With sparing hands will diet us to good,
Preventing surfeits of our pampered blood.
So feeds the mother bird her craving young
With little morsels, and delays them long.
True, this last blessing was a royal feast;
But where's the wedding-garment on the guest?
Our manners, as religion were a dream,
Are such as teach the nations to blaspheme.
In lusts we wallow, and with pride we swell,
And injuries with injuries repel;
Prompt to revenge, not daring to forgive,
Our lives unteach the doctrine we believe.
Thus Israel sinned, impenitently hard,
And vainly thought the present ark their guard;[327]
But when the haughty Philistines appear, }
They fled, abandoned to their foes and fear; }
Their God was absent, though his ark was there. }
Ah! lest our crimes should snatch this pledge away,
And make our joys the blessings of a day!
For we have sinned him hence, and that he lives,
God to his promise, not our practice, gives.
Our crimes would soon weigh down the guilty scale,
But James and Mary, and the church prevail.
Nor Amalek[328] can rout the chosen bands,
While Hur and Aaron hold up Moses' hands.
By living well, let us secure his days,
Moderate in hopes, and humble in our ways.
No force the free-born spirit can constrain,
But charity, and great examples gain.
Forgiveness is our thanks for such a day;
'Tis godlike God in his own coin to pay.
But you, propitious queen, translated here, }
From your mild heaven, to rule our rugged sphere,}
Beyond the sunny walks, and circling year; }
You, who your native climate have bereft
Of all the virtues, and the vices left;
Whom piety and beauty make their boast,
Though beautiful is well in pious lost;
So lost as star-light is dissolved away,
And melts into the brightness of the day;
Or gold about the royal diadem,
Lost, to improve the lustre of the gem,--
What can we add to your triumphant day?
Let the great gift the beauteous giver pay;
For should our thanks awake the rising sun, }
And lengthen, as his latest shadows run, }
That, though the longest day, would soon, too soon be done. }
Let angels' voices with their harps conspire,
But keep the auspicious infant from the choir;
Late let him sing above, and let us know
No sweeter music than his cries below.
Nor can I wish to you, great monarch, more
Than such an annual income to your store;
The day, which gave this unit, did not shine
For a less omen, than to fill the trine.
After a prince, an admiral beget;
The Royal Sovereign wants an anchor yet.
Our isle has younger titles still in store, }
And when the exhausted land can yield no more,}
Your line can force them from a foreign shore. }
The name of great your martial mind will suit;
But justice is your darling attribute:
Of all the Greeks, 'twas but one hero's due,[329]
And, in him, Plutarch prophesied of you.
A prince's favours but on few can fall,
But justice is a virtue shared by all.
Some kings the name of conquerors have assumed,
Some to be great, some to be gods presumed;
But boundless power, and arbitrary lust,
Made tyrants still abhor the name of just;
They shunned the praise this godlike virtue gives,
And feared a title that reproached their lives.
The power, from which all kings derive their state,
Whom they pretend, at least, to imitate,
Is equal both to punish and reward;
For few would love their God, unless they feared.
Resistless force and immortality
Make but a lame, imperfect deity;
Tempests have force unbounded to destroy,
And deathless being even the damned enjoy;
And yet heaven's attributes, both last and first,
One without life, and one with life accurst;
But justice is heaven's self, so strictly he,
That could it fail, the godhead could not be.
This virtue is your own; but life and state
Are, one to fortune subject, one to fate:
Equal to all, you justly frown or smile; }
Nor hopes nor fears your steady hand beguile; }
Yourself our balance hold, the world's our isle. }
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 289: The 10th of June. ]
[Footnote 290: Whitsunday. ]
[Footnote 291: Trinity Sunday, the octave of Whitsunday. ]
[Footnote 292: Note I. ]
[Footnote 293: Alluding only to the commonwealth party here, and in
other parts of the poem. DRYDEN. --See Note II. ]
[Footnote 294: Rev. xii. v. 4. ]
[Footnote 295: The Cross. ]
[Footnote 296: The Crescent, which the Turks bear for their arms.
DRYDEN. Note III. ]
[Footnote 297: The Pope, in the time of Constantine the Great; alluding
to the present Pope. DRYDEN. --See Note IV. ]
[Footnote 298: King James II. ]
[Footnote 299: Bill of Exclusion. ]
[Footnote 300: The Lemmon Ore, on which the vessel of King James was
lost in his return from Scotland. The crew perished, and he himself
escaped with difficulty. See Vol. IX. p. 401. ]
[Footnote 301: Venerable is here used in its original sense, as
deserving of veneration. But the epithet has been so commonly connected
with old age, that a modern poet would hardly venture to apply it to an
infant. ]
[Footnote 302: Note V. ]
[Footnote 303: Alluding to the temptation in the wilderness. ]
[Footnote 304:
_Restitit Æneas, clarâque in luce refulsit,
Os, humerosque deo similis; namque ipsa decoram
Cæsariem nato genetrix, lumenque juventæ
Purpureum, et lætos oculis afflarat honores. _
Æneid, Lib. I.
]
[Footnote 305: Edward the Black Prince, born on Trinity Sunday. ]
[Footnote 306: The motto of the poem explained. ]
[Footnote 307: St George. ]
[Footnote 308: The great Civil War. ]
[Footnote 309: The Fire of London. ]
[Footnote 310: The Popish plot. ]
[Footnote 311: The Test-act. ]
[Footnote 312: The death of the Jesuits, executed for the Plot. ]
[Footnote 313: All the queen's former children died in infancy. ]
[Footnote 314: The year 1688, big with so many events of importance,
commenced very unfavourably with stormy weather, and an epidemical
distemper among men and cattle. ]
[Footnote 315: 1 Kings, chap, xxxiv. ]
[Footnote 316: Note VI. ]
[Footnote 317: Original sin, supposed to be washed off by baptism. ]
[Footnote 318: See "The Hind and the Panther," p. 224. ]
[Footnote 319: The prince christened, but not named. ]
[Footnote 320: Jehovah, or the name of God, unlawful to be pronounced
by the Jews. DRYDEN. ]
[Footnote 321: Some authors say, that the true name of Rome was kept a
secret, _ne hostes incantamentis deos elicerent_. DRYDEN. ]
[Footnote 322: Candia, where Jupiter was born and lived secretly.
DRYDEN. ]
[Footnote 323: Pallas, or Minerva, said by the poets to have been bred
up by hand. DRYDEN. ]
[Footnote 324: The prince had no wet nurse. ]
[Footnote 325: The sudden false report of the prince's death. See Note
VII. ]
[Footnote 326: 2 Kings, chap. iv. ]
[Footnote 327: 1 Samuel, chap. iv. v. 10. ]
[Footnote 328: Exodus, chap. xvii. v. 8. ]
[Footnote 329: Aristides. See his Life in Plutarch. ]
NOTES
ON
BRITANNIA REDIVIVA.
Note I.
_Hail, son of prayers! by holy violence
Drawn down from heaven! _----P. 290.
We have noticed, in the introduction, that the birth of a Prince of
Wales, at a time of such critical importance to the Catholic faith,
was looked upon, by the Papists, as little less than miraculous. Some
talked of the petition of the Duchess of Modena to Our Lady of Loretto;
and Burnet affirms, that, in that famous chapel, there is actually a
register of the queen's conception, in consequence of her mother's
vow. But, in that case, the good duchess's intercession must have been
posthumous; for she died upon the 19th July, and the queen's time
run from the 6th of October. Others ascribed the event to the king's
pilgrimage to St Winifred's Well; and others, among whom was the Earl
of Melfort, suffered their zeal to hurry them into profaneness, and
spoke of the angel of the Lord moving the Bath waters, like the Pool of
Bethsaida. But the Jesuits claimed to their own prayers the principal
merit of procuring this blessing, which, indeed, they had ventured to
prophecy; for, among other devices which that order exhibited to the
English ambassador from James to the Pope, there was, according to Mr
Misson, one of a lily, from whose leaves distilled some drops of water,
which were once supposed, by naturalists, to become the seed of new
lilies: the motto was--_Lachrimor in prolem_--"I weep for children. "
Beneath which was the following distich:
_Pro natis, Jacobe, gemis, flos candide regum!
