This was
especially
true of the drama.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v09 - Dra to Eme
One may never see the insect, possibly, in the flesh, for it lives
underground; but its ravages confront one at every turn. You
build your house perhaps, and for a few months fancy you have
pitched upon the one solitary site in the country where there are
no white ants. But one day suddenly the door-post totters, and
lintel and rafters come down together with a crash. You look
at a section of the wrecked timbers, and discover that the whole
inside is eaten clean away. The apparently solid logs of which
the rest of the house is built are now mere cylinders of bark,
and through the thickest of them you could push your little
finger. Furniture, tables, chairs, chests of drawers, everything
made of wood, is inevitably attacked, and in a single night a
strong trunk is often riddled through and through, and turned
into match wood. There is no limit, in fact, to the depredation
by these insects, and they will eat books, or leather, or cloth, or
anything; and in many parts of Africa I believe if a man lay
down to sleep with a wooden leg, it would be a heap of sawdust
in the morning So much feared is this insect now, that no one
in certain parts of India and Africa ever attempts to travel with
such a thing as a wooden trunk. On the Tanganyika plateau I
have camped on ground which was as hard as adamant, and as
innocent of white ants apparently as the pavement of St. Paul's;
and wakened next morning to find a stout wooden box almost
gnawed to pieces. Leather portmanteaus share the same fate,
and the only substances which seem to defy the marauders are
iron and tin.
But what has this to do with earth or with agriculture? The
most important point in the work of the white ant remains to be
## p. 4906 (#64) ############################################
4906
HENRY DRUMMOND
noted. I have already said that the white ant is never seen.
Why he should have such a repugnance to being looked at is at
first sight a mystery, seeing that he himself is stone blind. But
his coyness is really due to the desire for self-protection; for
the moment his juicy body shows itself above ground there are
a dozen enemies waiting to devour it. And yet, the white ant
can never procure any food until it comes above ground. Nor
will it meet the case for the insect to come to the surface under
the shadow of night. Night in the tropics, so far as animal life
is concerned, is as the day. It is the great feeding-time, the
great fighting-time, the carnival of the carnivores, and of all
beasts, birds, and insects of prey, from the least to the greatest.
It is clear then that darkness is no protection to the white ant;
and yet without coming out of the ground it cannot live. How
does it solve the difficulty ? It takes the ground out along with
it. I have seen white ants working on the top of a high tree,
and yet they were underground. They took up some of the
ground with them to the tree-top; just as the Esquimaux heap
up snow, building it into the low tunnel-huts in which they live,
so the white ants collect earth, only in this case not from the
surface, but from some depth underneath the ground, and plaster
it into tunneled ways. Occasionally these run along the ground,
but more often mount in endless ramifications to the top of trees,
meandering along every branch and twig, and here and there
debouching into large covered chambers which occupy half the
girth of the trunk. Millions of trees in some districts are thus
fantastically plastered over with tubes, galleries, and chambers of
earth, and many pounds' weight of subsoil must be brought up
for the mining of even a single tree. The building material is
conveyed by the insects up a central pipe with which all the
galleries communicate, and which at the downward end connects
with a series of subterranean passages leading deep into the
earth. The method of building the tunnels and covered ways is
as follows: At the foot of a tree the tiniest hole cautiously
opens in the ground close to the bark.
A small head appears,
with a grain of earth clasped in its jaws. Against the tree
trunk this earth-grain is deposited, and the head is withdrawn.
Presently it reappears with another grain of earth; this is laid
beside the first, rammed tight against it, and again the builder
descends underground for more. The third grain is not placed
against the tree, but against the former grain; a fourth, a fifth,
## p. 4907 (#65) ############################################
HENRY DRUMMOND
4907
and a sixth follow, and the plan of the foundation begins to sug-
gest itself as soon as these are in position. The stones or grains
or pellets of earth are arranged in a semicircular wall; the ter-
mite, now assisted by three or four others, standing in the middle
between the sheltering wall and the tree, and working briskly with
head and mandible to strengthen the position. The wall in fact
forms a small moon-rampart, and as it grows higher and higher it
soon becomes evident that it is going to grow from a low battle-
ment into a long perpendicular tunnel running up the side of the
tree. The workers, safely ensconced inside, are now carrying up
the structure with great rapidity, disappearing in turn as soon as
they have laid their stone, and rushing off to bring up another.
The way in which the building is done is extremely curious, and
one could watch the movement of these wonderful little masons
by the hour. Each stone as it is brought to the top is first of
all covered with mortar. Of course, without this the whole tun-
nel would crumble into dust before reaching the height of half
an inch; but the termite pours over the stone a moist sticky
secretion, turning the grain round and round with its mandibles
until the whole is covered with slime. Then it places the stone
with great care upon the top of the wall, works it about vigor-
ously for a moment or two till it is well jammed into its place,
and then starts off instantly for another load.
Peering over the growing wall, one soon discovers one, two,
or more termites of a somewhat larger build, considerably longer,
and with a very different arrangement of the parts of the head,
and especially of the mandibles. These important-looking indi-
viduals saunter about the rampart in the most leisurely way, but
yet with a certain air of business, as if perhaps the one was the
master of works and the other the architect. But closer obser-
vation suggests that they are in no wise superintending opera-
tions, nor in any immediate way contributing to the structure,
for they take not the slightest notice either of the workers or
the works. They are posted there in fact as sentries; and there
they stand, or promenade about, at the mouth of every tun-
nel, like Sister Anne, to see if anybody is coming. Sometimes
somebody does come, in the shape of another ant; the real
ant this time, not the defenseless Neuropteron, but some valiant
and belted knight from the warlike Formicide. Singly or in
troops, this rapacious little insect, fearless in its chitinous coat of
mail, charges down the tree trunk, its antenna waving defiance
## p. 4908 (#66) ############################################
4908
HENRY DRUMMOND
to the enemy and its cruel mandibles thirsting for termite
blood. The worker white ant is a poor defenseless creature, and
blind and unarmed, would fall an immediate prey to these well-
drilled banditti, who forage about in every tropical forest in un-
numbered legion. But at the critical moment, like Goliath from
the Philistines, the soldier termite advances to the fight. With
a few sweeps of its scythe-like jaws it clears the ground, and
while the attacking party is carrying off its dead, the builders,
unconscious of the fray, quietly continue their work. To every
hundred workers in a white-ant colony, which numbers many
thousands of individuals, there are perhaps two of these fighting
men. The division of labor here is very wonderful; and the fact
that besides these two specialized forms there are in every nest
two other kinds of the same insect, the kings and queens, shows
the remarkable height to which civilization in these communities
has attained.
