No More Learning

]

[Footnote 71: Note III. ]

[Footnote 72: Note IV. ]

[Footnote 73: Note V. ]

[Footnote 74: Spain and Portugal, both desirous to ally themselves with
Charles by marriage. ]

[Footnote 75: Note VI. ]




NOTES

ON

THE PANEGYRIC ON THE CORONATION.


Note I.

_Some guilty months had in your triumphs shared. _

After the Restoration, several of the regicides were condemned to
death; but the king, with unexampled lenity, remitted the capital
punishment of many of these deep offenders. Only six of the king's
judges were executed; and, when to that number are added, the fanatic
Peters, who compared the suffering monarch to Barabbas, Coke, the
solicitor, who pleaded against Charles on his mock trial, and Hacker,
who commanded the guard, and brutally instigated, and even compelled
them to cry for execution, we have the number of nine, who suffered
for a fact, the most enormous in civilized history, till our age
produced a parallel. There was also an insurrection of the fierce and
hot-brained sect of fanatics, who called themselves fifth-monarchy
men, and devoutly believed, that the Millennium, and the reign of the
saints, was about to begin. Willing to contribute their share to this
happy consummation, these enthusiasts, headed by the fanatic Venner,
rushed into the streets of London; and, though but sixty in number,
were not overpowered without long resistance, and much bloodshed. These
incidents, Dryden, always happy in his allusion to the events of the
day, assigns as a reason for deferring the coronation to an untainted
year. Perhaps, however, he only meant to say, that, as Charles was
not restored till May, 1660, the preceding months of that year were
unworthy to share in the honour, which the coronation would have
conferred upon it.


Note II.

_The jealous sects----
You for their umpire, and their synod take,
And their appeal alone to Cæsar make. _

The conferences held at Savoy House, betwixt the presbyterians and the
bishops, excited hopes among those who did not understand the temper
of theological controversy, that these two powerful divisions of the
protestant church might be reconciled to each other. The quakers,
anabaptists, and other inferior sects, applied, by petitions and humble
addresses, to the king, to be permitted to worship God, according to
their consciences. Thus, the whole modelling of ecclesiastical matters
seemed to be in the hands of the king.


Note III.

_In stately frigates most delight you find. _

Charles the Second had a strong mechanical genius, and understood
ship-building, in particular, more completely than became a monarch,
if it were possible that a king of England could be too intimately
acquainted with what concerns the bulwark of his empire. The king's
skill in matters of navigation is thus celebrated by the author of
a Poem upon his Majesty's Coronation, the 22d April, 1661, being St
George's day.

The seaman's art, and his great end commerce,
Through all the corners of the universe,
Are not alone the subject of your care,
But your delight, and you their polar-star;
And even mechanic arts do find from you,
Both entertainment and improvement too.


Note IV.

_Beyond your court flows in the admitted tide. _

By the improvements made by Charles the Second on St James's Park,
there was a connection made with the river, which Waller has celebrated
in these lines, as a work of superior merit to founding a city.

Instead of rivers rolling by the side
Of Eden's garden, here flows in the tide.
The sea, which always served his empire, now
Pays tribute to our prince's pleasure too.
Of famous cities we the founders know;
But rivers old as seas, to which they go,
Are nature's bounty: 'tis of more renown,
To make a river, than to build a town.

_On St James's Park, as lately improved by His Majesty. _


Note V.

_Here the mistrustful fowl no harm suspects. _

The canal in St James's park formed a decoy for water-fowl, with which
it was stocked. This circumstance, like the former, is noticed by
Waller:

Whilst over head a flock of new-sprung fowl
Hangs in the air and does the sun controul.
Darkening the air, they hover o'er, and shrowd
The wanton sailors with a feathered cloud.

The water-fowl, thus celebrated, were particular favourites of the
king, who fed them with his own hand. His affection for his dogs and
ducks is noticed in many a libel.


Note VI.

_Thus from your Royal Oak, like Jove's of old,
Are answers sought, and destinies foretold;
Propitious oracles are begged with vows,
And crowns that grow upon the sacred boughs. _

This is in allusion to a device exhibited over the triumphal arch, in
Leadenhall street, through which the king passed in his way from the
Tower to Whitehall, on the day of his coronation. Behind a picture of
the king appeared, deciphered in a large table, "the Royal Oak, bearing
crowns and sceptres, instead of acorns; amongst the leaves in a label

_Miraturque novas frondes et non suà poma. _

As designing its reward, for the shelter it afforded his majesty,
after the fight at Worcester. "[76] These devices were invented by
John Ogilby, gent. , to the conduct of whom the poetical part of the
coronation, as it is termed in his writ of privilege, was solely
entrusted. The same fancy is commemorated, by the author of "Loyal
Reflections on his Majesty's Restoration, Procession, and Coronation,"
who thus apostrophises the Royal Oak:

Thou vegetive soul, whose glory 'tis and pride
To suffer wounds, or sink, not to divide;
Whose branches Ogilby's rich fancy made
Bear crowns for nuts, but thy best fruit was shade.
When Charles lodged in thy boughs, thou couldst not want
Many degrees to be a sensitive plant.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 76: Ogilby's relation of his Majesty's entertainment passing
through the city of London to his coronation. ]




TO

LORD CHANCELLOR HYDE.

&c.


The great statesman, to whom Dryden made this new-year's offering, was
the well known Earl of Clarendon, of whose administration Hume gives
the following striking account:

"Clarendon not only behaved with wisdom and justice in the office of
chancellor: all the counsels, which he gave the king, tended equally
to promote the interest of prince and people. Charles, accustomed, in
his exile, to pay entire deference to the judgment of this faithful
servant, continued still to submit to his direction; and for some time
no minister was ever possessed of more absolute authority. He moderated
the forward zeal of the royalists, and tempered their appetite
for revenge. With the opposite party, he endeavoured to preserve,
inviolate, all the king's engagements. He kept an exact register of the
promises which had been made, for any service; and he employed all his
industry to fulfil them. "

Notwithstanding the merits of Clarendon, and our author's prophecy in
the following verses, that

He had already wearied fortune so,
She could no longer be his friend or foe;

this great statesman was doomed to be one of the numberless victims to
the uncertainty of court favour. His fall took place in 1667, when he
was attainted and banished. The popular discontent was chiefly excited
against him, by a groundless charge of corruption; an accusation to
which the vulgar lend a greedy and implicit faith, because ignorance is
always suspicious, and low minds, not knowing how seldom avarice is the
companion of ambition, conceive the opportunities of peculation to be
not only numerous, but irresistibly tempting. Accordingly, the heroes
of Athens, as well as the patriots of Rome, were usually stigmatized
with this crime; bare suspicion of which, it would seem, is usually
held adequate to the fullest proof. Nor have instances been wanting
in our own days, of a party adopting the same mode, to blacken the
character of those, whose firmness and talents impeded their access to
power, and public confidence.