Hos natura tibi si neget, astra dabunt. _
For sons, fair flower of kings, why melts thine eye?
The heavens shall grant what nature may deny.
Note II.
_For, see the dragon winged on his way,
To watch the travail, and devour the prey. _--P. 291.
"And the dragon stood before the woman, who was ready to be delivered,
for to devour her child, as soon as it was born,"--Revel. xii. 4.
Dryden is at pains, by an original marginal note, which, with others,
is restored in this edition, to explain, that, by this allusion here,
and in other parts of the poem, he meant "the commonwealth's party. "
The acquittal of the bishops, on the 17th of June, two days before the
poem was licensed, must have excited a prudential reverence for the
church of England in the moment of her triumph. The poet fixes upon
this commonwealth party therefore, exclusively, the common reports
which had been circulated during the queen's pregnancy, and which are
thus noticed in the (supposititious) letter to Father La Chaise: "As
to the queen's being with child, that great concern goes as well as
we could wish, notwithstanding all the satirical discourses of the
heretics, who content themselves to vent their poison in libels, which,
by night, they disperse in the street, or fix upon the walls. There was
one lately found upon a pillar of a church, that imported, that such a
day thanks should be given to God for the queen's being great with a
cushion. If one of these pasquil-makers could be discovered, he would
but have an ill time on't, and should be made to take his last farewell
at Tyburn. "
The usual topics of wit, during the queen's pregnancy, were, allusions
to a cushion, a tympany, &c. &c. ; and Partridge, the Protestant
almanack-maker, utters the following predictions:--"That there was some
bawdy project on foot, either about buying, selling, or procuring, a
child or children, for some pious uses. " And, again, "Some child is to
be topped upon the lawful heirs, to cheat them out of their right and
estate. "--"God preserve the kingdom of England from invasion! for about
this time I fear it in earnest, and keep the Protestants there from
being dragooned. "
One single circumstance is sufficient to rout all suspicions thus
carefully infused into the people. It is well known, and is noticed
in one of L'Estrange's papers at the time, that a similar outcry was
raised during a former pregnancy of the queen; but the child proving a
female, there was no use for pushing the calumny any further upon that
occasion.
Note III.
_Already has he lifted high the sign,
Which crowned the conquering arms of Constantine;
The moon grows pale at that presaging sight,
And half her train of stars have lost their light. _--P. 292.
The public exercise of the Catholic religion in England is compared
to the miraculous display of the cross, with the motto, _In hoc signo
vinces_; which is said to have appeared to Constantine on the eve of
his great victory.
The war against the Turks, which was now raging in Hungary, seems
to have occupied much of James's attention. He amused himself with
anxiety about the fate of this holy warfare, as he probably thought
it, while his own crown was tottering on his head. In all his letters
to the Prince of Orange, he expresses his wishes for the peace of
Christendom, that the emperor and the Venetians might have leisure to
prosecute the war against the Turks; and conjectures about the taking
of Belgrade, and the progress of the Duke of Lorraine, are very gravely
sent, as interesting matter to the prince, who was anticipating the
conquest of England, and the dethronement of his father-in-law. There
may be something of affectation in this; but, as Dryden takes up
the same tone, it may be supposed to have forwarded James's general
conversation, as well as his letters to the Prince of Orange. --_See_
DALRYMPLE'S _Memoirs_. _Appendix to Book V. _
Note IV.
_Behold another Sylvester, to bless
The sacred standard, and secure success;
Large of his treasures, of a soul so great,
As fills and crowds his universal seat. _--P. 292.
Dryden talks of the Pope with the respect of a good Catholic.
Nevertheless it happened, by a very odd chance, that, while the throne
of England was held by a Catholic, for the first time during the course
of a century, the chair of St Peter was occupied by Innocent XI. who
acquired the uncommon epithet of the Protestant Pope. He received, with
great coldness, the Earl of Castlemain, whom James sent to Rome as his
ambassador, and refused the only two requests which a king of England
had made to Rome since the days of Henry VIII. , although they were only
a dispensation to Petre the king's confessor, to hold a bishopric,
and another to the Mareschal D'Humier's daughter to marry within the
prohibited degrees. Nay, the Pope is said to have privately admitted
the Prince of Orange's envoy to his confidence, while he treated
Castlemaine with so much contempt. The cause of this coldness was the
Pope's quarrel with James's ally, Louis, and his dislike to the order
of Jesuits, by whom the king of England was entirely ruled. In truth,
Innocent XI. was much more anxious to maintain the privileges of the
Roman see against those princes who retained her communion, than to add
England to a flock which was become so mutinous and untractable. He
was, besides, a man of no extended views, and chiefly concerned himself
with managing the papal revenue, involved in debt by a succession of
wasteful pontificates. To this the conversion of England promised no
immediate addition, and, with the narrowness of view natural to his
pursuits, Innocent XI. thought it better to employ his exertions in
realizing an immediate income, than in endeavouring to extend the faith
and authority of the church, by embarking in a design of great doubt
and hazard. He was, therefore, but a very poor representative of Pope
Sylvester. As for the last two lines, they contain, what we seldom
meet with in Dryden's poetry, a compliment not only bombastic, but
unappropriate, and even unmeaning.
Note V.
_Born in broad day-light, that the ungrateful rout
May find no room for a remaining doubt. _--P. 293.
In these lines, and the following, where the poet, with indecent
freedom, compares the suspicions entertained of a spurious birth to
the devil's doubts concerning our Saviour's godhead, he alludes to
those circumstances of publicity, which one would have supposed might
have rendered the birth of the prince indisputable. It took place at
ten o'clock in the morning; and eighteen privy counsellors, besides a
number of ladies, were present at the delivery. But the party violence
of the period was so extravagant, as to receive and circulate a variety
of reports, inconsistent with each other, and agreeing only in the
general conclusion, that the child was an imposition upon the nation.
The reasoning of the Bishop of Salisbury, on this point, is admirably
summed up by Smollet.
"On the 10th of June, 1688, the queen was suddenly seized with
labour-pains, and delivered of a son, who was baptized by the name of
James, and declared Prince of Wales. All the Catholics and friends of
James were transported with the most extravagant joy at the birth of
this child; while great part of the nation consoled themselves with
the notion, that it was altogether supposititious. They carefully
collected a variety of circumstances, upon which this conjecture
was founded; and though they were inconsistent, contradictory, and
inconclusive, the inference was so agreeable to the views and passions
of the people, that it made an impression which, in all probability,
will never be totally effaced. Dr Burnet, who seems to have been at
uncommon pains to establish this belief, and to have consulted all the
Whig nurses in England upon the subject, first pretends to demonstrate,
that the queen was not with child; secondly, that she was with child,
but miscarried; thirdly, that a child was brought into the queen's
apartment in a warming-pan; fourthly, that there was no child at all
in the room; fifthly, that the queen actually bore a child, but it
died that same day; sixthly, that it had the fits, of which it died at
Richmond; therefore, the Chevalier de St George must be the fruit of
four different impostures. "
Note VI.
_Five months to discord and debate were given. _--P. 295.
During the five months preceding the birth of the Chevalier de St
George, James was wholly engaged by those feuds and dissensions which
tended to render irreparable the breach between him and his subjects.