But where is this tunnel going to, and what object have the
insects in view in ascending this lofty tree? Thirty feet from
the ground, across innumerable forks, at the end of a long
branch, are a few feet of dead wood. How the ants know it is
there, how they know its sap has dried up, and that it is now
fit for the termites' food, is a mystery. Possibly they do not
know, and are only prospecting on the chance. The fact that
they sometimes make straight for the decaying limb argues in
these instances a kind of definite instinct; but on the other hand,
the fact that in most cases the whole tree, in every branch and
limb, is covered with termite tunnels, would show perhaps that
they work most commonly on speculation, while the number of
abandoned tunnels, ending on a sound branch in a cul de sac,
proves how often they must suffer the usual disappointments of
all such adventurers. The extent to which these insects carry
on their tunneling is quite incredible, until one has seen it in
nature with his own eyes. The tunnels are perhaps about the
thickness of a small-sized gas-pipe, but there are junctions here
and there of large dimensions, and occasionally patches of earth-
work are found, embracing nearly the whole trunk for some feet.
The outside of these tunnels, which are never quite straight, but
wander irregularly along stem and branch, resembles in texture
a coarse sandpaper; and the color, although this naturally varies
with the soil, is usually a reddish brown. The quantity of earth
and mud plastered over a single tree is often enormous; and
## p. 4909 (#67) ############################################
HENRY DRUMMOND
4909
when one thinks that it is not only an isolated specimen here
and there that is frescoed in this way, but often all the trees of
a forest, some idea will be formed of the magnitude of the
operations of these insects, and the extent of their influence upon
the soil which they are thus ceaselessly transporting from under-
neath the ground.
In traveling through the great forests of the Rocky Mount-
ains or of the Western States, the broken branches and fallen
trunks, strewing the ground breast-high with all sorts of decay-
ing litter, frequently make locomotion impossible.
To attempt
to ride through these Western forests, with their meshwork of
interlocked branches and decaying trunks, is often out of the
question, and one has to dismount and drag his horse after him
as if he were clambering through a wood-yard. But in an Afri-
can forest not a fallen branch is seen. One is struck at first at
a certain clean look about the great forests of the interior, a
novel and unaccountable cleanness, as if the forest bed was care-
fully swept and dusted daily by unseen elves. And so indeed
it is. Scavengers of a hundred kinds remove decaying animal
matter, from the carcass of a fallen elephant to the broken wing
of a gnat; eating it, or carrying it out of sight and burying
it in the deodorizing earth. And these countless millions of
termites perform a similar function for the vegetable world,
making away with all plants and trees, all stems, twigs, and
tissues, the moment the finger of decay strikes the signal. Con-
stantly in these w ds one comes across what appear to be sticks
and branches and bundles of fagots, but when closely examined
they are to be mere casts in mud. From these hollow
tubes, which preserve the original form of the branch down to
the minutest knot or fork, the ligneous tissue is often entirely
removed, while others are met with in all stages of demolition.
There is the section of an actual specimen, which is not yet
completely destroyed, and from which the mode of attack may
be easily seen. The insects start apparently from two centres.
One company attacks the inner bark, which is the favorite mor-
sel, leaving the coarse outer bark untouched, or more usually
replacing it with grains of earth, atom by atom, as they eat it
away. The inner bark is gnawed off likewise as they go along,
but the woody tissue beneath is allowed to remain, to form a
protective sheath for the second company, who begin work at
the centre. This second contingent eats its way outward and
seen
## p. 4910 (#68) ############################################
4910
HENRY DRUMMOND
onward, leaving a thin tube of the outer wood to the last, as
props to the mine, till they have finished the main excavation.
When a fallen trunk lying upon the ground is the object of
attack, the outer cylinder is frequently left quite intact, and it is
only when one tries to drag it off to his camp-fire that he finds
to his disgust that he is dealing with a mere hollow tube, a few
lines in thickness, filled up with mud.
But the works above ground represent only a part of the
labors of these slow-moving but most industrious of creatures.
The arboreal tubes are only the prolongation of a much more
elaborate system of subterranean tunnels, which extend over large
areas and mine the earth sometimes to a depth of many feet or
even yards.
The material excavated from these underground galleries and
from the succession of domed chambers — used as nurseries or
granaries -- to which they lead, has to be thrown out upon the
surface. And it is from these materials that the huge ant-hills
are reared, which form so distinctive a feature of the African
landscape. These heaps and mounds are so conspicuous that
they may be seen for miles, and so numerous are they and so
useful as cover to the sportsman, that without them in certain
districts hunting would be impossible. The first things, indeed,
to strike the traveler in entering the interior are the mounds of
the white ant, now dotting the plain in groups like a small
cemetery, now rising into mounds, singly or in clusters, each
thirty or forty feet in diameter and ten or fifteen in height; or
again, standing out against the sky like obelisks, their bare sides
carved and futed into all sorts of fantastic shapes. In India
these ant-heaps seldom attain a height of more than a couple of
feet, but in Central Africa they form veritable hills, and contain
many tons of earth. The brick houses of the Scotch mission-
station on Lake Nyassa have all been built out of a single ants'
nest, and the quarry from which the material has been derived
forms a pit beside the settlement some dozen feet in depth. A
supply of bricks as large again could probably still be taken
from this convenient depot; and the missionaries on Lake Tan-
ganyika and onwards to Victoria Nyanza have been similarly
indebted to the labors of the termites. In South Africa the
Zulus and Kaffirs pave all their huts with white-ant earth; and
during the Boer war our troops in Pretoria, by scooping out the
interior from the smailer beehive-shaped ant-heaps and covering
## p. 4911 (#69) ############################################
HENRY DRUMMOND
4911
the top with clay, constantly used them as ovens. These ant.
heaps may be said to abound over the whole interior of Africa,
and there are several distinct species. The most peculiar, as
well as the most ornate, is a small variety from one to two feet
in height, which occurs in myriads along the shores of Lake
Tanganyika. It is built in symmetrical tiers, and resembles a
pile of small rounded hats, one above another, the rims depend-
ing like eaves, and sheltering the body of the hill from rain.