In the address to the Chancellor, Dryden has indulged his ingenuity
in all the varied and prolonged comparisons and conceits, which were
the taste of his age. Johnson has exemplified Dryden's capacity of
producing these elaborate trifles, by referring to the passage, which
compares the connection between the king and his minister, to the
visible horizon. "It is," says he, "so successfully laboured, that
though at last it gives the mind more perplexity than pleasure, and
seems hardly worth the study that it costs; yet it must be valued, as
the proof of a mind at once subtle and comprehensive. " The following
couplet, referring to the friendship of Charles I, when in his
distresses, for Clarendon, contains a comparison, which is eminently
happy:

Our setting sun, from his declining seat,
Shot beams of kindness on you, not of heat.

In general, this poem displays more uniform adherence to the
metaphysical style of Cowley, and his contemporaries, than occurs
in any of Dryden's other compositions. May we not suppose, that, in
addressing Clarendon, he adopted the style of those muses, with whom
the Chancellor had conversed in his earlier days, in preference to the
plainer and more correct taste, which Waller, and Denham, had begun
to introduce; but which, to the aged statesman, could have brought
no recollection of what he used to consider as poetry? Certain, at
least, it is, that, to use the strong language of Johnson, Dryden never
after ventured "to bring on the anvil such stubborn and unmanageable
thoughts;" and these lines afford striking evidence, how the lever of
genius, like that of machinery applied to material substances, can
drag together, and compel the approximation of the most unsociable
ideas. Our admiration of both, however, is much qualified, when they
are applied rather to make exhibition of their own powers, than for any
better purpose.




TO

THE LORD-CHANCELLOR HYDE.

PRESENTED ON NEW-YEAR'S-DAY, 1662.


MY LORD,

While flattering crouds officiously appear
To give themselves, not you, an happy year,
And by the greatness of their presents prove
How much they hope, but not how well they love,--
The Muses, who your early courtship boast,
Though now your flames are with their beauty lost,
Yet watch their time, that, if you have forgot
They were your mistresses, the world may not.
Decayed by time and wars, they only prove
Their former beauty by their former love;
And now present, as ancient ladies do,
That, courted long, at length are forced to woo:
For still they look on you with such kind eyes,
As those, that see the Church's sovereign rise,
From their own order chose, in whose high state
They think themselves the second choice of fate.
When our great monarch into exile went,
Wit and religion suffered banishment.
Thus once, when Troy was wrapped in fire and smoke,
The helpless gods their burning shrines forsook;
They with the vanquished prince and party go,
And leave their temples empty to the foe.
At length the Muses stand, restored again
To that great charge which nature did ordain;
And their loved druids seem revived by fate,
While you dispense the laws, and guide the state.
The nation's soul, our monarch, does dispense,
Through you, to us his vital influence:
You are the channel, where those spirits flow,
And work them higher, as to us they go.
In open prospect nothing bounds our eye,
Until the earth seems joined unto the sky:
So in this hemisphere, our utmost view
Is only bounded by our king and you;
Our sight is limited where you are joined,
And beyond that no farther heaven can find.
So well your virtues do with his agree,
That, though your orbs of different greatness be,
Yet both are for each other's use disposed,
His to inclose, and yours to be inclosed:
Nor could another in your room have been,
Except an emptiness had come between.
Well may he, then, to you his cares impart,
And share his burden where he shares his heart.
In you his sleep still wakes; his pleasures find
Their share of business in your labouring mind.
So, when the weary sun his place resigns,
He leaves his light, and by reflection shines.
Justice, that sits and frowns where public laws
Exclude soft mercy from a private cause,
In your tribunal most herself does please;
There only smiles because she lives at ease;
And, like young David, finds her strength the more,
When disincumbered from those arms she wore.
Heaven would your royal master should exceed
Most in that virtue, which we most did need;
And his mild father (who too late did find
All mercy vain but what with power was joined)
His fatal goodness left to fitter times,
Not to increase, but to absolve our crimes:
But when the heir of this vast treasure knew
How large a legacy was left to you,
(Too great for any subject to retain)
He wisely tied it to the crown again;
Yet, passing through your hands, it gathers more,
As streams, through mines, bear tincture of their ore.
While emp'ric politicians use deceit,
Hide what they give, and cure but by a cheat;
You boldly shew that skill which they pretend,
And work by means as noble as your end;
Which should you veil, we might unwind the clue,
As men do nature, till we came to you.
And, as the Indies were not found before
Those rich perfumes, which, from the happy shore,
The winds upon their balmy wings conveyed,
Whose guilty sweetness first their world betrayed;
So, by your counsels, we are brought to view
A rich and undiscovered world in you.
By you our monarch does that fame assure,
Which kings must have, or cannot live secure:
For prosperous princes gain their subjects' heart,
Who love that praise in which themselves have part.
By you he fits those subjects to obey,
As heaven's eternal monarch does convey
His power unseen, and man, to his designs,
By his bright ministers, the stars, inclines.
Our setting sun, from his declining seat,
Shot beams of kindness on you, not of heat;
And, when his love was bounded in a few
That were unhappy, that they might be true,
Made you the favourite of his last sad times,
That is a sufferer in his subjects' crimes:
Thus, those first favours you received, were sent,
Like heaven's rewards, in earthly punishment:
Yet fortune, conscious of your destiny,
E'en then took care to lay you softly by,
And wrapped your fate among her precious things,
Kept fresh to be unfolded with your king's.
Shewn all at once, you dazzled so our eyes,
As new-born Pallas did the gods surprise,
When, springing forth from Jove's new-closing wound,
She struck the warlike spear into the ground;
Which sprouting leaves did suddenly inclose,
And peaceful olives shaded as they rose.
How strangely active are the arts of peace,
Whose restless motions less than war's do cease!
Peace is not freed from labour, but from noise;
And war more force, but not more pains employs.
Such is the mighty swiftness of your mind,
That, like the earth, it leaves our sense behind,
While you so smoothly turn and roll our sphere,
That rapid motion does but rest appear.
For, as in nature's swiftness, with the throng
Of flying orbs while ours is borne along,
All seems at rest to the deluded eye,
Moved by the soul of the same harmony;
So, carried on by your unwearied care,
We rest in peace, and yet in motion share.
Let envy, then, those crimes within you see,
From which the happy never must be free;
(Envy, that does with misery reside,
The joy and the revenge of ruined pride. )
Think it not hard, if, at so cheap a rate,
You can secure the constancy of fate,
Whose kindness sent what does their malice seem,
By lesser ills the greater to redeem;
Nor can we this weak shower a tempest call,
But drops of heat that in the sun-shine fall.
You have already wearied Fortune so,
She cannot farther be your friend or foe;
But sits all breathless, and admires to feel
A fate so weighty, that it stops our wheel.
In all things else above our humble fate,
Your equal mind yet swells not into state,
But, like some mountain in those happy isles,
Where in perpetual spring young nature smiles,
Your greatness shews; no horror to affright,
But trees for shade, and flowers to court the sight:
Sometimes the hill submits itself a while
In small descents, which do its height beguile;
And sometimes mounts, but so as billows play,
Whose rise not hinders, but makes short, our way.
Your brow, which does no fear of thunder know,
Sees rolling tempests vainly beat below;
And, like Olympus' top, the impression wears
Of love and friendship writ in former years.
Yet unimpaired with labours, or with time,
Your age but seems to a new youth to climb.
Thus heavenly bodies do our time beget,
And measure change, but share no part of it.
And still it shall without a weight increase,
Like this new-year, whose motions never cease:
For, since the glorious course you have begun
Is led by Charles, as that is by the sun,
It must both weightless and immortal prove,
Because the centre of it is above.