The arbitrary attacks upon the privileges of Magdalen College, and
of the Charter-House, fell nearly within this period. Above all, the
petition of the seven bishops against reading the Declaration of
Indulgence, their imprisonment, their memorable trial and acquittal,
had all taken place since the month of April; and it is well known
to what a state of violent opposition the nation had been urged by a
train of arbitrary acts of violence, so imprudently commenced, and
perversely insisted in. Dryden, like other men of sense, probably began
to foresee the consequences of so violent and general irritation; and
expresses himself in moderate and soothing language, both as to the
past and future. Nothing is therefore dropt which can offend the church
of England. Perhaps they may have been spared by the royal command;
for it seems, as is hinted by a letter from Halifax to the Prince of
Orange, that, not finding his expectations answered by the dissenters,
whom he had so greatly favoured of late, James entertained thoughts of
returning to his old friends, the High-churchmen; "but the truth is,"
his lordship adds, "the Papists have of late been so hard and fierce
upon them, that the very species of those formerly mistaking men is
destroyed; they have so broken that loom in pieces, that they cannot
now set it up again to work upon it. "--DALRYMPLE'S _Memoirs_. Appendix
to Book V.
Note VII.
----_When the sudden blast,
The face of heaven, and our young sun, o'ercast,
Fame, the swift ill increasing as she rolled,
Disease, despair, and death, at three reprises told. _--P. 297.
There was, Dryden informs us, a report of the prince's death, to which
he alludes. James, in a letter to the Prince of Orange, dated June 12,
mentions the birth of his son on the Sunday preceding, and adds, "the
child was somewhat ill this last night, of the wind, and some gripes,
but is now, blessed be God, very well, and like to have no returns
of it, and is a strong boy. " About this illness, Burnet tells the
following gossipping story: "That night, one Hemings, a very worthy
man, an apothecary by his trade, who lived in St Martin's Lane, the
very next door to a family of an eminent Papist, (Brown, brother to
the Viscount Montacute, lived there;) the wall between his parlour and
their's being so thin, that he could easily hear any thing that was
said with a louder voice, he (Hemings) was reading in his parlour late
at night, when he heard one come into the neighbouring parlour, and
say, with a doleful voice, the Prince of Wales is dead: Upon which a
great many that lived in the house came down stairs very quick. Upon
this confusion he could not hear any thing more; but it was plain they
were in a great consternation. He went with the news next morning to
the bishops in the Tower. The Countess of Clarendon came thither soon
after, and told them, she had been at the young prince's door, but
was denied access: she was amazed at it; and asked, if they knew her:
they said, they did; but that the queen had ordered, that no person
whatsoever should be suffered to come in to him. This gave credit to
Hemings' story; and looked as if all was ordered to be kept shut up
close, till another child was found. One, that saw the child two days
after, said to me, that he looked strong, and not like a child so newly
born. "
The poem of Dryden plainly proves, that such a report was so far
from being confined among the Catholics, that it was spread over
all the town; and what the worthy Mr Hemings over-heard in his next
neighbour's, the Papist's, might probably have been heard in any
company in London that evening, although the mode of communication
would doubtless have been doleful or joyous, according to the party and
religion of the news-bearer.
PROLOGUES
AND
EPILOGUES.
PROLOGUES AND EPILOGUES.
The prologue of the English drama was originally, like that of the
ancients, merely a kind of argument of the play, instructing the
audience concerning those particulars of the plot, which were necessary
in order to understand the opening of the piece. That this might be
done more artificially, it was often spoken in the character of some
person connected with the preceding history of the intrigue, though
not properly one of the _dramatis personæ_. But when increasing
refinement introduced the present mode of opening the action in the
course of the play itself, the prologue became a preliminary address
to the audience, bespeaking their attention and favour for the piece.
The epilogue had always borne this last character, being merely an
extension of the ancient "_valete et plaudite_;" an opportunity seized
by the performers, after resigning their mimic characters, to pay their
respects to the public in their own, and to solicit its approbation
of their exertions. By degrees it assumed a more important shape, and
was indulged in descanting upon such popular topics as were likely to
interest the audience, even though less immediately connected with the
actor's address of thanks, or the piece they had been performing.
[Footnote 271: _Ergoteering_ was a phrase used by Dryden in his
"Defence of the Duchess's Paper," and which Stillingfleet harps upon
throughout his "Vindication. "]
[Footnote 272: Ralph's History, Vol. I. p. 933. --Secret Consults, &c.
of the Roman Party, p. 59. ]
[Footnote 273: "One Petre, descended from a noble family; a man of no
learning, nor any way famed for his virtue, but who made up all in
boldness and zeal, was the Jesuit of them all, that seemed animated
with the most courage. "--BURNET. ]
[Footnote 274: "We have," says one of the order, "a good while begun
to get footing in England. We teach humanity at Lincoln, Norwich, and
York. At Warwick, we have a public chapel secured from all injuries by
the king's soldiers; we have also bought some houses of the city of
Wiggorn, in the province of Lancaster. The Catholic cause very much
increaseth. In some Catholic churches, upon holidays, above 1500 are
always numbered present at the sermon. At London, likewise, things
succeed no worse. Every holiday, or preaching, people are so frequent,
that many of the chapels cannot contain them. Two of our fathers,
Darmes and Berfall, do constantly say mass before the king and queen.
Father Edmund Newill, before the queen-dowager, Father Alexander Regnes
in the chapel of the ambassador aforesaid, others in other places. Many
houses are bought for the college in the Savoy, as they call it, nigh
Somerset-house, London, the palace of the queen-dowager, to the value
of about eighteen thousand florins; in making of which, after the form
of a college, they labour very hard, that the schools may be opened
before Easter. " A Letter from a Jesuit at Liege. _Somers' Tracts_, p.
248. About this letter, see Burnet's History, Vol. I. p. 711. The king
also granted the manor of York to Lawson, a priest, for thirty years,
as a seminary for the education of youth in the Catholic faith; to the
great displeasure of Sir John Reresby, the governor of the city, who
had fitted it up for his own residence. See his _Memoirs_, pp. 245,
246. ]
[Footnote 275: So says the memorable "Test of the Church of England's
Loyalty. "]
[Footnote 276: New Test, &c. ]
[Footnote 277: Roman Catholic Principles, 1680. ]
[Footnote 278: There is a copy of this old caricature print in
Luttrell's Collection. ]
[Footnote 279: History of his Own Times, Vol. I. p. 280. ]
[Footnote 280: See Burnet's Life, by his Son, p. 686. ]
[Footnote 281: See Dr Flexman's catalogue of his works, under the head
"Tracts, Political, Polemical, and Miscellaneous. "]
[Footnote 282: Mr B--ty, vice-chamberlain. ]
[Footnote 283: Notes on the Phœnix Pastoral Letter, _Johnson's Works_,
pp. 317, 318. ]
[Footnote 284: The Declaration of Indulgence. See Vol. IX. p. 447. ]
BRITANNIA REDIVIVA:
A POEM
ON
THE BIRTH OF THE PRINCE,
(BORN 10TH JUNE, 1688. )
_Di patrii indigetes, et Romule, Vestaque mater,
Quæ Tuscum Tyberim et Romana palatia servas,
Hunc saltem everso puerum succurrere sæclo
Ne prohibete! satis jampridem sanguine nostro
Laomedonteæ luimus perjuria Trojæ. _
VIRG. GEORG. 1.
BRITANNIA REDIVIVA.