To estimate the amount of earth per acre raised from the water-
line of the subsoil by white ants, would not in some districts be
an impossible task; and it would be found probably that the
quantity at least equaled that manipulated annually in temperate
regions by the earthworm.
These mounds, however, are more than mere waste-heaps.
Like the corresponding region underground, they are built into
a meshwork of tunnels, galleries, and chambers, where the social
interests of the community are attended to. The most spacious
of these chambers, usually far underground, is very properly allo-
cated to the head of the society, the queen. The queen termite is a
very rare insect, and as there are seldom more than one or at most
two to a colony, and as the royal apartments are hidden far in
the earth, few persons have ever seen a queen; and indeed most,
if they did happen to come across it, from its very singular ap-
pearance would refuse to believe that it had any connection with
white ants. It possesses indeed the true termite head, but there
the resemblance to the other members of the family stops; for
the size of the head bears about the same proportion to the rest
of the body as does the tuft on his Glengarry bonnet to a six-foot
Highlander. The phenomenal corpulence of the royal body in the
case of the queen termite is possibly due in part to want of exer-
cise; for once seated upon her throne, she never stirs to the end
of her days. She lies there, a large, loathsome, cylindrical pack-
age, two or three inches long, in shape like a sausage, and as
white as a bolster. Her one duty in life is to lay eggs; and it
must be confessed she discharges her function with complete suc-
cess, for in a single day her progeny often amounts to many thou-
sands, and for months this enormous fecundity never slackens.
The body increases slowly in size, and through the transparent
skin the long folded ovary may be seen, with the eggs, impelled
by a peristaltic motion, passing onward for delivery to the work-
ers, who are waiting to carry them to the nurseries, where they
## p. 4912 (#70) ############################################
4912
HENRY DRUMMOND
are hatched. Assiduous attention meantime is paid to the queen
by other workers, who feed her diligently, with much self-denial
stuffing her with morsel after morsel from their own jaws. A
guard of honor in the shape of a few of the larger soldier ants
is also in attendance, as a last and almost unnecessary precaution.
In addition finally to the soldiers, workers, and queen, the royal
chamber has also one other inmate — the king.
He is a very
ordinary-looking insect, about the same size as the soldiers, but
the arrangement of the parts of the head and body is widely dif-
ferent, and like the queen he is furnished with eyes.
## p. 4913 (#71) ############################################
4913
WILLIAM DRUMMOND OF HAWTHORNDEN
(1585-1649)
T SEEMS to be the mission of many writers to illuminate con-
temporary literature and so to light the way for future
students, rather than to make any vital contribution to the
achievement of their time. Such writers reflect the culture of their
own day and represent its ideals; and although their creative work
may be slight, their loss to literature would be serious. Among these
lesser men stands that sincere poet, Drummond of Hawthornden. In
Scotland under the Stuarts, when the vital energy of the land was
concentrated upon politics and theology,
native literature was reduced to a mere re-
flection of the pre-Spenserian classicism of
England. Into this waste of correct medi-
ocrity entered the poetry of William Drum-
inond, an avowed and enthusiastic follower
of the Elizabethan school, a finished scholar,
one of the typical Scottish gentlemen who
were then making Scottish history. Court-
ier and trifler though he was, however, he
showed himself so true a poet of nature that
his felicities of phrase seem to anticipate
the sensuous realism of Keats and his suc-
William DRUMMOND
cessors.
William Drummond, born in 1585, was a cadet of the historic
house which in 1357 gave in marriage to King Robert III. the beau-
tiful Annabella Drummond, who was destined to become the ances-
tress of the royal Stuarts of Scotland and England. In his own day
the family, whose head was the Earl of Perth, was powerful in
Scottish affairs, and the history of the clan Drummond would be
largely a history of the events which led to the Protectorate.
Throughout the storm and stress that preceded the civil war Drum-
mond was a loyalist, though at one time he appeared to be identified
with the Covenanters. His literary influence, which was consider-
able, was always thrown on the side of the King, while the term
« Drummondism ” was a popular synonym for the conservative policy.
Throughout the struggle, however, Drummond seems to have been
forced into activity by circumstances rather than by choice. He had
the instincts of a recluse and a scholar. He delighted in the society
IX-308
## p. 4914 (#72) ############################################
4914
WILLIAM DRUMMOND OF HAWTHORNDEN
of literary men, and he was much engrossed in philosophical specu-
lations.
In spite of the difficulties of distance, he managed to keep abreast
of the thought of literary London, the London of Drayton and Web-
ster, of Beaumont, Fletcher, Massinger, and Ford. His chief satisfac-
tion was to know that his own work was not unacceptable to this
brilliant group, and one of the great pleasures of his life was a visit
from Ben Jonson, who, making a walking tour to Scotland, found at
Hawthornden that congenial hospitality in which his soul delighted.
Of this famous visit, as of other important events, Drummond kept a
record, in which he set down his guest's behavior, opinions, and con-
fidential sayings. Warmly as he admired Jonson's genius, he found
his personality oppressive, and intrusted his criticisms to his diary.
When this was published, more than a century later, the gentle Scot
was accused of bad taste, breach of confidence, and disloyalty to
friendship. But his defense lies in the fact that the book was meant
for no eyes but his own, and that the intimacy and candor of its
revelations were intended to preserve his recollections of a memorable
experience.
If his environment was not entirely favorable to literary excel-
lences, it is yet very likely that Drummond developed the full meas-
ure of his gift. He expressed the spirit of the inore imaginative
generation which succeeded a hard and fettered predecessor, and it
is for this that literature owes him its peculiar debt.
His career began in his twenty-ninth year with the publication of
an elegy on the death of Henry, Prince of Wales, eldest son of James I.
This poem, under the title "Tears on the Death of Mæliades,' ap-
peared in 1613, and reached a third edition within a twelvemonth.
Its two hundred lines show the finished versification of the scholar,
with much poetic grace. It was a product of the Spenserian school,
and emphasized the fact that the representative literature of the land
had abandoned the Scottish dialect for English forms. Drummond's
second volume of poems commemorated the death of his wife and his
love of her. It is in this work that the ultimate mood of the poet
appears. Much beauty of form, a delightful sensitiveness to nature, a
luxuriance of color, and a finely tempered thoughtfulness pervade the
poems. His next production, celebrating the visit of James I. to his
native land, was entitled (Forth Feasting,' and represented the
Forth and all its borders as rejoicing in the presence of their King.