SATIRE ON THE DUTCH.


This Satire was, as the title informs us, written in 1662: probably
towards the latter end of the year, when Charles, having quarrelled
with De Wit, then at the head of the public affairs of Holland, was
endeavouring to patch up an union with France, to which kingdom he
was naturally partial, against the States, whom he hated, both as
a republic, and an association of vulgar merchants. This impolitic
alliance did not then take place, notwithstanding the sale of Dunkirk,
(conquered by the arms of Cromwell,) to France, for L. 400,000. On the
contrary, in 1665 France armed in defence of Holland. But this was
contrary to the expectations and wishes of Charles; and accordingly
Dryden, in 1662, alludes to the union of the two crowns against the
States as a probable event.

The verses are adapted to the comprehension of the vulgar, whom they
were intended to inflame. Bold invective, and coarse raillery, supply
the place of the wit and argument, with which Dryden, when the time
fitted, knew so well how to arm his satire.

The verses, such as they are, appeared to the author well qualified
for the purpose intended; for, when, in 1672, his tragedy of "Amboyna"
was brought forward, to exasperate the nation against Holland, the
following verses were almost literally woven into the prologue and
epilogue of that piece. See Vol. V. pp. 10. 87. Nevertheless, as
forming a link in our author's poetical progress, the present Editor
has imitated his predecessors, in reprinting them among his satires and
political pieces.




SATIRE ON THE DUTCH.

WRITTEN IN THE YEAR 1662.


As needy gallants, in the scrivener's hands,
Court the rich knaves that gripe their mortgaged lands;
The first fat buck of all the season's sent,
And keeper takes no fee in compliment;
The dotage of some Englishmen is such,
To fawn on those who ruin them,--the Dutch.
They shall have all, rather than make a war
With those who of the same religion are.
The Straits, the Guinea-trade, the herrings too;
Nay, to keep friendship, they shall pickle you.
Some are resolved not to find out the cheat,
But, cuckold-like, love them that do the feat.
What injuries soe'er upon us fall,
Yet still the same religion answers all:--
Religion wheedled us to civil war,
Drew English blood, and Dutchmen's now would spare.
Be gulled no longer, for you'll find it true,
They have no more religion, faith! than you.
Interest's the god they worship in their state;
And we, I take it, have not much of that.
Well monarchies may own religion's name;
But states are atheists in their very frame.
They share a sin: and such proportions fall,
That, like a stink, 'tis nothing to them all.
Think on their rapine, falsehood, cruelty,
And that, what once they were they still would be.
To one well-born the affront is worse and more,
When he's abused and baffled by a boor.
With an ill grace the Dutch their mischiefs do;
They've both ill nature and ill manners too.
Well may they boast themselves an ancient nation;
For they were bred ere manners were in fashion:
And their new commonwealth hath set them free
Only from honour and civility.
Venetians do not more uncouthly ride,
Than did their lubber state mankind bestride;
Their sway became them with as ill a main,
As their own paunches swell above their chin.
Yet is their empire no true growth, but humour,
And only two kings' touch can cure the tumour. [77]
As Cato fruits of Afric did display,
Let us before our eyes their Indies lay:
All loyal English will like him conclude,--
Let Cæsar live, and Carthage be subdued. [78]

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 77: Alluding to the hoped for union between France and
England, and to the cure, by touching, for the Evil. ]

[Footnote 78: Cato is said to have laid before the Senate the fine figs
of Africa, and to have reminded them, that the country which produced
these choice fruits was but three days sail from Rome. He used also
to conclude every speech with the famous expression, _Delenda est
Carthago_. ]




TO

HER ROYAL HIGHNESS

THE DUCHESS OF YORK,

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


The Duchess, here addressed, was Anne Hyde, daughter of the Earl of
Clarendon, and first wife of James, Duke of York, afterwards James
II. She appears to have been a woman of first-rate talents, as well
as exemplary prudence. Of the last qualification she gave a singular
proof, when her marriage with the Duke was declared. She had admitted
James to her bed while abroad, under a solemn promise of marriage. Many
endeavoured to dissuade him from completing this unequal alliance; and
that a motive, at least an apology, might be supplied for a retreat
from his engagements, Lord Falmouth, Killigrew, and other courtiers,
did not hesitate to boast of favours received from the lady. When
the king's regard for his minister, and James's attachment to his
betrothed wife, occasioned the confirmation of the marriage, these
zealous witnesses found themselves in an unpleasing predicament, till
the Duchess took an opportunity of assuring them, that she was far
from harbouring the least resentment at the reports they had raised,
since they believed them calculated to promote the interest of their
master and her husband. [79] It may be presumed, that Dryden had already
attached himself to the fortunes of the Duke of York, since he so early
addressed the princess, whose posthumous avowal of the Catholic faith
he afterwards attempted to vindicate.

The victory of the 23d June, 1665, was gained by the British fleet,
commanded by the Duke of York, over the Dutch, under the famous Opdam.
It was, like all naval actions between the English and the Dutch, a
fierce, obstinate, and bloody conflict. The fleets met near Harwich
on the 2d June; but the Dutch declined action upon that day, from a
superstitious recollection that it was the anniversary of a dreadful
defeat, received from Blake and Monk in 1653, in which they lost their
famous Admiral, Von Tromp. But on the morning of the third, the fleets
joined battle so near the shore, that the thunder of the combat was
heard all along the English coast. York and Opdam singled each other
out, and lay alongside in close action, till the Dutch vessel (a second
rate) was blown up, and all on board perished. The Dutch fleet then
dispersed and fled, losing nineteen ships sunk and taken, while the
English lost only one. During this dreadful battle the Duke of York
displayed the greatest personal courage. He was in the thickest of the
fire, when one cannon-shot killed Lord Falmouth, Lord Muskerry, and Mr
Boyle, by his side, and covered him with the gore of the most faithful
and attached companions of his fortune. Yet this day, the brightest
which ever shone on him, was not without a cloud. When the Dutch fleet
were scattered, and an active pursuit was all that remained to the
victors, Brounker, a gentleman of the Duke's bed-chamber, commanded
Sir John Harman, in the Duke's name, to slacken sail. James was then
asleep, and the flimsy pretext of not disturbing his repose was set
up as a reason for this most untimely interference. The affair was
never well explained. The Duke dismissed Brounker from his service,
and a parliamentary investigation of his conduct took place. [80]
But no adequate punishment was inflicted, and the nation saw, with
displeasure, the fruits of a dear-bought and splendid victory lost by
the unauthorized interference of an officious minion.

The Duchess, as we learn, amongst other authorities, from an old libel,
came down to Harwich to see her husband embark, and afterwards made
the triumphant progress to the north, which is here commemorated. The
splendour of her reception at Harwich is thus censured by the Satirist:

One thrifty ferry-boat, of mother-pearl,
Sufficed of old the Citherean girl;
Yet navies are but fopperies, when here
A small sea mask, and built to court your dear:
Three goddesses in one, Pallas for art,
Venus for sport, but Juno in your heart.
O Duchess, if thy nuptial pomp was mean,
'Tis paid with interest in thy naval scene.
Never did Roman Mark, within the Nile,
So feast the fair Egyptian crocodile;
Nor the Venetian Duke, with such a state,
The Adriatic marry at that rate.