The remarkable incident, which gave rise to the following poem, was
hailed by the Catholics with the most unbounded joy. That party,
whose transient prosperity depended upon the declining life of James
II. , could hardly enjoy their present power, embittered as it was by
the reflection, that it must end with the reign of the king and the
succession of the Princess of Orange. Many circumstances seemed to
render the hopes of the king having a male heir of his body extremely
precarious. His system was said to have been injured by early
dissipation, and he was now advanced in life. The queen, also, had been
in a bad state of health; had lost all her children soon after they
were born; and had now, for several years, ceased to have any. Amidst
these discouraging considerations, the queen's pregnancy was announced
in 1687; and even before his birth, addressers and panegyrists in verse
hailed the future prince, as a pledge for the maintenance of liberty of
conscience, and the security of the royal line. [285]
But the Catholics were so transported with this unexpected happiness,
that they could not refrain from spreading an hundred follies, tending
to connect the queen's pregnancy with the efficacy of the king's faith.
Some said, that the queen's conception took place at the very time
when her mother made a vow to the Lady of Loretto, that her daughter
might by her means have a son: Others attributed it to the queen's
personal influence with Saint Xavier: Others to the intercessions of
the Jesuits, among whom the king had enrolled himself: All ascribed
so happy and unhoped an event to something more than mere natural
causes, and ventured to presage, that the joyful fruit of the queen's
conception would prove a son, since otherwise, it was said, God would
have done his work by halves. [286] It is dangerous for a religious
sect to cry, a miracle! for it is always echoed by their adversaries,
shouting out, an imposture! The same circumstances which induced the
Catholics to believe that this happy event was owing to a peculiar
divine interposition, led the nation to ascribe so unexpected and
opportune an occurrence to artifice and imposition; and they were
prepared to pronounce a birth spurious, which their adversaries had
incautiously pushed to the verge of miraculous.
On the 10th of June, 1688, the prince was born, under circumstances
which ought to have removed all suspicion of imposture. But these
suspicions were too deeply rooted in party prejudices and fears; and it
became a distinguishing mark of a true Protestant, to hold for spurious
the birth of a prince, which took place in the presence of more people
than is either consistent with custom or decency.
In the mean while, public rejoicings, of the most splendid kind,
were solemnized at home and abroad;[287] and the poets flocked with
their addresses of congratulation[288] on the birth of a Prince of
Wales, who was doomed shortly to be distinguished through the English
dominions by the ignominious appellation of Pretender, and abroad, by
the dubious title of Chevalier de St George. It was peculiarly the part
of our author, as poet-laureat, and a good Catholic, to solemnize an
event of so much importance to the king, and those of his religion, and
to bear down, if possible, the popular prejudice by the exertion of his
poetical powers. "Britannia Rediviva" was written, nine days after the
event celebrated, and published accordingly. It is licensed on the 19th
of June.
In this poem, our author assumes the tone and feeling which we
have described as general among the Catholics, upon this happy and
unexpected event. It is less an address of congratulation than a solemn
devotional hymn; and, even considered as such, abounds with expressions
of awful gratitude, rather for a miraculous interposition of heaven
and the blessed saints, than for a blessing conferred through the
ordinary course of nature. Dryden, who knew how to assume every style
that fitted the occasion, writes here in the character of a devout and
grateful Catholic, with much of the _unction_ which marks the hymns of
the Roman church. In English poetry, we have hardly another example of
the peculiar tone which the invocation of saints, and an enthusiastic
faith in the mystic doctrines of the Catholic faith, can give to
poetry. To me, I confess, that communion seems to offer the same
facilities to the poet, which it has been long famous for affording
to the painter; and the "Britannia Rediviva," while it celebrates the
mystic influence of the sacred festivals of the Paraclete and the
Trinity, and introduces the warlike forms of St Michael and St George,
has often reminded me of one of the ancient altar pieces, which it is
impossible to regard without reverence, though presenting miracles
which never happened, or saints who never existed. These subordinate
divinities are something upon which the imagination, dazzled and
overwhelmed by the contemplation of a single Omnipotent Being, can
fairly rest and expand itself. They approach nearer to humanity and
to comprehension; yet are sufficiently removed from both, to have
the full effect of sublime obscurity. Dryden has undoubtedly reaped
considerable advantage from religion in the present poem. It must,
however, be owned, that the effect of these passages is much injured
by the frequent allusion to the deities of classical mythology; and
that Dryden has ranked the gods and goddesses of ancient Rome with the
saints of her modern church, in the same indiscriminate order in which
they are classed in the Pantheon. We have the Giants' War immediately
preceding the miracle wrought on the Shunamite's son; and the serpents
of the infant Hercules are classed in the very sentence with the
dragons of the Apocalypse. On one occasion he has stooped yet lower,
and condescended to pun upon the child's being born on Trinity Sunday,
as promising at least a _trine_ of infant princes.
Still, however, the strain of the poem is, upon the whole, grave and
exalted. Besides the general tone of "Britannia Rediviva," there are
many passages in it deserving the reader's attention. The address
to the queen, beginning, "But you, propitious queen," has all the
smoothness with which Dryden could vary the masculine character of his
general poetry, when he addressed the female sex, and forms a marked
contrast to the more majestic tone of the rest of the piece. It may
indeed be said of Dryden, as he himself says of Virgil, that though he
is smooth where smoothness is required, yet he is so far from affecting
that general character, that he seems rather to disdain it.
The original edition of the "Britannia Rediviva" is in quarto, printed,
as usual, for Tonson, with a motto from the first book of the Georgics,
which is now restored. The concluding lines refer to the death of so
many Catholics by the perjured evidences of Oates and Bedlow:
---- _satis jampridem sanguine nostro
Laomedonteæ luimus_ perjuria _Trojæ. _
The word _perjuria_, as well as _Puerum_, in the preceding passage,
are marked by a difference of type; a mode of soliciting the attention
of the reader to a pointed remark or inuendo, which was first used in
Charles II. 's time, and seems to have been introduced by L'Estrange,
who carried it to a most extravagant degree, chequering his Observators
with all manner of characters, from the Roman to the Anglo-Saxon.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 285: The addresses of the grand juries of the counties of
Monmouth, Stafford, Glocester, Yorkshire, &c. &c. , all pressed forward
upon this occasion, and are all positive that the blessed hope of the
queen's womb must necessarily prove a son, since the king seemed to
have very little occasion for more daughters. Edmund Arwaker is of the
same opinion, in his poem humbly dedicated to the queen, on occasion of
her majesty's happy conception. ]
[Footnote 286: "That which does us most harm with the lords and great
men, is the apprehension of a heretic successor: For as a lord told me
lately, assure me of a Catholic successor, and I assure you I and my
family will be so too. To this purpose the queen's happy delivery will
be of very great moment. Our zealous Catholics do already lay two to
one that it will be a prince. God does nothing by halves, and every
day masses are said upon this very occasion. "--_Letter from Father
Petre to Father La Chaise. _ This letter is a forgery, but it distinctly
expresses the hopes and apprehensions of both parties. ]
[Footnote 287: The most remarkable were celebrated at the Hague, by
the Marquis of Abbeville, his majesty's ambassador there. On one side
of a triumphal arch were the figures of Truth and Justice, with this
inscription: _Veritas et Justitia fulcimentum throni Patris et erunt
mei_: On the other side were Religion and Liberty embracing, with
this motto, _Religio et Libertas amplexatæ erant_. On the portico was
painted the conquest of the dragon by St George, and the delivery
of St Margaret, explained to allude to the liberty of conscience
procured by James's abolition of the test and penal laws. These
decorations, remarkable for their import, and the place in which they
were exhibited, were accompanied with the discharge of fire-works, and
other public rejoicings. There are particular accounts of the splendid
rejoicings at Ratisbon and Paris, &c. &c. in the Gazettes of the
period. ]
[Footnote 288: As for example, the poets of Isis, in a collection
called "_Strenæ Natalitiæ in Celsissimum principem. --Oxoni; E Theatro
Shedoniano, 1688_. " Consisting of Latin, Greek, Arabic, and Turkish,
pastoral, heroic, and lyrical pieces, on this happy topic.