To the reader of to-day the panegyric sounds fulsome and the poetry
stilted, and the once famous book has now merely an archaic interest.
Drummond's reputation is based upon the ‘Poems,' and upon the
Jeremy-Taylor-like Cypress Grove,' published in 1623 in connection
with the religious verses called Flowers of Sion. ' 'Cypress Grove
## p. 4915 (#73) ############################################
WILLIAM DRUMMOND OF HAWTHORNDEN
4915
is an essay on death, akin in spirit to the religious temper of the
Middle Ages, and in philosophic breadth to the diviner mood of Plato.
Only a mind of a high order would have conceived so beautiful and
lofty a meditation on the Final Mystery. This brief essay marks the
utmost reach of Drummond's mind, and shows the strength of that
serene spirituality, which could thus hold its way undisturbed by the
sectarian bitterness that fixed a great gulf between England and
Scotland. "The History of the Five Jameses,' which Drummond was
ten years in compiling and which was not published until six years
after his death, added nothing to his reputation. It lacked alike the
diligent minuteness of the chronicler and the broader view of the
historian. Many minor papers on the state of religion and politics,
chief of which is the political tract Irene,' show Drummond's ag-
gressive interest in contemporary affairs. It is not generally known
that this gentle scholar was also an inventor of military engines. In
1626 Charles I. engaged him to produce sixteen machines and “not
a few inventions besides. ” The biographers have remained curiously
ignorant of this phase of his activity, but the State papers show that
the King named him our faithful subject, William Drummond of
Hawthornden. ” He died in 1649, his death being hastened, it was
said, by his passion of grief over the martyrdom of King Charles.
SEXTAIN
T"
He heaven doth not contain so many stars,
So many leaves not prostrate lie in woods
When autumn's old and oreas soun his wars,
So many waves have not the ocean floods,
As my rent mind hath torments all the night,
And heart spends sighs when Phæbus brings the light.
Why should I have been partner of the light,
Who, crost in birth by bad aspect of stars,
Have never since had happy day or night?
Why was not I a liver in the woods,
Or citizen of Thetis's ystal floods,
Than made a man, for love and fortune's wars ?
I look each day when death should end the wars,
Uncivil wars, 'twixt sense and reason's light;
My pains I count to mountains, meads, and floods,
And of my sorrow partners make the stars;
All desolate I haunt the fearful woods,
When I should give myself to rest at night.
## p. 4916 (#74) ############################################
4916
WILLIAM DRUMMOND OF HAWTHORNDEN
With watchful eyes I ne'er behold the night,
Mother of peace, but ah! to me of wars,
And Cynthia, queen-like, shining through the woods,
When straight those lamps come in my thought, whose light
My judgment dazzled, passing brightest stars,
And then mine eyes en-isle themselves with floods.
Turn to their springs again first shall the floods,
Clear shall the sun the sad and gloomy night,
To dance about the pole cease shall the stars,
The elements renew their ancient wars
Shall first, and be deprived of place and light,
E'er I find rest in city, fields, or woods.
End these my days, indwellers of the woods,
Take this my life, ye deep and raging floods;
Sun, never rise to clear me with thy light,
Horror and darkness, keep a lasting night;
Consume me, care, with thy intestine wars,
And stay your influence o'er me, bright stars!
In vain the stars, indwellers of the woods,
Care, horror, wars, I call, and raging floods,
For all have sworn no night shall dim my sight.
MADRIGAL
T**
His world a-hunting is,
The prey poor man, the Nimrod
fierce is Death;
His speedy greyhounds are
Lust, sickness, envy, care,
Strife that ne'er falls amiss,
With all those ills which haunt us while we breathe.
Now if by chance we fly
Of these the eager chase,
Old age with stealing pace
Casts up his nets, and there we panting die.
## p. 4917 (#75) ############################################
WILLIAM DRUMMOND OF HAWTHORNDEN
4917
REASON AND FEELING
I
KNOW that all beneath the moon decays,
And what by mortals in this world is brought,
In Time's great periods shall return to naught;
That fairest States have fatal nights and days.
I know that all the Muse's heavenly lays,
With toil of sp'rit, which are so dearly bought,
As idle sounds, of few or none are sought, -
That there is nothing lighter than vain praise.
I know frail beauty like the purple flower,
To which one morn oft birth and death affords;
That love a jarring is of minds' accords,
Where sense and will envassal Reason's power:
Know what I list, all this cannot me move,
But that, alas! I both must write and love.
DEGENERACY OF THE WORLD
WAT
HAT hapless hap had I for to be born
In these unhappy times, and dying days
Of this now doting World, when Good decays,
Love's quite extinct, and Virtue's held a-scorn!
When such are only prized, by wretched ways,
Who with a golden fleece them can adorn;
When avarice and lust are counted praise,
And bravest minds live orphan-like forlorn!
Why was not I born in that golden age
When gold was not yet known ? and those black arts
By which base worldlings vilely play their parts,
With horrid acts staining Earth's stately stage?
To have been then, () Heaven! 't had been my bliss;
But bless me now, and take me soon from this.
THE BRIEFNESS OF LIFE
L
ook, how the flower which ling'ringly doth fade,
The morning's darling late, the summer's queen,
Spoiled of that juice which kept it fresh and green,
As high as it did raise, bows low the head:
Right so my life, contentment being dead,
Or in their contraries but only seen,
## p. 4918 (#76) ############################################
4918
WILLIAM DRUMMOND OF HAWTHORNDEN
With swifter speed declines than erst it spread,
And, b1 sted, scarce now shows what it hath been.
As doth the pilgrim, therefore, whom the night
By darkness would imprison on his way,-
Think on thy home, my soul, and think aright,
Of what's yet left thee of life's wasting day;
Thy sun posts westward, passèd is thy morn,
And twice it is not given thee to be born.
THE UNIVERSE
O"
F This fair volume which we World do name,
If we the leaves and sheets could turn with care-
Of Him who it corrects and did it frame
We clear might read the art and wisdom rare,
Find out his power, which wildest powers doth tame,
His providence, extending everywhere,
His justice, which proud rebels doth not spare,
In every page and period of the same.
But silly we, like foolish children, rest
Well pleased with colored vellum. leaves of gold,
Fair dangling ribands, leaving what is best;
On the great Writer's sense ne'er taking hold;
Or if by chance we stay our minds on aught,
It is some picture on the margin wrought.