The poem itself is adapted to the capacity and taste of a lady; and, if
we compare it with that which Dryden had two years before addressed to
the Chancellor, it strengthens, I think, very strongly the supposition,
that the old taste of extravagant and over-laboured conceits, with
which the latter abounds, was a stile purposely adapted to gratify the
great Statesman to whom it was addressed, whose taste must necessarily
have been formed upon the ancient standard. The address, which follows,
is throughout easy and complimentary, much in the stile of Waller, as
appears from comparing it with that veteran bard's poem on the same
subject. Although upon a sublime subject, Dryden treats it in the light
most capable of giving pleasure to a fair lady; and the journey of the
duchess to the north is proposed as a theme, nearly as important as the
celebrated victory of her husband.

Accordingly Dryden himself tells us, in the introductory letter to the
"Annus Mirabilis," that, in these lines, he only affected smoothness
of measure and softness of expression; and the verses themselves were
originally introduced in that letter, to vindicate the character there
given of them.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 79: See Memoires de Grammont, Chapitre VIII. for the
Duchess's conduct towards these _temoins a bonne fortune_, as Hamilton
happily calls them. ]

[Footnote 80: Even Harman did not escape suspicion on this occasion.
Marvell gives the following account of his examination before
Parliament:

"Yesterday Harman was brought to the house, to give an account of
slackening sail in the first victory. He had a very good reputation at
his coming in; but when he said, that Mr Bronkard only used arguments,
and justified the thing himself, saying, 'That he had been a madman
had he not done it;' and other witnesses clearly contradicting this,
and proving, that Bronkard brought him orders in the Duke's name, he
lost all credit with us; and yet more, when, upon recollection, he
confessed that Mr Bronkard did bring orders as from the Duke: so he is
committed to the sergeant, and will doubtless be impeached. Both he and
Mr Bronkard, who was also heard, will probably, on Tuesday next, taste
the utmost severity of the house. " ANDREW MARVELL _to the_ MAYOR OF
HULL. _See his Works_, Vol. I. p. 104. ]




TO

HER ROYAL HIGHNESS

THE DUCHESS,

ON THE

MEMORABLE VICTORY GAINED BY THE DUKE OVER

THE HOLLANDERS, JUNE THE 3. 1665.

AND ON

HER JOURNEY AFTERWARDS INTO THE NORTH.


MADAM,

When, for our sakes, your hero you resigned
To swelling seas, and every faithless wind;
When you released his courage, and set free
A valour fatal to the enemy;
You lodged your country's cares within your breast,
(The mansion where soft love should only rest,)
And, ere our foes abroad were overcome,
The noblest conquest you had gained at home.
Ah, what concerns did both your souls divide!
Your honour gave us what your love denied;
And 'twas for him much easier to subdue
Those foes he fought with, than to part from you.
That glorious day, which two such navies saw,
As each unmatched might to the world give law,
Neptune, yet doubtful whom he should obey,
Held to them both the trident of the sea:
The winds were hushed, the waves in ranks were cast,
As awfully as when God's people past:
Those, yet uncertain on whose sails to blow,
These, where the wealth of nations ought to flow.
Then with the duke your Highness ruled the day: }
While all the brave did his command obey, }
The fair and pious under you did pray. }
How powerful are chaste vows! the wind and tide
You bribed to combat on the English side.
Thus to your much-loved lord you did convey
An unknown succour, sent the nearest way.
New vigour to his wearied arms you brought,
(So Moses was upheld while Israel fought)[81]
While, from afar, we heard the cannon play,
Like distant thunder on a shiny day. [82]
For absent friends we were ashamed to fear,
When we considered what you ventured there.
Ships, men, and arms, our country might restore,
But such a leader could supply no more.
With generous thoughts of conquest he did burn,
Yet fought not more to vanquish than return.
Fortune and victory he did pursue,
To bring them, as his slaves, to wait on you:
Thus beauty ravished the rewards of fame,
And the fair triumphed, when the brave o'ercame.
Then, as you meant to spread another way
By land your conquests, far as his by sea,
Leaving our southern clime, you marched along
The stubborn north, ten thousand Cupids strong.
Like commons the nobility resort,
In crowding heaps, to fill your moving court:
To welcome your approach the vulgar run,
Like some new envoy from the distant sun;
And country beauties by their lovers go,
Blessing themselves, and wondering at the show.
So, when the new-born Phœnix first is seen,
Her feathered subjects all adore their queen,
And, while she makes her progress through the east,
From every grove her numerous train's increased:
Each poet of the air her glory sings,
And round him the pleased audience clap their wings.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 81: Note I. ]

[Footnote 82: Note II.
]




NOTES

ON

THE PRECEDING POEM.


Note I.

_So Moses was upheld while Israel fought. _

"And it came to pass, when Moses held up his hand, that Israel
prevailed; and when he let down his hand, Amalek prevailed.

"But Moses' hands were heavy, and they took a stone, and put it under
him, and he sat thereon: and Aaron and Hur stayed up his hands, the one
on the one side, and the other on the other side, and his hands were
steady until the going down of the sun.

"And Joshua discomfited Amalek and his people with the edge of the
sword. " Exodus, chap. xvii. 11, 12, 13th verses.


Note II.

_While, from afar, we heard the cannon play,
Like distant thunder on a shiny day. _

The noise of the battle was distinctly heard at London, as appears from
the Introduction to our author's "Essay on Dramatic Poetry," where the
dialogue is supposed to pass in a barge, in which the speakers had
embarked to hear more distinctly, "those undulations of sound, which,
though almost vanishing before they reached them, seemed yet to retain
somewhat of their first horror which they had betwixt the fleets. " And,
by the sound seeming to retire from them, Eugenius draws an omen of the
enemy's defeat. This whole scene is imagined with so much liveliness,
that we can hardly doubt Dryden was actually an ear-witness of the
combat.




ANNUS MIRABILIS;

THE

YEAR OF WONDERS,

1666,

AN HISTORICAL POEM.




ANNUS MIRABILIS.


This is the first poem of any length which Dryden gave to the public.
Formerly he had only launched out in occasional verses, and, in some
instances, on subjects of no prominent importance. He now spread a
broader canvas, and prepared to depict a more extensive and magnificent
scene. The various incidents of an eventful war between two powerful
nations, who disputed the trident of the ocean, and the tremendous
fire, which had laid London in ashes, were subjects which still
continued to agitate the bosoms of his countrymen. These, therefore,
he ventured to assume as the theme of his poem; and his choice is
justified by the effects which it yet produces upon the reader.