The following poems are in the Luttrell Collection:
"_Votum pro Principe. _
"To the King, upon the Queen's being delivered of a Son; by John Baber,
Esq.
"To the King, on ditto; by William Niven, late master of the music
school of Inverness, in Scotland. " Surely the very _ultima_ Thule
of poetry.
"A Congratulatory Poem on ditto, by Mrs Behn.
"A Pindarique Ode on ditto, by Calib Calle. "
]
BRITANNIA REDIVIVA.
Our vows are heard betimes, and heaven takes care
To grant, before we can conclude the prayer;
Preventing angels met it half the way,
And sent us back to praise, who came to pray.
Just on the day, when the high-mounted sun
Did farthest in its northern progress run,[289]
He bended forward, and even stretched the sphere
Beyond the limits of the lengthened year,
To view a brighter sun in Britain born; }
That was the business of his longest morn; }
The glorious object seen, 'twas time to turn. }
Departing spring could only stay to shed}
Her gloomy beauties on the genial bed, }
But left the manly summer in her stead, }
With timely fruit the longing land to cheer,
And to fulfil the promise of the year.
Betwixt two seasons comes the auspicious heir,
This age to blossom, and the next to bear.
Last solemn Sabbath[290] saw the church attend,
The Paraclete in fiery pomp descend;
But when his wonderous octave[291] rolled again,
He brought a royal infant in his train:
So great a blessing to so good a king,
None but the Eternal Comforter could bring.
Or did the mighty Trinity conspire,
As once in council to create our sire?
It seems as if they sent the new-born guest,
To wait on the procession of their feast;
And on their sacred anniverse decreed
To stamp their image on the promised seed.
Three realms united, and on one bestowed,
An emblem of their mystic union showed;
The Mighty Trine the triple empire shared,
As every person would have one to guard.
Hail, son of prayers! by holy violence
Drawn down from heaven;[292] but long be banished thence,
And late to thy paternal skies retire!
To mend our crimes, whole ages would require;
To change the inveterate habit of our sins,
And finish what thy godlike sire begins.
Kind heaven, to make us Englishmen again,
No less can give us than a patriarch's reign.
The sacred cradle to your charge receive,
Ye seraphs, and by turns the guard relieve;
Thy father's angel, and thy father join,
To keep possession, and secure the line;
But long defer the honours of thy fate;
Great may they be like his, like his be late,
That James this running century may view,
And give this son an auspice to the new.
Our wants exact at least that moderate stay; }
For, see the dragon[293] winged on his way, }
To watch the travail,[294] and devour the prey: }
Or, if allusions may not rise so high, }
Thus, when Alcides raised his infant cry,}
The snakes besieged his young divinity; }
But vainly with their forked tongues they threat,
For opposition makes a hero great.
To needful succour all the good will run,
And Jove assert the godhead of his son.
O still repining at your present state,
Grudging yourselves the benefits of fate;
Look up, and read in characters of light
A blessing sent you in your own despite!
The manna falls, yet that celestial bread,
Like Jews, you munch, and murmur while you feed.
May not your fortune be, like theirs, exiled,
Yet forty years to wander in the wild!
Or, if it be, may Moses live at least,
To lead you to the verge of promised rest!
Though poets are not prophets, to foreknow
What plants will take the blight, and what will grow,
By tracing heaven, his footsteps may be found;
Behold, how awfully he walks the round!
God is abroad, and, wondrous in his ways,
The rise of empires, and their fall, surveys;
More, might I say, than with an usual eye, }
He sees his bleeding church in ruins lie, }
And hears the souls of saints beneath his altar cry. }
Already has he lifted high the sign,
Which crowned the conquering arms of Constantine. [295]
The moon[296] grows pale at that presaging sight,
And half her train of stars have lost their light.
Behold another Sylvester,[297] to bless
The sacred standard, and secure success;
Large of his treasures, of a soul so great,
As fills and crowds his universal seat.
Now view at home a second Constantine;[298]
(The former too was of the British line,)
Has not his healing balm your breaches closed,
Whose exile many sought, and few opposed? [299]
O, did not heaven, by its eternal doom,
Permit those evils, that this good might come?
So manifest, that even the moon-eyed sects
See whom and what this Providence protects.
Methinks, had we within our minds no more
Than that one shipwreck on the fatal Ore,[300]
That only thought may make us think again,
What wonders God reserves for such a reign.
To dream, that chance his preservation wrought,
Were to think Noah was preserved for nought;
Or the surviving eight were not designed
To people earth, and to restore their kind.
When humbly on the royal babe we gaze,
The manly lines of a majestic face
Give awful joy; 'tis paradise to look
On the fair frontispiece of nature's book:
If the first opening page so charms the sight,
Think how the unfolded volume will delight!
See how the venerable[301] infant lies
In early pomp; how through the mother's eyes
The father's soul, with an undaunted view,
Looks out, and takes our homage as his due!
See on his future subjects how he smiles,
Nor meanly flatters, nor with craft beguiles;
But with an open face, as on his throne,
Assures our birthrights, and assumes his own
Born in broad day-light, that the ungrateful rout
May find no room for a remaining doubt;[302]
Truth, which itself is light, does darkness shun,
And the true eaglet safely dares the sun.
Fain[303] would the fiends have made a dubious birth,
Loth to confess the godhead clothed in earth;
But, sickened, after all their baffled lies,
To find an heir apparent in the skies,
Abandoned to despair, still may they grudge,
And, owning not the Saviour, prove the judge.
Not great Æneas stood in plainer day,[304]
When the dark mantling mist dissolved away;
He to the Tyrians showed his sudden face,
Shining with all his goddess mother's grace;
For she herself had made his countenance bright,
Breathed honour on his eyes, and her own purple light.
If our victorious Edward,[305] as they say,
Gave Wales a prince on that propitious day,
Why may not years revolving with his fate
Produce his like, but with a longer date;
One, who may carry to a distant shore
The terror that his famed forefather bore?
But why should James, or his young hero, stay
For slight presages of a name or day?
We need no Edward's fortune to adorn
That happy moment when our prince was born;
Our prince adorns this day, and ages hence
Shall wish his birth-day for some future prince.
Great Michael,[306] prince of all the etherial hosts,
And whate'er inborn saints our Britain boasts;
And thou, the adopted patron[307] of our isle,
With cheerful aspects on this infant smile!
The pledge of heaven, which, dropping from above,
Secures our bliss, and reconciles his love.
Enough of ills our dire rebellion wrought,[308]
When to the dregs we drank the bitter draught;
Then airy atoms did in plagues conspire, }
Nor did the avenging angel yet retire, }
But purged our still-increasing crimes with fire. [309]}
Then perjured plots,[310] the still impending test,[311]
And worse--[312] but charity conceals the rest.
Here stop the current of the sanguine flood;
Require not, gracious God! thy martyrs' blood;
But let their dying pangs, their living toil,
Spread a rich harvest through their native soil;
A harvest ripening for another reign,
Of which this royal babe may reap the grain.
Enough of early Saints one womb has given,
Enough increased the family of heaven;[313]
Let them for his and our atonement go,
And, reigning blest above, leave him to rule below.
Enough already has the year foreslowed
His wonted course, the sea has overflowed,
The meads were floated with a weeping spring,
And frightened birds in woods forgot to sing;
The strong-limbed steed beneath his harness faints,
And the same shivering sweat his lord attaints. [314]
When will the minister of wrath give o'er?
Behold him at Araunah's threshing-floor!
He stops, and seems to sheath his flaming brand,
Pleased with burnt incense from our David's hand;[315]
David has bought the Jebusite's abode,
And raised an altar to the living God.