ON DEATH
From Cypress Grove)
D
EATH is a piece of the order of this all, a part of the life of
this world; for while the world is the world, some creatures
must die and others take life. Eternal things are raised
far above this orb of generation and corruption where the First
Matter, like a still flowing and ebbing sea, with diverse waves
but the same water, keepeth a restless and never tiring current;
what is below in the universality of its kind doth not in itself
abide.
If thou dost complain there shall be a time in
the which thou shalt not be, why dost thou not too grieve that
there was a time in which thou wast not, and so that thou art
not as old as the enlivening planet of Time ?
The
excellent fabric of the universe itself shall one day suffer ruin, or
change like ruin, and poor earthlings, thus to be handled, com
plain!
## p. 4918 (#77) ############################################
## p. 4918 (#78) ############################################
JOHN DRYDEN
## p. 4918 (#79) ############################################
4919
JOHN DRYDEN
(1631-1700)
BY THOMAS R. LOUNSBURY
OHN DRYDEN, the foremost man of letters of the period fol-
lowing the Restoration, was born at Aldwinkle, a village of
Northamptonshire, on August 9th, 1631. He died May ist,
1700. His life was therefore coeval with the closing period of the
fierce controversies which culminated in the civil war and the tri-
umph of the Parliamentary party; that, in turn, to be followed suc-
cessively by the iron rule of Cromwell, by the restoration of the
exiled Stuarts, and the reactionary tendencies in politics that accom-
panied that event; and finally with the effectual exclusion from the
throne of this same family by the revolution of 1688, leaving behind,
however, to their successors a smoldering Jacobite hostility that per-
petually plotted the overthrow of the new government and later
broke out twice into open revolt. All these changes of fortune, with
their changes of opinion, are faithfully reflected in the productions of
Dryden. To understand him thoroughly requires therefore an inti-
mate familiarity with the civil and religious movements which char-
acterize the whole period. Equally also do his writings, both creative
and critical, represent the revolution of literary taste that took place
in the latter half of the seventeenth century. It was while he was in
the midst of his intellectual activity that French canons of criticism
became largely the accepted rules, by which the value of English
productions was tested.
This was especially true of the drama. The
study of Dryden is accordingly a study of the political and literary
history of his times to an extent that is correspondingly true of no
other English author before or since.
His family, both on the father's and the mother's side, was in full
sympathy with the party opposed to the court. The son was edu-
cated at Westminster, then under the mastership of Richard Busby,
whose relentless use of the rod has made his name famous in that
long line of flagellants who have been at the head of the great Eng-
lish public schools. From Westminster he went to Trinity College,
Cambridge. There he received the degree of A. B. in January 1654.
Later in that same decade the precise date is not known — he took
up his residence in London; and in London the rest of his life was
almost entirely spent.
## p. 4918 (#80) ############################################
JOHN DRYDEN.
## p. 4919 (#81) ############################################
their changes of
Dryden. Tunda
mate familiarity ?
acterize the whole
and critical represei
in the latter half
the midst of his inti! ! 1. '1' it!
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history of his tines tos att?
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sympathy with the pritet
cated at Westminster, 1
whose relentless 115€
long line of flagellat:
lish public schonis,
Cambridge There !
Later in that same nila
up his residence in Li:
almost entirely spent.
ro
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## p. 4920 (#82) ############################################
4920
JOHN DRYDEN
Dryden's first published literary effort appeared in a little volume
made up of thirty-three elegies, by various authors, on the death of
a youth of great promise who had been educated at Westminster.
This was Lord Hastings, the eldest son of the Earl of Huntingdon.
He had died of the small-pox. Dryden's contribution was written in
1649, and consisted of but little over a hundred lines. No one ex-
pects great verse from a boy of eighteen; but the most extravagant
anticipations of sorry performance will fail to come up to the reality
of the wretchedness which was here attained. It was in words like
these that the future laureate bewailed the death of the young noble-
man and depicted the disease of which he died :-
«Was there no milder way but the small-pox,
The very filthiness of Pandora's box?
So many spots, like næves, our Venus soil ?
One jewel set off with so many a foil?
Blisters with pride swelled, which through his fesh did sprout
Like rosebuds, stuck in the lily-skin about.
Each little pimple had a tear in it,
To wail the fault its rising did commit;
Which, rebel-like, with its own lord at strife,
Thus made an insurrection 'gainst his life.
Or were these gems sent to adorn his skin,
The cabinet of a richer soul within ?
No comet need foretell his change drew on,
Whose corps might seem a constellation. ”
Criticism cannot be rendered sufficiently vituperative to character-
ize properly such a passage. It is fuller of conceits than ever Cowley
crowded into the same space; and lines more crabbed and inhar-
monious Donne never succeeded in perpetrating. Its production up-
sets all principles of prophecy. The wretchedest of poetasters can
take courage, when he contemplates the profundity of the depth out
of which uprose the greatest poet of his time.
Dryden is, in fact, an example of that somewhat rare class of
writers who steadily improve with advancing years. Most poets write
their best verse before middle life. Many of them after that time go
through a period of decline, and sometimes of rapid decline; and if
they live to reach old age, they add to the quantity of their produc-
tion without sensibly increasing its value. This general truth is con-
spicuously untrue of Dryden. His first work gave no promise of his
future excellence, and it was by very slow degrees that he attained
to the mastery of his art. But the older he grew, the better he
wrote; and the volume published a few months before his death, and
largely composed almost under its shadow, so far from showing the
## p. 4921 (#83) ############################################
JOHN DRYDEN
4921
slightest sign of failing power, contains a great deal of the best
poetry he ever produced.
As Dryden's relatives were Puritans, and some of them held place
under the government, it was natural that upon coming to London
he should attach himself to that party. Accordingly it is no surprise
to find him duly mourning the death of the great Protector in cer-
tain Heroic Stanzas Consecrated to the Memory of Oliver Cromwell. ”
The first edition bears the date of 1659, and so far as we know, the
production was Dryden's second venture in poetry. It was written
in the measure of Davenant's Gondibert,' and is by no means a poor
piece of work, though it has been sometimes so styled. It certainly
pays not simply a high but a discerning tribute to the genius of
Cromwell. Before two years had gone by, we find its author greet-
ing the return of Charles with effusive loyalty, and with predictions
of prosperity and honor to attend his reign, which events were soon
woefully to belie. The poet has been severely censured for this
change of attitude. It is a censure which might be bestowed with as
much propriety upon the whole population of England. The joyful
expectations to which he gave utterance were almost universal; and
no other charge can well be brought against him than that he had
the ability and took the occasion to express sentiments which were
felt by nearly the entire nation.