There would have been no doubt, even had the author himself been
silent, that he followed D'Avenant in the choice of the elegiac
stanza, in which the _Annus Mirabilis_ is composed. It is sounding and
harmonious to the ear; and perhaps Dryden still annexed to the couplet
the idea of that harshness, which was so long its characteristick in
the hands of our early English writers. But the four-lined stanza has
also its peculiar disadvantages; and they are admirably stated by the
judicious critic, who first turned the Editor's eyes, and probably
those of many others, on the neglected poem of "Gondibert. "--"The
necessity of comprising a sentence within the limits of the measure, is
the tyranny of Procrustes to thought. For the sake of a disagreeable
uniformity, expression must constantly be cramped or extenuated.
In general, the latter expedient will be practised as the easiest;
and thus both sentiment and language will be enfeebled by unmeaning
expletives. "[83] It is nevertheless true, that Dryden has very seldom
suffered his poem to languish. Every stanza presents us either with
vivid description, or with some strong thought, which is seldom
suffered to glide into tenuity. But this structure of verse has often
laid him under an odd and rather unpleasing necessity, of filling up
his stanza, by coupling a simile, or a moral, expressed in the two
last lines, along with the fact, which had been announced in the
two first. When these comments, or illustrations, however good in
themselves, appear to be intruded upon the narrative or description,
and not naturally to flow out of either, they must be considered as
defects in composition; and a kind of versification, which compels
frequent recurrence to such expedients for filling up the measure, has
a disadvantage, for which mere harmony can hardly compensate. In the
passages which follow, there is produced a stiff and awkward kind of
balance between the story and the poet's reflections and illustrations.

Lawson among the foremost met his fate,
Whom sea-green Sirens from the rocks lament:
Thus as an offering for the Grecian state,
He first was killed, who first to battle went.

* * * * *

To nearest ports their shattered ships repair,
Where by our dreadful cannon they lay awed
So reverently men quit the open air,
Where thunder speaks the angry gods abroad.

* * * * *

Like hunted castors, conscious of their store,
Their way-laid wealth to Norway's coasts they bring;
There first the North's cold bosom spices bore,
And winter brooded on the eastern spring.

When, after such verses, we find one in which the author expresses
a single idea so happily, as just to fill up the _quatrain_, the
difference is immediately visible, betwixt a simile easily and
naturally introduced, and stanzas made up and levelled with what a
poet of those times would perhaps have ventured to call the _travelled
earth_ of versification:

And now four days the sun had seen our woes;
Four nights the moon beheld the incessant fire;
It seemed as if the stars more sickly rose,
And farther from the feverish north retire.

Of all these difficulties our author seems to have been aware, from
his preliminary epistle to Sir Robert Howard; and it was probably the
experimental conviction, that they were occasionally invincible, which
induced him thenceforward to desert the _quatrain_; although he has
decided that stanza to be more noble, and of greater dignity, both for
the sound and number, than any other verse in use among us.

The turn of composition, as well as the structure of the verse, is
adopted from "Gondibert. " But Dryden, more completely master of the
English language, and a writer of much more lively imagination and
expression, has, in general, greatly exceeded his master in conceiving
and bringing out the far-fetched ideas and images, with which each
has graced his poem. D'Avenant is often harsh and turgid, and the
construction of his sentences extremely involved. Dryden has his
obscure, and even unintelligible, passages; but they arise from the
extravagance of the idea, not from the want of power to express it. For
example, D'Avenant says,

Near her seems crucified that lucky thief,
In heaven's dark lottery prosperous more than wise,
Who groped at last by chance for heaven's relief,
And throngs undoes with hopes by one drawn prize.

We here perfectly understand the author's meaning, through his
lumbering and unpoetical expression; but, in the following stanza,
Dryden is unintelligible, because he had conceived an idea approaching
to nonsense, while the words themselves are both poetical and
expressive:

Then we upon our globe's last verge shall go,
And view the ocean leaning on the sky;
From thence our rolling neighbours we shall know,
And on the lunar world securely pry.

In short, Dryden never fails in the power of elegant expression, till
he ventures upon something which it is impossible to express.

The love of conceit and point, that inveterate though decaying disease
of the literature of the time, has not failed to infect the _Annus
Mirabilis_. That monstrous verse, in which the extinction of the
fire is described, cannot be too often quoted, both to expose the
meanness of the image, and the confusion of the metaphor; for it will
be noticed, that the extinguisher, so unhappily conceived, is not
even employed in its own mean office. The flames of London are first
a tallow candle; and secondly hawks, which, while pouncing on their
quarry, are hooded with an extinguisher:

An hollow crystal pyramid he takes,
In firmamental waters dipt above;
Of it a broad extinguisher he makes,
And hoods the flames that to their quarry drove.

Passages also occur, in which, from the author's zealous desire to
be technically minute, the style becomes low and vulgar. There is no
doubt, that, as Dryden has observed, the proper terms of art may be not
only justly, but with the highest advantage, employed in poetry; but
such technical phrases require to be selected with great judgment:
they must bear relation to some striking and important object, or they
are mean and trivial; and they must be at once generally intelligible,
and more expressive in themselves than ordinary language, or they are
unnecessarily obscure and pedantic. Dryden has failed in both these
points, in his account of the repairs of the fleet. [84] Stanza 148, in
particular, combines the faults of meanness and unnecessary obscurity,
from the affected use of the dialect of the dock-yard:

Some the galled ropes with dawby marline bind,
Or searcloth masts with strong tarpawling coats:
To try new shrouds one mounts into the wind,
And one below their ease or stiffness notes.

Other examples might be produced of the faults of this remarkable
poem; but it is time to say, that they are much overbalanced by its
beauties. If Dryden is sometimes obscure, from the extravagance of
his imagination, or the far-fetched labour of his similes, and if his
desire to use appropriate language has occasionally led him into low
and affected minuteness, this poem exhibits a far greater number of
instances of happy and judicious illustration, beautiful description,
and sublime morality. The comparison of the secret rise of the fire of
London to the obscure birth of an usurper, is doubly striking, when we
consider how closely the passage may be understood to bear reference
to the recent domination of the Protector. [85] I will not load these
preliminary observations, by inserting the whole of the striking
passage, on the different manner in which the night, after the battle
of the first of June, was passed on board the English and Dutch fleets;
but certainly the 71st stanza will not lose, by being an hundred times
quoted:

In dreams they fearful precipices tread;
Or, shipwrecked, labour to some distant shore;
Or in dark churches walk among the dead;
They wake with horror, and dare sleep no more.

The verses, in which Prince Rupert and his enemy are compared to a
greyhound and hare, after a course so desperate as totally to exhaust
both, have been always considered as exquisitely beautiful. [86] The
description of the Loyal London partakes of the beauties and faults
which are dispersed through the poem. Nothing can be more majestic than
her description, "firing the air with her sanguine streamers," and
"riding upon her shadow in floating gold. " We lament, that the weaver
should have been so fascinated with his labours as to commence seaman;
and still more, that, after describing her "roomy decks," and "depth of
draught," she should furnish no grander simile than that of

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

More unqualified approbation may be justly afforded to the whole
description of the Dutch homeward-bound fleet, captured in sight of
their desired haven; and the fine moral lessons which the poet takes
the opportunity to inculcate, from so unexpected an incident. The 34th
stanza has a tenderness and simplicity, which every lover of true
poetry must admire:

This careful husband had been long away,
Whom his chaste wife and little children mourn;
Who on their fingers learned to tell the day
On which their father promised to return.