Heaven, to reward him, makes his joys sincere;}
No future ills nor accidents appear, }
To sully and pollute the sacred infant's year. }
Five months to discord and debate were given;[316]
He sanctifies the yet remaining seven.
Sabbath of months! henceforth in him be blest,
And prelude to the realms perpetual rest!
Let his baptismal drops for us atone;[317]
Lustrations for offences not his own:
Let conscience, which is interest ill disguised,[318]
In the same font be cleansed, and all the land baptized.
Unnamed[319] as yet; at least unknown to fame;
Is there a strife in heaven about his name,
Where every famous predecessor vies,
And makes a faction for it in the skies?
Or must it be reserved to thought alone?
Such was the sacred Tetragrammaton. [320]
Things worthy silence must not be revealed;
Thus the true name of Rome[321] was kept concealed,
To shun the spells and sorceries of those,
Who durst her infant majesty oppose.
But when his tender strength in time shall rise
To dare ill tongues, and fascinating eyes,
This isle, which hides the little Thunderer's fame,
Shall be too narrow to contain his name:
The artillery of heaven shall make him known;
Crete[322] could not hold the god, when Jove was grown.
As Jove's increase,[323] who from his brain was born,
Whom arms and arts did equally adorn,
Free of the breast was bred, whose milky taste
Minerva's name to Venus had debased;
So this imperial babe rejects the food,
That mixes monarch's with plebeian blood:[324]
Food that his inborn courage might controul,
Extinguish all the father in his soul,
And for his Estian race, and Saxon strain,
Might reproduce some second Richard's reign.
Mildness he shares from both his parents' blood;
But kings too tame are despicably good:
Be this the mixture of this regal child,
By nature manly, but by virtue mild.
Thus far the furious transport of the news
Had to prophetic madness fired the muse;
Madness ungovernable, uninspired,
Swift to foretel whatever she desired.
Was it for me the dark abyss to tread,
And read the book which angels cannot read?
How was I punished, when the sudden blast[325]
The face of heaven, and our young sun, o'ercast!
Fame, the swift ill increasing as she rolled,
Disease, despair, and death, at three reprises told:
At three insulting strides she stalked the town,
And, like contagion, struck the loyal down.
Down fell the winnowed wheat; but, mounted high,
The whirlwind bore the chaff, and hid the sky.
Here black rebellion shooting from below, }
(As earth's gigantic brood by moments grow,) }
And here the sons of God are petrified with woe:}
An apoplex of grief! so low were driven
The saints, as hardly to defend their heaven.
As, when pent vapours run their hollow round,
Earthquakes, which are convulsions of the ground,
Break bellowing forth, and no confinement brook,
Till the third settles what the former shook;
Such heavings had our souls, till, slow and late,
Our life with his returned, and faith prevailed on fate.
By prayers the mighty blessing was implored,
To prayers was granted, and by prayers restored.
So, ere the Shunamite a son conceived,
The prophet promised, and the wife believed;
A son was sent, the son so much desired,
But soon upon the mother's knees expired.
The troubled seer approached the mournful door,
Ran, prayed, and sent his pastoral staff before,
Then stretched his limbs upon the child, and mourned,
Till warmth, and breath, and a new soul returned. [326]
Thus mercy stretches out her hand, and saves
Desponding Peter, sinking in the waves.
As when a sudden storm of hail and rain
Beats to the ground the yet unbearded grain,
Think not the hopes of harvest are destroyed
On the flat field, and on the naked void;
The light, unloaded stem, from tempest freed,
Will raise the youthful honours of his head;
And, soon restored by native vigour, bear
The timely product of the bounteous year.
Nor yet conclude all fiery trials past,
For heaven will exercise us to the last;
Sometimes will check us in our full career,
With doubtful blessings, and with mingled fear,
That, still depending on his daily grace,
His every mercy for an alms may pass;
With sparing hands will diet us to good,
Preventing surfeits of our pampered blood.
So feeds the mother bird her craving young
With little morsels, and delays them long.
True, this last blessing was a royal feast;
But where's the wedding-garment on the guest?
Our manners, as religion were a dream,
Are such as teach the nations to blaspheme.
In lusts we wallow, and with pride we swell,
And injuries with injuries repel;
Prompt to revenge, not daring to forgive,
Our lives unteach the doctrine we believe.
Thus Israel sinned, impenitently hard,
And vainly thought the present ark their guard;[327]
But when the haughty Philistines appear, }
They fled, abandoned to their foes and fear; }
Their God was absent, though his ark was there. }
Ah! lest our crimes should snatch this pledge away,
And make our joys the blessings of a day!
For we have sinned him hence, and that he lives,
God to his promise, not our practice, gives.
Our crimes would soon weigh down the guilty scale,
But James and Mary, and the church prevail.
Nor Amalek[328] can rout the chosen bands,
While Hur and Aaron hold up Moses' hands.
By living well, let us secure his days,
Moderate in hopes, and humble in our ways.
No force the free-born spirit can constrain,
But charity, and great examples gain.
Forgiveness is our thanks for such a day;
'Tis godlike God in his own coin to pay.
But you, propitious queen, translated here, }
From your mild heaven, to rule our rugged sphere,}
Beyond the sunny walks, and circling year; }
You, who your native climate have bereft
Of all the virtues, and the vices left;
Whom piety and beauty make their boast,
Though beautiful is well in pious lost;
So lost as star-light is dissolved away,
And melts into the brightness of the day;
Or gold about the royal diadem,
Lost, to improve the lustre of the gem,--
What can we add to your triumphant day?
Let the great gift the beauteous giver pay;
For should our thanks awake the rising sun, }
And lengthen, as his latest shadows run, }
That, though the longest day, would soon, too soon be done. }
Let angels' voices with their harps conspire,
But keep the auspicious infant from the choir;
Late let him sing above, and let us know
No sweeter music than his cries below.
Nor can I wish to you, great monarch, more
Than such an annual income to your store;
The day, which gave this unit, did not shine
For a less omen, than to fill the trine.
After a prince, an admiral beget;
The Royal Sovereign wants an anchor yet.
Our isle has younger titles still in store, }
And when the exhausted land can yield no more,}
Your line can force them from a foreign shore. }
The name of great your martial mind will suit;
But justice is your darling attribute:
Of all the Greeks, 'twas but one hero's due,[329]
And, in him, Plutarch prophesied of you.
A prince's favours but on few can fall,
But justice is a virtue shared by all.
Some kings the name of conquerors have assumed,
Some to be great, some to be gods presumed;
But boundless power, and arbitrary lust,
Made tyrants still abhor the name of just;
They shunned the praise this godlike virtue gives,
And feared a title that reproached their lives.
The power, from which all kings derive their state,
Whom they pretend, at least, to imitate,
Is equal both to punish and reward;
For few would love their God, unless they feared.
Resistless force and immortality
Make but a lame, imperfect deity;
Tempests have force unbounded to destroy,
And deathless being even the damned enjoy;
And yet heaven's attributes, both last and first,
One without life, and one with life accurst;
But justice is heaven's self, so strictly he,
That could it fail, the godhead could not be.
This virtue is your own; but life and state
Are, one to fortune subject, one to fate:
Equal to all, you justly frown or smile; }
Nor hopes nor fears your steady hand beguile; }
Yourself our balance hold, the world's our isle. }
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 289: The 10th of June. ]
[Footnote 290: Whitsunday. ]
[Footnote 291: Trinity Sunday, the octave of Whitsunday. ]
[Footnote 292: Note I. ]
[Footnote 293: Alluding only to the commonwealth party here, and in
other parts of the poem. DRYDEN. --See Note II. ]
[Footnote 294: Rev. xii. v. 4. ]
[Footnote 295: The Cross. ]
[Footnote 296: The Crescent, which the Turks bear for their arms.