From this time on, Dryden appears more and more in the public
eye, and slowly but steadily forged his way to the front as the rep-
resentative man of letters of his time. In 1670 he was appointed to
the two distinct offices of poet laureate and historiographer royal.
Thenceforward his relations with the court became close, and so
they did not cease to be until the expulsion of James II. In 1683 he
received a further mark of royal favor, in being made collector of
customs of the port of London. In the political controversies which
subsequently arose, Dryden's writings faithfully represented the sen-
timents of the side he had chosen, and expressed their prejudices
and aversions not merely with force but also with virulence. His
first literary activity, however, was on neutral ground. After eigh-
teen years of compulsory closing, the Restoration opened wide once
more the doors of the theatre. Dryden, like every one else possessed
of literary ability, began to write for the stage. His first play, a
comedy entitled “The Wild Gallant,' was brought out in February
1663; and for the eighteen years following, it was compositions of
such nature that occupied the main portion of his literary life. Dur-
ing that time he produced wholly or in part twenty-two comedies
and tragedies. His pieces must from the outset have met with a
fair degree of success, otherwise the King's Company would not have
entered into a contract with him, as it did in 1667, to furnish for
## p. 4922 (#84) ############################################
4922
JOHN DRYDEN
them each year a fixed number of plays, in consideration of his
receiving a certain share of the profits of the theatre.
Yet it cannot be said that Dryden was in any respect a dramatist
of a high order. As a writer of comedy he was not only inferior to
contemporaries and immediate successors like Wycherley, Congreve,
Vanbrugh, and Farquhar, but in certain ways he was surpassed by
Shadwell, the very man whom he himself has consigned to a disagree-
able immortality as the hero of the MacFlecknoe. ' His comedies
are not merely full of obscenity, — which seems to have been a neces-
sary ingredient to suit them to the taste of the age,— but they are
full of a peculiarly disagreeable obscenity. One of his worst offenses in
this direction, and altogether his most impudent one, was his adapta-
tion for the stage of Shakespeare's “Tempest. The two plays are
worth reading together for the sake of seeing how easily a pure and
perfect creation of genius can be vulgarized in language and spirit
almost beyond the possibility of recognition. ' In his tragedies,
however, Dryden was much more successful. Yet even these, in spite
of the excellence of occasional passages, do not attain to a high rank.
Indeed, thought and expression are at times extravagant, not to say
stilted, to an extent which afterward led him himself to make them
the subject of ridicule. It was in them, however, during these years
that he perfected by degrees his mastery of heroic verse, of which
later he was to display the capabilities in a way that had never pre-
viously been seen and has never since been surpassed.
A controversy in regard to the proper method of composing plays
brought forward Dryden, at an early period in his literary career, as
a writer of prose. In this he at once attained unusual eminence. In
him appear for the first time united the two characters of poet and
of critic. Ben Jonson had in a measure preceded him in this respect;
but Jonson's criticism was not so much devoted to the examination
of general principles as to the exposure of the hopeless, helpless
obtuseness of the men who had a different opinion of his works from
what he himself entertained. The questions discussed by Dryden were
of a more general nature. With the Stuarts had come in French
literary tastes and French literary methods. The age was supposed
to be too refined to be pleased with what had satisfied the coarse
palates of preceding generations. In stage-writing in particular, the
doctrine of the unities, almost uniformly violated by Shakespeare and
most of the Elizabethans, was now held up as the only correct
method of composition that could be employed by any writer who
sought to conform to the true principles of art. Along with this
came the substitution in the drama of rhyme for blank verse. Upon
the comparative merits of these two as employed in tragedy, arose
the first controversy in which Dryden was engaged. This one was
6mposing
## p. 4923 (#85) ############################################
JOHN DRYDEN
4923
with his brother-in-law, Sir Robert Howard; for in 1663 Dryden had
become the husband of the daughter of the Earl of Berkshire, thus
marrying, as Pope expressed it, “misery in a noble wife. ” Dryden
was an advocate of rhyme; and the controversy on this point began
with the publication in 1668 of his Essay of Dramatic Poesy. It
was afterward carried on by both parties, in prefaces to the plays
they successively published. The prefaces to these productions regu-
larly became later the place where Dryden laid down his critical
doctrines on all points that engaged his attention; and whether we
agree with his views or not, we are always sure to be charmed with
the manner in which they are expressed.
In 1667 Dryden published a long poem entitled Annus Mirabilis. '
It was in the same measure as the stanzas on Oliver Cromwell. It
gave him a good deal of reputation at the time; but though it is far
from being a despicable performance, few there are now who read it
and still fewer who re-read it. Far different has been the fate of
his next work. It was not until 1681, when England was beginning
to emerge slowly from the excitement and agitation growing out of
the alleged Popish plot, that he brought out his `Absalom and Achi-
tophel,' without question the greatest combined poetical and political
satire to be found in our tongue. Here it was that for the first time
he fully displayed his mastery over heroic verse. The notion once
so widely prevalent — for the vogue of which, indeed, Dryden him-
self is mainly responsible - that Waller and Denham brought this
verse to perfection, it now requires both extensive and special igno-
rance of our earlier authors to entertain; but on the other hand,
there is no question that he himself imparted to the line a variety,
vigor, and sustained majesty movement such as the verse in ts
modern form had never previously received. There is therefore a
fairly full measure of truth in the lines in which he was character-
ized by Pope: -
«Waller/ was
smooth/; but Dryden taught/to join
The varging versq. the fulll resounding line,
The long majestic marel/ and enfergy divine. ”
These lines of Pope, it may be added, exemplify purposely two pecul-
iarities of Dryden's versification, — the occasional use of the triplet
instead of the regular couplet, and of the Alexandrine, or line of six
feet, in place of the usual line of five.