I will only point out to attention the beautiful and happily expressed
simile of the eagle in stanzas 107 and 108, and then, in imitation of
honest John Bunyan,

No more detain the readers in the porch,
Or keep them from the day-light with a torch.

The title of _Annus Mirabilis_ did not, according to Mr Malone,
originate with Dryden; a prose tract, so intitled, being published
in 1662. [87] Neither was he the last that used it; for, the learned
editor of "Predictions and Observations, collected from Mr J.
Partridge's Almanacks for 1687 and 1688," has so entitled his
astrological lucubrations.

The _Annus Mirabilis_ was first printed in octavo, in 1667, the year
succeeding that which was the subject of the poem. The quarto edition
of 1688, which seems very correct, has been employed in correcting that
of Derrick in a few trifling instances.

FOOTNOTES:

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

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

[Footnote 85: Stanzas 213, 214. ]

[Footnote 86: See stanzas 131, 132. I wish, however, our author had
spared avouching himself to have been eye-witness to so marvellous a
chase. The "so have I seen" should be confined to things which are
not only possible, but, in a certain degree, of ordinary occurrence.
Dryden's ocular testimony is not, however, so incredible as that of the
bard, who averred,

_So have I seen_, in Araby the blest,
A Phœnix couched upon her funeral nest.

Such chaces, if not frequent, have sometimes happened. In the north
of England, in ancient days, a stag and a famous greyhound, called
Hercules, after a desperate course, were found dead within a few paces
of each other, and interred with this inscription:

Hercules killed Hart of grece,
And Hart of grece killed Hercules.
]

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




TO THE

METROPOLIS OF GREAT-BRITAIN,

THE MOST RENOWNED AND LATE FLOURISHING

CITY OF LONDON,

IN ITS

REPRESENTATIVES,

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


As, perhaps, I am the first who ever presented a work of this nature to
the metropolis of any nation, so it is likewise consonant to justice,
that he, who was to give the first example of such a dedication, should
begin it with that city, which has set a pattern to all others, of true
loyalty, invincible courage, and unshaken constancy. Other cities have
been praised for the same virtues, but I am much deceived if any have
so dearly purchased their reputation: their fame has been won them by
cheaper trials than an expensive, though necessary war, a consuming
pestilence, and a more consuming fire. To submit yourselves with that
humility to the judgments of heaven, and, at the same time, to raise
yourselves with that vigour above all human enemies; to be combated at
once from above, and from below; to be struck down, and to triumph,--I
know not whether such trials have been ever paralleled in any nation:
the resolution and successes of them never can be. Never had prince
or people more mutual reason to love each other, if suffering for
each other can endear affection. You have come together a pair of
matchless lovers, through many difficulties; he, through a long exile,
various traverses of fortune, and the interposition of many rivals, who
violently ravished and with-held you from him; and certainly you have
had your share in sufferings. But providence has cast upon you want of
trade, that you might appear bountiful to your country's necessities;
and the rest of your afflictions are not more the effects of God's
displeasure (frequent examples of them having been in the reign of the
most excellent princes) than occasions for the manifesting of your
christian and civil virtues. To you, therefore, this Year of Wonders
is justly dedicated, because you have made it so; you, who are to
stand a wonder to all years and ages; and who have built yourselves an
immortal monument on your own ruins. You are now a Phœnix in her
ashes, and, as far as humanity can approach, a great emblem of the
suffering Deity; but heaven never made so much piety and virtue to
leave it miserable. I have heard, indeed, of some virtuous persons who
have ended unfortunately, but never of any virtuous nation: Providence
is engaged too deeply, when the cause becomes so general; and I cannot
imagine it has resolved that ruin of the people at home, which it has
blessed abroad with such successes. I am therefore to conclude, that
your sufferings are at an end; and that one part of my poem has not
been more an history of your destruction, than the other a prophecy
of your restoration. The accomplishment of which happiness, as it is
the wish of all true Englishmen, so is it by none more passionately
desired, than by

The greatest of your admirers,

And most humble of your servants,

JOHN DRYDEN.




AN

ACCOUNT OF THE ENSUING POEM,

IN A LETTER TO THE

HON. SIR ROBERT HOWARD. [88]


SIR,

I am so many ways obliged to you, and so little able to return your
favours, that, like those who owe too much, I can only live by getting
farther into your debt. You have not only been careful of my fortune,
which was the effect of your nobleness, but you have been solicitous
of my reputation, which is that of your kindness. It is not long since
I gave you the trouble of perusing a play for me,[89] and now, instead
of an acknowledgment, I have given you a greater, in the correction of
a poem. But since you are to bear this persecution, I will at least
give you the encouragement of a martyr,--you could never suffer in
a nobler cause; for I have chosen the most heroic subject, which any
poet could desire. I have taken upon me to describe the motives, the
beginning, progress, and successes, of a most just and necessary war;
in it, the care, management, and prudence of our king; the conduct
and valour of a royal admiral, and of two incomparable generals; the
invincible courage of our captains and seamen; and three glorious
victories, the result of all. After this, I have, in the Fire, the most
deplorable, but withal the greatest, argument that can be imagined;
the destruction being so swift, so sudden, so vast and miserable, as
nothing can parallel in story. The former part of this poem, relating
to the war, is but a due expiation for my not serving my king and
country in it. All gentlemen are almost obliged to it; and I know no
reason we should give that advantage to the commonalty of England, to
be foremost in brave actions, which the nobles of France would never
suffer in their peasants. I should not have written this but to a
person, who has been ever forward to appear in all employments, whither
his honour and generosity have called him. The latter part of my poem,
which describes the Fire, I owe, first, to the piety and fatherly
affection of our monarch to his suffering subjects; and, in the second
place, to the courage, loyalty, and magnanimity of the city; both which
were so conspicuous, that I have wanted words to celebrate them as they
deserve. I have called my poem historical, not epic, though both the
actions and actors are as much heroic as any poem can contain. But,
since the action is not properly one, nor that accomplished in the
last successes, I have judged it too bold a title for a few stanzas,
which are little more in number than a single Iliad, or the longest
of the Æneids. For this reason, (I mean not of length, but broken
action, tied too severely to the laws of history) I am apt to agree
with those, who rank Lucan rather among historians in verse, than Epic
poets; in whose room, if I am not deceived, Silius Italicus, though a
worse writer, may more justly be admitted. I have chosen to write my
poem in quatrains, or stanzas of four in alternate rhyme, because I
have ever judged them more noble, and of greater dignity, both for the
sound and number, than any other verse in use amongst us; in which I am
sure I have your approbation. The learned languages have certainly a
great advantage of us, in not being tied to the slavery of any rhyme;
and were less constrained in the quantity of every syllable, which
they might vary with spondees or dactyls, besides so many other helps
of grammatical figures, for the lengthening or abbreviation of them,
than the modern are in the close of that one syllable, which often
confines, and more often corrupts, the sense of all the rest. But in
this necessity of our rhymes, I have always found the couplet verse
most easy, (though not so proper for this occasion,) for there the work
is sooner at an end, every two lines concluding the labour of the poet;
but in quatrains he is to carry it farther on, and not only so, but to
bear along in his head the troublesome sense of four lines together.
For, those, who write correctly in this kind, must needs acknowledge,
that the last line of the stanza is to be considered in the composition
of the first. Neither can we give ourselves the liberty of making any
part of a verse for the sake of rhyme, or concluding with a word which
is not current English, or using the variety of female rhymes,[90] all
which our fathers practised; and for the female rhymes, they are still
in use amongst other nations; with the Italian in every line, with
the Spaniard promiscuously, with the French alternately, as those who
have read the Alaric, the Pucelle, or any of their later poems, will
agree with me. And besides this, they write in Alexandrines, or verses
of six feet; such as, amongst us, is the old translation of Homer by
Chapman:[91] all which, by lengthening of their chain, makes the sphere
of their activity the larger.