DRYDEN. Note III. ]
[Footnote 297: The Pope, in the time of Constantine the Great; alluding
to the present Pope. DRYDEN. --See Note IV. ]
[Footnote 298: King James II. ]
[Footnote 299: Bill of Exclusion. ]
[Footnote 300: The Lemmon Ore, on which the vessel of King James was
lost in his return from Scotland. The crew perished, and he himself
escaped with difficulty. See Vol. IX. p. 401. ]
[Footnote 301: Venerable is here used in its original sense, as
deserving of veneration. But the epithet has been so commonly connected
with old age, that a modern poet would hardly venture to apply it to an
infant. ]
[Footnote 302: Note V. ]
[Footnote 303: Alluding to the temptation in the wilderness. ]
[Footnote 304:
_Restitit Æneas, clarâque in luce refulsit,
Os, humerosque deo similis; namque ipsa decoram
Cæsariem nato genetrix, lumenque juventæ
Purpureum, et lætos oculis afflarat honores. _
Æneid, Lib. I.
]
[Footnote 305: Edward the Black Prince, born on Trinity Sunday. ]
[Footnote 306: The motto of the poem explained. ]
[Footnote 307: St George. ]
[Footnote 308: The great Civil War. ]
[Footnote 309: The Fire of London. ]
[Footnote 310: The Popish plot. ]
[Footnote 311: The Test-act. ]
[Footnote 312: The death of the Jesuits, executed for the Plot. ]
[Footnote 313: All the queen's former children died in infancy. ]
[Footnote 314: The year 1688, big with so many events of importance,
commenced very unfavourably with stormy weather, and an epidemical
distemper among men and cattle. ]
[Footnote 315: 1 Kings, chap, xxxiv. ]
[Footnote 316: Note VI. ]
[Footnote 317: Original sin, supposed to be washed off by baptism. ]
[Footnote 318: See "The Hind and the Panther," p. 224. ]
[Footnote 319: The prince christened, but not named. ]
[Footnote 320: Jehovah, or the name of God, unlawful to be pronounced
by the Jews. DRYDEN. ]
[Footnote 321: Some authors say, that the true name of Rome was kept a
secret, _ne hostes incantamentis deos elicerent_. DRYDEN. ]
[Footnote 322: Candia, where Jupiter was born and lived secretly.
DRYDEN. ]
[Footnote 323: Pallas, or Minerva, said by the poets to have been bred
up by hand. DRYDEN. ]
[Footnote 324: The prince had no wet nurse. ]
[Footnote 325: The sudden false report of the prince's death. See Note
VII. ]
[Footnote 326: 2 Kings, chap. iv. ]
[Footnote 327: 1 Samuel, chap. iv. v. 10. ]
[Footnote 328: Exodus, chap. xvii. v. 8. ]
[Footnote 329: Aristides. See his Life in Plutarch. ]
NOTES
ON
BRITANNIA REDIVIVA.
Note I.
_Hail, son of prayers! by holy violence
Drawn down from heaven! _----P. 290.
We have noticed, in the introduction, that the birth of a Prince of
Wales, at a time of such critical importance to the Catholic faith,
was looked upon, by the Papists, as little less than miraculous. Some
talked of the petition of the Duchess of Modena to Our Lady of Loretto;
and Burnet affirms, that, in that famous chapel, there is actually a
register of the queen's conception, in consequence of her mother's
vow. But, in that case, the good duchess's intercession must have been
posthumous; for she died upon the 19th July, and the queen's time
run from the 6th of October. Others ascribed the event to the king's
pilgrimage to St Winifred's Well; and others, among whom was the Earl
of Melfort, suffered their zeal to hurry them into profaneness, and
spoke of the angel of the Lord moving the Bath waters, like the Pool of
Bethsaida. But the Jesuits claimed to their own prayers the principal
merit of procuring this blessing, which, indeed, they had ventured to
prophecy; for, among other devices which that order exhibited to the
English ambassador from James to the Pope, there was, according to Mr
Misson, one of a lily, from whose leaves distilled some drops of water,
which were once supposed, by naturalists, to become the seed of new
lilies: the motto was--_Lachrimor in prolem_--"I weep for children. "
Beneath which was the following distich:
_Pro natis, Jacobe, gemis, flos candide regum!
Hos natura tibi si neget, astra dabunt. _
For sons, fair flower of kings, why melts thine eye?
The heavens shall grant what nature may deny.
Note II.
_For, see the dragon winged on his way,
To watch the travail, and devour the prey. _--P. 291.
"And the dragon stood before the woman, who was ready to be delivered,
for to devour her child, as soon as it was born,"--Revel. xii. 4.
Dryden is at pains, by an original marginal note, which, with others,
is restored in this edition, to explain, that, by this allusion here,
and in other parts of the poem, he meant "the commonwealth's party. "
The acquittal of the bishops, on the 17th of June, two days before the
poem was licensed, must have excited a prudential reverence for the
church of England in the moment of her triumph. The poet fixes upon
this commonwealth party therefore, exclusively, the common reports
which had been circulated during the queen's pregnancy, and which are
thus noticed in the (supposititious) letter to Father La Chaise: "As
to the queen's being with child, that great concern goes as well as
we could wish, notwithstanding all the satirical discourses of the
heretics, who content themselves to vent their poison in libels, which,
by night, they disperse in the street, or fix upon the walls. There was
one lately found upon a pillar of a church, that imported, that such a
day thanks should be given to God for the queen's being great with a
cushion. If one of these pasquil-makers could be discovered, he would
but have an ill time on't, and should be made to take his last farewell
at Tyburn. "
The usual topics of wit, during the queen's pregnancy, were, allusions
to a cushion, a tympany, &c. &c. ; and Partridge, the Protestant
almanack-maker, utters the following predictions:--"That there was some
bawdy project on foot, either about buying, selling, or procuring, a
child or children, for some pious uses. " And, again, "Some child is to
be topped upon the lawful heirs, to cheat them out of their right and
estate. "--"God preserve the kingdom of England from invasion! for about
this time I fear it in earnest, and keep the Protestants there from
being dragooned. "
One single circumstance is sufficient to rout all suspicions thus
carefully infused into the people. It is well known, and is noticed
in one of L'Estrange's papers at the time, that a similar outcry was
raised during a former pregnancy of the queen; but the child proving a
female, there was no use for pushing the calumny any further upon that
occasion.
Note III.
_Already has he lifted high the sign,
Which crowned the conquering arms of Constantine;
The moon grows pale at that presaging sight,
And half her train of stars have lost their light. _--P. 292.
The public exercise of the Catholic religion in England is compared
to the miraculous display of the cross, with the motto, _In hoc signo
vinces_; which is said to have appeared to Constantine on the eve of
his great victory.
The war against the Turks, which was now raging in Hungary, seems
to have occupied much of James's attention. He amused himself with
anxiety about the fate of this holy warfare, as he probably thought
it, while his own crown was tottering on his head. In all his letters
to the Prince of Orange, he expresses his wishes for the peace of
Christendom, that the emperor and the Venetians might have leisure to
prosecute the war against the Turks; and conjectures about the taking
of Belgrade, and the progress of the Duke of Lorraine, are very gravely
sent, as interesting matter to the prince, who was anticipating the
conquest of England, and the dethronement of his father-in-law. There
may be something of affectation in this; but, as Dryden takes up
the same tone, it may be supposed to have forwarded James's general
conversation, as well as his letters to the Prince of Orange. --_See_
DALRYMPLE'S _Memoirs_. _Appendix to Book V. _
Note IV.
_Behold another Sylvester, to bless
The sacred standard, and secure success;
Large of his treasures, of a soul so great,
As fills and crowds his universal seat. _--P. 292.
Dryden talks of the Pope with the respect of a good Catholic.