The poem is largely an attack upon the Earl of Shaftesbury,
who in it bears the title of Achitophel. The portrayal of this states-
man, which is given in this volume, is ample evidence of that skill of
the poet in characterization which has made the pictures he drew
immortal. Perhaps even more effective was the description of the
## p. 4924 (#86) ############################################
4924
JOHN DRYDEN
Duke of Buckingham, under the designation of Zimri. For attacking
that nobleman Dryden had both political and personal reasons. Buck-
ingham had now joined the opponents of the court. Ten years previ-
ously the poet himself had been brought by him on the stage, with
the aid of others, in the play called The Rehearsal. ' His usual
actions had been mimicked, his usual expressions had been put into
the mouth of the character created to represent him, who was styled
Bayes. This title had been given him because Dryden figuratively
wore the bays, or laurel, as poet laureate. The name henceforward
stuck. Dryden's turn had now come; and it was in these, following
lines that he drew the unfaded and fadeless picture of this noble-
man, whose reputation even then was notorious rather than famous,
and whose intellect was motley-minded rather than versatile:-
«Some of their chiefs were princes of the land;
In the front rank of these did Zimri stand,
A man so various that he seemed to be
Not one, but all mankind's epitome:
Stiff in opinions, always in the wrong,
Was everything by starts and nothing long,
But in the course of one revolving moon
Was chymist, fiddler, statesman, and buffoon;
Then all for women, painting, rhyming, drinking,
Besides ten thousand freaks that died in thinking.
Blest madman, who could every hour employ
With something new to wish or to enjoy!
Railing and praising were his usual themes,
And both, to show his judgment, in extremes:
So over-violent or over-civil
That every man with him was God or Devil.
In squandering wealth was his peculiar art:
Nothing went unrewarded but desert.
Beggared by fools whom still he found too late,
He had his jest, and they had bis estate.
As an example of the loftier and more majestic style occasionally
found in this poem, is the powerful appeal of Achitophel to Absalom.
The latter, it is to be said, stands for the Duke of Monmouth, the
eldest of the illegitimate sons of Charles II. Him many of the so-
called country party, now beginning to be styled Whigs, were
endeavoring to have recognized as the next successor to the throne,
in place of the Roman Catholic brother of the king, James, Duke of
York. As a favorite son of the monarch, he, though then in opposi-
tion, is treated tenderly by Dryden throughout; and this feeling is
plainly visible in the opening of the address to him put into the
mouth of Achitophel, in these words:-
## p. 4925 (#87) ############################################
JOHN DRYDEN
4925
1
“Auspicious prince, at whose nativity
Some royal planet ruled the southern sky,
Thy longing country's darling and desire,
Their cloudy pillar and their guardian fire,
Their second Moses, whose extended wand
Divides the seas and shows the promised land,
Whose dawning day in every distant age
Has exercised the sacred prophet's rage,
The people's prayer, the glad diviner's theme,
The young men's vision and the old men's dream,-
Thee savior, thee the nation's vows confess,
And never satisfied with seeing, bless. ”
Dryden followed up the attack upon Shaftesbury with a poem en-
titled “The Medal. ” This satire, which appeared in March 1682, was
called forth by the action of the partisans of the Whig leader in hav-
ing a medal struck commemorating his release from the Tower, after
the grand jury had thrown out the charge of treason which had been
brought against him. Both of these pieces were followed by a host
of replies. Some of them did not refrain from personal attack, which
indeed had a certain justification in the poet's own violence of denun-
ciation. The most abusive of these was a poem by Thomas Shadwell,
entitled (The Medal of John Bayes. ' Such persons as fancy Dryden's
subsequent punishment of that dramatist, unwarranted in its severity
should in justice read this ferociously scurrilous diatribe, in which
every charge against the poet that malice or envy had concocted and
rumor had set afloat, was here industriously raked together; and to
the muck-heap thus collected, the intimacy of previous acquaintance
was doubtless enabled to contribute its due quota of malignant asser-
tion and more malignant insinuation. Shadwell was soon supplied,
however, with ample reason to regret his action. Dryden's first and
best known rejoinder is MacFlecknoe, or a Satire on the True Blue
Protestant Poet T. S. This production has always had the reputation
in literature of being the severest personal satire in the language;
but it requires now for its appreciation an intimate acquaintance
with Shadwell's plays, which very few possess. It is further disfig-
ured in places by a coarseness from which, indeed, none of the poet's
writings were certain to be free. Its general spirit can be indicated
by a brief extract from its opening paragraph. Flecknoe, it is to be
said, was a feeble poet who had died a few years before. He is
here represented as having long reigned over the kingdom of dullness,
but knowing that his end was close at hand, determines to settle the
succession to the State. Accordingly he fixes upon his son Shadwell
as the one best fitted to take his place in ruling over the realm of
nonsense, and in continuing the war with wit and sense. The an-
nouncement of his intention he begins in the following words:--
## p. 4926 (#88) ############################################
4926
JOHN DRYDEN
« – 'Tis resolved, for Nature pleads that he
Should only rule who most resembles me.
Shadwell alone my perfect image bears,
Mature in dullness from his tender years;
Shadwell alone of all my sons is he
Who stands confirmed in full stupidity.
The rest, to some faint meaning make pretense,
But Shad well neper deviates into sense. ”
Far more bitter, however, was the renewed attack which a month
later Dryden inserted in the two hundred lines he contributed to the
continuation of Absalom and Achitophel' that was written by Nahum
Tate. In this second part, which came out in November 1682, he de-
voted himself in particular to two of his opponents, Settle and Shad-
well, under the names respectively of Doeg and Og—"two fools,” he
says, in his energetic way,-
<< That crutch their feeble sense on verse;
Who by my Muse to all succeeding times
Shall live in spite of their own doggerel rhymes. ”
Of Settle, whose poetry was possessed of much smoothness but
little sense, he spoke in a tone of contemptuous good-nature, though
the object of the attack must certainly have deemed the tender mer-
cies of Dryden to be cruel. It was in this way he was described, to
quote a few lines:-
«Spiteful he is not, though he wrote a satire,
For still there goes some thinking to ill-nature.
Let him be gallows-free by my consent,
And nothing suffer, since he nothing meant;
Hanging supposes human soul and reason,
This animal's below committing treason:
Shall he be hanged who never could rebel?
That's a preferment for Achitophel.
Let him rail on; let his invective Muse
Have four-and-twenty letters to abuse,
Which if he jumbles to one line of sense,
Indict him of a capital offense. ”
But it was not till he came to the portraiture of Shadwell that he
gave full vent to the ferocity of his satire. He taunted him with the
unwieldiness of his bulk, the grossness of his habits, with his want
of wealth, and finally closed up with some lines into which he con-
centrated all the venom of his previous attacks:
« But though Heaven/made him poor, with (reverence speaking.