I have dwelt too long upon the choice of my stanza, which you may
remember is much better defended in the preface to "Gondibert;"
and therefore I will hasten to acquaint you with my endeavours in
the writing. In general I will only say, I have never yet seen the
description of any naval fight in the proper terms which are used at
sea; and if there be any such, in another language, as that of Lucan
in the third of his Pharsalia, yet I could not avail myself of it in
the English; the terms of art in every tongue bearing more of the idiom
of it than any other words. We hear indeed among our poets, of the
thundering of guns, the smoke, the disorder, and the slaughter; but all
these are common notions. And certainly, as those, who in a logical
dispute keep in general terms, would hide a fallacy; so those, who do
it in any poetical description, would veil their ignorance:[92]

_Descriptas servare vices, operumque colores,
Cur ego, si nequeo ignoroque, poeta salutor? _

For my own part, if I had little knowledge of the sea, yet I have
thought it no shame to learn; and if I have made some few mistakes, it
is only, as you can bear me witness, because I have wanted opportunity
to correct them; the whole poem being first written, and now sent
you from a place, where I have not so much as the converse of any
seaman. Yet though the trouble I had in writing it was great, it was
more than recompensed by the pleasure. I found myself so warm in
celebrating the praises of military men, two such especially as the
prince and general, that it is no wonder if they inspired me with
thoughts above my ordinary level. And I am well satisfied, that, as
they are incomparably the best subject I ever had, excepting only the
royal family, so also, that this I have written of them is much better
than what I have performed on any other. I have been forced to help
out other arguments, but this has been bountiful to me; they have
been low and barren of praise,[93] and I have exalted them, and made
them fruitful; but here--_Omnia sponte suà reddit justissima tellus_.
I have had a large, a fair, and a pleasant field; so fertile, that,
without my cultivating, it has given me two harvests in a summer, and
in both oppressed the reaper. All other greatness in subjects is only
counterfeit; it will not endure the test of danger; the greatness of
arms is only real. Other greatness burdens a nation with its weight;
this supports it with its strength. And as it is the happiness of the
age, so it is the peculiar goodness of the best of kings, that we may
praise his subjects without offending him. Doubtless it proceeds from
a just confidence of his own virtue, which the lustre of no other can
be so great as to darken in him; for the good or the valiant are never
safely praised under a bad or a degenerate prince.

But to return from this digression to a farther account of my poem;
I must crave leave to tell you, that as I have endeavoured to adorn
it with noble thoughts, so much more to express those thoughts with
elocution. The composition of all poems is, or ought to be, of wit;[94]
and wit in the poet, or wit-writing, (if you will give me leave to
use a school-distinction) is no other than the faculty of imagination
in the writer, which, like a nimble spaniel, beats over and ranges
through the field of memory, 'till it springs the quarry it hunted
after; or, without metaphor, which searches over all the memory for the
species or ideas of those things, which it designs to represent. Wit
written is that which is well defined, the happy result of thought, or
product of imagination. But to proceed from wit, in the general notion
of it, to the proper wit of an Heroic or Historical Poem, I judge it
chiefly to consist in the delightful imagining of persons, actions,
passions, or things. It is not the jerk or sting of an epigram, nor
the seeming contradiction of a poor antithesis, (the delight of an
ill-judging audience in a play of rhyme,) nor the gingle of a more
poor paronomasia;[95] neither is it so much the morality of a grave
sentence, affected by Lucan, but more sparingly used by Virgil; but
it is some lively and apt description, dressed in such colours of
speech, that it sets before your eyes the absent object, as perfectly,
and more delightfully than nature. So then the first happiness of the
poet's imagination is properly invention, or finding of the thought;
the second is fancy, or the variation, deriving, or moulding, of that
thought, as the judgment represents it proper to the subject; the
third is elocution, or the art of clothing and adorning that thought,
so found and varied, in apt, significant, and sounding words. The
quickness of the imagination is seen in the invention, the fertility
in the fancy, and the accuracy in the expression. For the two first of
these, Ovid is famous amongst the poets; for the latter, Virgil. Ovid
images more often the movements and affections of the mind, either
combating between two contrary passions, or extremely discomposed
by one. His words therefore are the least part of his care; for he
pictures nature in disorder, with which the study and choice of words
is inconsistent. This is the proper wit of dialogue or discourse, and
consequently of the drama, where all that is said is supposed to be the
effect of sudden thought; which, though it excludes not the quickness
of wit in repartees, yet admits not a too curious election of words,
too frequent allusions, or use of tropes, or, in fine, any thing that
shews remoteness of thought, or labour in the writer. On the other
side, Virgil speaks not so often to us in the person of another, like
Ovid, but in his own: he relates almost all things as from himself,
and thereby gains more liberty than the other, to express his thoughts
with all the graces of elocution, to write more figuratively, and to
confess as well the labour as the force of his imagination. Though he
describes his Dido well and naturally, in the violence of her passions,
yet he must yield in that to the Myrrha, the Biblis, the Althæa, of
Ovid; for, as great an admirer of him as I am, I must acknowledge,
that if I see not more of their souls than I see of Dido's, at least I
have a greater concernment for them: and that convinces me, that Ovid
has touched those tender strokes more delicately than Virgil could. But
when action or persons are to be described, when any such image is to
be set before us, how bold, how masterly, are the strokes of Virgil!
We see the objects he presents us with in their native figures, in
their proper motions; but so we see them, as our own eyes could never
have beheld them so beautiful in themselves. We see the soul of the
poet, like that universal one of which he speaks, informing and moving
through all his pictures:

----_Totamque infusa per artus
Mens agitat molem, et magno se corpore miscet. _

We behold him embellishing his images, as he makes Venus breathing
beauty upon her son Æneas:

---- ----_lumenque juventæ
Purpureum, & lætos oculis afflârat honores:
Quale manus addunt ebori decus, aut ubi flavo
Argentum, Pariusve lapis, circundatur auro. _

See his Tempest, his Funeral Sports, his Combat of Turnus and Æneas:
and in his "Georgics," which I esteem the divinest part of all his
writings, the Plague, the Country, the Battle of the Bulls, the labour
of the Bees; and those many other excellent images of nature, most of
which are neither great in themselves, nor have any natural ornament
to bear them up; but the words wherewith he describes them are so
excellent, that it might be well applied to him, which was said by
Ovid, _Materium superabat opus_: the very sound of his words has often
somewhat that is connatural to the subject; and while we read him,
we sit, as in a play, beholding the scenes of what he represents. To
perform this, he made frequent use of tropes, which you know change
the nature of a known word, by applying it to some other signification;
and this is it which Horace means in his Epistle to the Piso's:

_Dixeris egregiè, notum si callida verbum
Reddiderit junctura novum. _----

But I am sensible I have presumed too far to entertain you with a
rude discourse of that art, which you both know so well, and put into
practice with so much happiness. Yet before I leave Virgil, I must
own the vanity to tell you, and by you the world, that he has been
my master in this poem. I have followed him every where, I know not
with what success, but I am sure with diligence enough; my images are
many of them copied from him, and the rest are imitations of him. My
expressions also are as near as the idioms of the two languages would
admit of in translation. And this, sir, I have done with that boldness,
for which I will stand accountable to any of our little critics, who,
perhaps, are no better acquainted with him than I am. Upon your first
perusal of this poem, you have taken notice of some words, which I have
innovated (if it be too bold for me to say refined) upon his Latin;
which, as I offer not to introduce into English prose, so I hope they
are neither improper, nor altogether inelegant in verse; and, in this,
Horace will again defend me:

_Et nova, fictaque nuper, habebunt verba fidem, si
Græco fonte cadunt, parcè detorta. _----

The inference is exceeding plain; for, if a Roman poet might have
liberty to coin a word, supposing only that it was derived from the
Greek, was put into a Latin termination, and that he used this liberty
but seldom, and with modesty; how much more justly may I challenge
that privilege to do it with the same prerequisites, from the best
and most judicious of Latin writers? In some places, where either
the fancy or the words were his, or any other's, I have noted it in
the margin, that I might not seem a plagiary;[96] in others I have
neglected it, to avoid as well tediousness, as the affectation of
doing it too often. Such descriptions or images well wrought, which
I promise not for mine, are, as I have said, the adequate delight of
heroic poesy; for they beget admiration, which is its proper object;
as the images of the burlesque, which is contrary to this, by the
same reason beget laughter: for, the one shews nature beautified, as
in the picture of a fair woman, which we all admire; the other shews
her deformed, as in that of a lazar, or of a fool with distorted face
and antique gestures, at which we cannot forbear to laugh, because it
is a deviation from nature. But though the same images serve equally
for the Epic poesy, and for the Historic and Panegyric, which are
branches of it, yet a several sort of sculpture is to be used in them.
If some of them are to be like those of Juvenal, _stantes in curribus
Æmiliani_, heroes drawn in their triumphal chariots, and in their full
proportion; others are to be like that of Virgil, _spirantia mollius
æra_: there is somewhat more of softness and tenderness to be shewn in
them. You will soon find I write not this without concern. Some, who
have seen a paper of verses, which I wrote last year to her highness
the Duchess, have accused them of that only thing I could defend in
them. They said, I did _humi serpere_,--that I wanted not only height
of fancy, but dignity of words, to set it off. I might well answer
with that of Horace, _Nunc non erat his locus_; I knew I addressed
them to a lady, and accordingly I affected the softness of expression,
and the smoothness of measure, rather than the height of thought; and
in what I did endeavour, it is no vanity to say I have succeeded. I
detest arrogance; but there is some difference betwixt that and a just
defence. But I will not farther bribe your candour, or the reader's.
I leave them to speak for me; and, if they can, to make out that
character, not pretending to a greater, which I have given them. [97]

And now, sir, it is time I should relieve you from the tedious length
of this account. You have better and more profitable employment for
your hours, and I wrong the public to detain you longer. In conclusion,
I must leave my poem to you with all its faults, which I hope to find
fewer in the printing by your emendations. I know you are not of the
number of those, of whom the younger Pliny speaks; _Nec sunt parum
multi, qui carpere amicos suos judicium vocant_: I am rather too secure
of you on that side. Your candour in pardoning my errors may make
you more remiss in correcting them; if you will not withal consider,
that they come into the world with your approbation, and through your
hands. I beg from you the greatest favour you can confer upon an absent
person, since I repose upon your management what is dearest to me, my
fame and reputation; and therefore I hope it will stir you up to make
my poem fairer by many of your blots: if not, you know the story of
the gamester who married the rich man's daughter, and when her father
denied the portion, christened all the children by his sirname, that
if, in conclusion, they must beg, they should do so by one name,
as well as by the other. But, since the reproach of my faults will
light on you, it is but reason I should do you that justice to the
readers, to let them know, that, if there be any thing tolerable in
this poem, they owe the argument to your choice, the writing to your
encouragement, the correction to your judgment, and the care of it to
your friendship, to which he must ever acknowledge himself to owe all
things, who is,

SIR,

The most obedient, and most

Faithful of your servants,

JOHN DRYDEN.

From Charlton, in Wiltshire,
Nov. 10, 1666.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 88: Sir Robert Howard was son to the Earl of Berkshire, and
brother to Lady Elizabeth Dryden, our author's wife. This epistle is
dated from Charlton, the seat of Lord Berkshire. ]

[Footnote 89: Probably "The Indian Queen," which was a joint production
of Dryden and Howard. ]

[Footnote 90: The author alludes to the privilege, anciently used,
of throwing an accentuation on the last syllable, of such a word as
_noble_, so as to make it sound _nobley_. An instance may be produced
from our author's poem on the Coronation:

Some lazy ages, lost in sleep and ease,
No action have to busy chronicles.
]

[Footnote 91: These translations are, however, in fourteen, not twelve
syllables; a vile hobbling sort of measure, used also by Phayr, and
other old translators. ]

[Footnote 92: This is one of Dryden's hasty and inaccurate averments.
The ancient dramatic authors were particularly well acquainted with
nautical terms, and applied them with great accuracy. See a note in
Gifford's excellent edition of Massinger, vol. II. p. 229. ]

[Footnote 93: We need not here suppose, that Dryden speaks particularly
of those to whom he had offered panygyricks: undoubtedly, he had
written poems on many subjects, which, remaining unpublished, have not
descended to us. ]

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

[Footnote 95: Commonly called a pun. ]

[Footnote 96: These notes are all retained in this edition, as well as
the smaller foot notes, by which the poet thought proper to explain
difficult passages. They are distinguished by the addition of his name. ]

[Footnote 97: In the early editions of the _Annus Mirabilis_, the
verses to the Duchess are here inserted. ]




ANNUS MIRABILIS;

THE

YEAR OF WONDERS,

1666.


1.

In thriving arts long time had Holland grown,
Crouching at home and cruel when abroad;
Scarce leaving us the means to claim our own;
Our king they courted, and our merchants awed. [98]

2.

Trade, which like blood should circularly flow,
Stopped in their channels, found its freedom lost;
Thither the wealth of all the world did go,
And seemed but shipwrecked on so base a coast.

3.

For them alone the heavens had kindly heat,
In eastern quarries ripening precious dew;[99]
For them the Idumæan balm did sweat,
And in hot Ceylon spicy forests grew.

4.

The sun but seemed the labourer of the year;
Each waxing moon supplied her watery store,[100]
To swell those tides, which from the Line did bear
Their brim-full vessels to the Belgian shore.

5.