Nevertheless it happened, by a very odd chance, that, while the throne
of England was held by a Catholic, for the first time during the course
of a century, the chair of St Peter was occupied by Innocent XI. who
acquired the uncommon epithet of the Protestant Pope. He received, with
great coldness, the Earl of Castlemain, whom James sent to Rome as his
ambassador, and refused the only two requests which a king of England
had made to Rome since the days of Henry VIII. , although they were only
a dispensation to Petre the king's confessor, to hold a bishopric,
and another to the Mareschal D'Humier's daughter to marry within the
prohibited degrees. Nay, the Pope is said to have privately admitted
the Prince of Orange's envoy to his confidence, while he treated
Castlemaine with so much contempt. The cause of this coldness was the
Pope's quarrel with James's ally, Louis, and his dislike to the order
of Jesuits, by whom the king of England was entirely ruled. In truth,
Innocent XI. was much more anxious to maintain the privileges of the
Roman see against those princes who retained her communion, than to add
England to a flock which was become so mutinous and untractable. He
was, besides, a man of no extended views, and chiefly concerned himself
with managing the papal revenue, involved in debt by a succession of
wasteful pontificates. To this the conversion of England promised no
immediate addition, and, with the narrowness of view natural to his
pursuits, Innocent XI. thought it better to employ his exertions in
realizing an immediate income, than in endeavouring to extend the faith
and authority of the church, by embarking in a design of great doubt
and hazard. He was, therefore, but a very poor representative of Pope
Sylvester. As for the last two lines, they contain, what we seldom
meet with in Dryden's poetry, a compliment not only bombastic, but
unappropriate, and even unmeaning.
Note V.
_Born in broad day-light, that the ungrateful rout
May find no room for a remaining doubt. _--P. 293.
In these lines, and the following, where the poet, with indecent
freedom, compares the suspicions entertained of a spurious birth to
the devil's doubts concerning our Saviour's godhead, he alludes to
those circumstances of publicity, which one would have supposed might
have rendered the birth of the prince indisputable. It took place at
ten o'clock in the morning; and eighteen privy counsellors, besides a
number of ladies, were present at the delivery. But the party violence
of the period was so extravagant, as to receive and circulate a variety
of reports, inconsistent with each other, and agreeing only in the
general conclusion, that the child was an imposition upon the nation.
The reasoning of the Bishop of Salisbury, on this point, is admirably
summed up by Smollet.
"On the 10th of June, 1688, the queen was suddenly seized with
labour-pains, and delivered of a son, who was baptized by the name of
James, and declared Prince of Wales. All the Catholics and friends of
James were transported with the most extravagant joy at the birth of
this child; while great part of the nation consoled themselves with
the notion, that it was altogether supposititious. They carefully
collected a variety of circumstances, upon which this conjecture
was founded; and though they were inconsistent, contradictory, and
inconclusive, the inference was so agreeable to the views and passions
of the people, that it made an impression which, in all probability,
will never be totally effaced. Dr Burnet, who seems to have been at
uncommon pains to establish this belief, and to have consulted all the
Whig nurses in England upon the subject, first pretends to demonstrate,
that the queen was not with child; secondly, that she was with child,
but miscarried; thirdly, that a child was brought into the queen's
apartment in a warming-pan; fourthly, that there was no child at all
in the room; fifthly, that the queen actually bore a child, but it
died that same day; sixthly, that it had the fits, of which it died at
Richmond; therefore, the Chevalier de St George must be the fruit of
four different impostures. "
Note VI.
_Five months to discord and debate were given. _--P. 295.
During the five months preceding the birth of the Chevalier de St
George, James was wholly engaged by those feuds and dissensions which
tended to render irreparable the breach between him and his subjects.
The arbitrary attacks upon the privileges of Magdalen College, and
of the Charter-House, fell nearly within this period. Above all, the
petition of the seven bishops against reading the Declaration of
Indulgence, their imprisonment, their memorable trial and acquittal,
had all taken place since the month of April; and it is well known
to what a state of violent opposition the nation had been urged by a
train of arbitrary acts of violence, so imprudently commenced, and
perversely insisted in. Dryden, like other men of sense, probably began
to foresee the consequences of so violent and general irritation; and
expresses himself in moderate and soothing language, both as to the
past and future. Nothing is therefore dropt which can offend the church
of England. Perhaps they may have been spared by the royal command;
for it seems, as is hinted by a letter from Halifax to the Prince of
Orange, that, not finding his expectations answered by the dissenters,
whom he had so greatly favoured of late, James entertained thoughts of
returning to his old friends, the High-churchmen; "but the truth is,"
his lordship adds, "the Papists have of late been so hard and fierce
upon them, that the very species of those formerly mistaking men is
destroyed; they have so broken that loom in pieces, that they cannot
now set it up again to work upon it. "--DALRYMPLE'S _Memoirs_. Appendix
to Book V.
Note VII.
----_When the sudden blast,
The face of heaven, and our young sun, o'ercast,
Fame, the swift ill increasing as she rolled,
Disease, despair, and death, at three reprises told. _--P. 297.
There was, Dryden informs us, a report of the prince's death, to which
he alludes. James, in a letter to the Prince of Orange, dated June 12,
mentions the birth of his son on the Sunday preceding, and adds, "the
child was somewhat ill this last night, of the wind, and some gripes,
but is now, blessed be God, very well, and like to have no returns
of it, and is a strong boy. " About this illness, Burnet tells the
following gossipping story: "That night, one Hemings, a very worthy
man, an apothecary by his trade, who lived in St Martin's Lane, the
very next door to a family of an eminent Papist, (Brown, brother to
the Viscount Montacute, lived there;) the wall between his parlour and
their's being so thin, that he could easily hear any thing that was
said with a louder voice, he (Hemings) was reading in his parlour late
at night, when he heard one come into the neighbouring parlour, and
say, with a doleful voice, the Prince of Wales is dead: Upon which a
great many that lived in the house came down stairs very quick. Upon
this confusion he could not hear any thing more; but it was plain they
were in a great consternation. He went with the news next morning to
the bishops in the Tower. The Countess of Clarendon came thither soon
after, and told them, she had been at the young prince's door, but
was denied access: she was amazed at it; and asked, if they knew her:
they said, they did; but that the queen had ordered, that no person
whatsoever should be suffered to come in to him. This gave credit to
Hemings' story; and looked as if all was ordered to be kept shut up
close, till another child was found. One, that saw the child two days
after, said to me, that he looked strong, and not like a child so newly
born. "
The poem of Dryden plainly proves, that such a report was so far
from being confined among the Catholics, that it was spread over
all the town; and what the worthy Mr Hemings over-heard in his next
neighbour's, the Papist's, might probably have been heard in any
company in London that evening, although the mode of communication
would doubtless have been doleful or joyous, according to the party and
religion of the news-bearer.
PROLOGUES
AND
EPILOGUES.
PROLOGUES AND EPILOGUES.
The prologue of the English drama was originally, like that of the
ancients, merely a kind of argument of the play, instructing the
audience concerning those particulars of the plot, which were necessary
in order to understand the opening of the piece. That this might be
done more artificially, it was often spoken in the character of some
person connected with the preceding history of the intrigue, though
not properly one of the _dramatis personæ_. But when increasing
refinement introduced the present mode of opening the action in the
course of the play itself, the prologue became a preliminary address
to the audience, bespeaking their attention and favour for the piece.
The epilogue had always borne this last character, being merely an
extension of the ancient "_valete et plaudite_;" an opportunity seized
by the performers, after resigning their mimic characters, to pay their
respects to the public in their own, and to solicit its approbation
of their exertions. By degrees it assumed a more important shape, and
was indulged in descanting upon such popular topics as were likely to
interest the audience, even though less immediately connected with the
actor's address of thanks, or the piece they had been performing.