He never was a poet of God's (nidking;
## p. 4927 (#89) ############################################
JOHN DRYDEN
4927
The midwife laid her hand on his thick skull,
With this prophetic blessing - Be thou dull;
Drink, swear, and roar, forbear no lewd delight
Fit for thy bulk; do anything but write.
Thou art of lasting make, like thoughtless men;
A strong nativity – but for the pen;
Eat opium, mingle arsenic in thy drink,
Still thou mayest live, avoiding pen and ink.
I see, I see, 'tis counsel given in vain,
For treason, botched in rhyme, will be thy bane;
Rhyme is the rock on which thou art to wreck;
'Tis fatal to thy fame and to thy neck.
"A double noose thou on thy neck dost pull,
For writing treason and for writing dull;
To die for faction is a common evil,
Put to be hanged for nonsense is the devil.
Hadst thou the glories of thy King exprest,
Thy praises had been satires at the best;
But thou in clumsy verse, unlicked, unpointed,
Hast shamefully defied the Lord's anointed.
I will not rake the dungbill of thy crimes,
For who would read thy life that reads thy rhymes ?
But of King David's foes be this the doom, -
May all be like the young man Absalom;
And for my foes may this their blessing be,-
To talk like Doeg and to write like thee. ”
Refinement of tone is not the distinguishing characteristic of satire
of this sort. It does not attack its object by delicate insinuation or
remote suggestion. It operates by heavy downright blows which
crush by the mere weight and power of the stroke. There was in
truth in those days a certain brutality not only permitted but ex-
pected in the way men spoke of each other, and Dryden conformed
in this as in other respects to the manners and methods of his age.
But of its kind the attack is perfect. The blows of a bludgeon which
make of the victim a shapeless mass kill as effectively as the steel
or poison which leaves every feature undisturbed, and to the common
apprehension it serves to render the killing more manifest.
rate, so long as a person has been done to death, it makes compara-
tively little difference how the death was brought about; and the
object in this instance of Dryden's attack, though a man of no mean
abilities, has never recovered from the demolition which his reputa-
tion then underwent.
In 1685 Charles II. died, and his brother James ascended the throne.
In the following year Dryden went over to the Roman Catholic
Church. No act of his life has met with severer censure. Nor can
At any
(
## p. 4928 (#90) ############################################
4928
JOHN DRYDEN
there be any doubt that the time he took to change his religion
afforded ground for distrusting the sincerity of his motives. A king
was on the throne who was straining every nerve to bring the Church
of England once more under the sway of the Church of Rome. Ob-
viously the adoption of the latter faith would recommend the poet to
the favor of the bigoted monarch, and tend to advance his personal
interests. There is no wonder, therefore, that he should at the time
have been accused of being actuated by the unworthiest of reasons,
and that the charge should continue to be repeated to our day. Yet
a close study of Dryden's life and writings indicates that the step he
took was
a natural if not an inevitable outcome of the processes
through which his opinions had been passing. He had been early
trained in the strict tenets of the Puritan party. From these he had
been carried over to the loose beliefs and looser life that followed
everywhere hard upon the Restoration. By the sentiments then pre-
vailing he was profoundly affected. Nothing in the writings of the
first half of his literary life is more marked — not even his flings at
matrimony – than the scoffing way in which he usually spoke of the
clergy. His tone towards them is almost always contemptuous, where
it is not positively vituperative. His famous political satire began
with this line-
In pious times, ere priestcraft did begin;” -
and a little later in the course of the same poem he observed that -
(Fraud was used, the sacrificer's trade,
the sacrificer” here denoting the priest. This feeling toward the
clergy never in truth deserted him entirely. But no one who reads
carefully his Religio Laici, a poem published in 1982, can fail to
perceive that even then he had not only drifted far away from the
faith of his childhood, but had begun to be tormented and perplexed
by the insoluble problems connected with the life and destiny of
man, and with his relations to his Creator. The subject was not
likely to weigh less heavily upon him in the years that followed.
To Dryden, as to many before and since, it may have seemed the
easiest method of deliverance from the difficulties in which he found
himself involved, to cast the burden of doubts which disquieted the
mind and depressed the heart, upon a Church that undertakes to
assume the whole responsibility for the man's future on condition of
his yielding to it an unquestioning faith in the present.
An immediate result of his conversion was the production in 1687
of one of his most deservedly famous poems, (The Hind and the
Panther. He began it with the idea of assisting in bringing about
the reconciliation between the Panther, typifying the Church of Eng-
land, and the Hind, typifying the Church of Rome. It is apparent
## p. 4929 (#91) ############################################
JOHN DRYDEN
4929
that before he finished it he saw that the project was hopeless. It is
a poem of over twenty-five hundred es, of which the opening up to
line 150 is printed in this volume. Part of the passage here cited
contains, without professing it as an object, and probably without
intending it, the best defense that could be made for his change of
religion. The production in its entirety is remarkable for the skill
which its author displayed in carrying on an argument in verse. In
this he certainly had no superior among poets, perhaps no equal.
The work naturally created a great sensation in those days of fierce
political and religious controversy. Both it and its writer were made
the object of constant attack. A criticism, in particular, appeared
upon it in the shape of a dialogue in prose with snatches of verse
interspersed. It is usually known by the title of “The Town Mouse
and the Country Mouse,' and was exalted at the time by unrea-
soning partisanship into a wonderful performance. Even to the pres-
ent day, this dreary specimen of polemics is described as a very
witty work by those who have never struggled to read it.
It was
the production of Charles Montagu, the future Earl of Halifax, and
of Matthew Prior. A story too is still constantly repeated that Dry-
den was much hurt by the attacks of these two young men, to whom
he had been kind, and wept over their ingratitude. If he shed any
tears at all upon the occasion, they must have been due to the morti-
fication he felt that any two persons who had been admitted to his
friendship should have been guilty of twaddle so desperately tedious.
The flight of James and the accession of William and Mary threw
Dryden at once out of the favor of the court, upon which to a large
extent he had long depended for support. As a Jacobite he could
not take the oath of allegiance; but there is hardly any doubt that
under any circumstances he would have been deprived of the offices
of place and profit he held.
