]
[Footnote 214: It is a vulgar idea, that a dead swallow, suspended in
the air, intimates a change of wind, by turning its bill to the point
from which it is to blow.
[Footnote 214: It is a vulgar idea, that a dead swallow, suspended in
the air, intimates a change of wind, by turning its bill to the point
from which it is to blow.
Dryden - Complete
[217a]}
If you condemn that prince of tyranny,
Whose mandate forced your Gallic friends to fly,[218]
Make not a worse example of your own, }
Or cease to rail at causeless rigour shown, }
And let the guiltless person throw the stone. }
His blunted sword your suffering brotherhood
Have seldom felt; he stops it short of blood:
But you have ground the persecuting knife,
And set it to a razor-edge on life.
Cursed be the wit, which cruelty refines, }
Or to his father's rod the scorpion joins! }
Your finger is more gross than the great monarch's loins. }
But you, perhaps, remove that bloody note,
And stick it on the first reformers' coat.
Oh let their crime in long oblivion sleep;
'Twas theirs indeed to make, 'tis yours to keep!
Unjust, or just, is all the question now;
'Tis plain, that, not repealing, you allow.
To name the Test would put you in a rage;
You charge not that on any former age,
But smile to think how innocent you stand,
Armed by a weapon put into your hand.
Yet still remember, that you wield a sword,
Forged by your foes against your sovereign lord;
Designed to hew the imperial cedar down,
Defraud succession, and dis-heir the crown. [219]
To abhor the makers, and their laws approve,
Is to hate traitors, and the treason love.
What means it else, which now your children say,
We made it not, nor will we take away?
Suppose some great oppressor had, by slight}
Of law, disseised your brother of his right, }
Your common sire surrendering in a fright; }
Would you to that unrighteous title stand,
Left by the villain's will to heir the land?
More just was Judas, who his Saviour sold; }
The sacrilegious bribe he could not hold, }
Nor hang in peace, before he rendered back the gold. }
What more could you have done, than now you do,
Had Oates and Bedlow and their plot been true?
Some specious reasons for those wrongs were found;}
The dire magicians threw their mists around, }
And wise men walked as on enchanted ground. }
But now when time has made the imposture plain, }
(Late though he followed truth, and limping held her train,}
What new delusion charms your cheated eyes again? }
The painted harlot might a while bewitch,
But why the hag uncased, and all obscene with itch? [220]
The first reformers were a modest race;
Our peers possessed in peace their native place,
And when rebellious arms o'erturned the state,
They suffered only in the common fate;
But now the sovereign mounts the regal chair,
And mitred seats are full, yet David's bench is bare. [221]
Your answer is, they were not dispossest;
They need but rub their mettle on the Test
To prove their ore;--'twere well if gold alone
Were touched and tried on your discerning stone;
But that unfaithful test unfound will pass
The dross of Atheists, and sectarian brass;
As if the experiment were made to hold
For base production, and reject the gold.
Thus men ungodded may to places rise,
And sects may be preferred without disguise;
No danger to the church or state from these,
The Papist only has his writ of ease.
No gainful office gives him the pretence
To grind the subject, or defraud the prince.
Wrong conscience, or no conscience, may deserve
To thrive, but ours alone is privileged to starve.
Still thank yourselves, you cry; your noble race
We banish not, but they forsake the place;
Our doors are open:--true, but ere they come,
You toss your 'censing test, and fume the room;
As if 'twere Toby's rival to expel,
And fright the fiend who could not bear the smell. [222]
To this the Panther sharply had replied,}
But having gained a verdict on her side, }
She wisely gave the loser leave to chide; }
Well satisfied to have the _but and peace_,[223]}
And for the plaintiff's cause she cared the less, }
Because she sued _in forma pauperis_; }
Yet thought it decent something should be said,
For secret guilt by silence is betrayed;
So neither granted all, nor much denied,
But answered with a yawning kind of pride:
Methinks such terms of proffered peace you bring,
As once Æneas to the Italian king:[224]
By long possession all the land is mine; }
You strangers come with your intruding line,}
To share my sceptre, which you call to join. }
You plead like him an ancient pedigree,
And claim a peaceful seat by fate's decree.
In ready pomp your sacrificer stands,
To unite the Trojan and the Latin bands;
And, that the league more firmly may be tied,
Demand the fair Lavinia for your bride.
Thus plausibly you veil the intended wrong,
But still you bring your exiled gods along;
And will endeavour, in succeeding space,
Those household puppets on our hearths to place.
Perhaps some barbarous laws have been preferred;
I spake against the Test, but was not heard.
These to rescind, and peerage to restore, }
My gracious sovereign would my vote implore; }
I owe him much, but owe my conscience more. --}
Conscience is then your plea, replied the dame,
Which, well-informed, will ever be the same.
But yours is much of the camelion hue,
To change the dye with every distant view.
When first the Lion sat with awful sway,
Your conscience taught your duty to obey:[225]
He might have had your statutes and your Test;
No conscience but of subjects was professed.
He found your temper, and no farther tried,
But on that broken reed, your church, relied.
In vain the sects essayed their utmost art, }
With offered treasure to espouse their part; }
Their treasures were a bribe too mean to move his heart. }
But when, by long experience, you had proved,
How far he could forgive, how well he loved;
(A goodness that excelled his godlike race,
And only short of heaven's unbounded grace;
A flood of mercy that o'erflowed our isle,
Calm in the rise, and fruitful as the Nile,)
Forgetting whence your Egypt was supplied,
You thought your sovereign bound to send the tide;
Nor upward looked on that immortal spring,
But vainly deemed, he durst not be a king.
Then Conscience, unrestrained by fear, began
To stretch her limits, and extend the span;
Did his indulgence as her gift dispose,
And made a wise alliance with her foes. [226]
Can Conscience own the associating name, }
And raise no blushes to conceal her shame? }
For sure she has been thought a bashful dame. }
But if the cause by battle should be tried,}
You grant she must espouse the regal side; }
O Proteus conscience, never to be tied! }
What Phœbus from the Tripod shall disclose,
Which are, in last resort, your friends or foes?
Homer, who learned the language of the sky,
The seeming Gordian knot would soon untie;
Immortal powers the term of Conscience know,[227]
But Interest is her name with men below. --
Conscience or Interest be't, or both in one,
(The Panther answered in a surly tone;)
The first commands me to maintain the crown,
The last forbids to throw my barriers down.
Our penal laws no sons of yours admit,
Our Test excludes your tribe from benefit.
These are my banks your ocean to withstand,
Which, proudly rising, overlooks the land,
And, once let in, with unresisted sway,
Would sweep the pastors and their flocks away.
Think not my judgment leads me to comply
With laws unjust, but hard necessity:
Imperious need, which cannot be withstood,
Makes ill authentic, for a greater good.
Possess your soul with patience, and attend;
A more auspicious planet may ascend;[228]
Good fortune may present some happier time,
With means to cancel my unwilling crime;
(Unwilling, witness all ye powers above! )
To mend my errors, and redeem your love:
That little space you safely may allow;
Your all-dispensing power protects you now. [229]
Hold, said the Hind, 'tis needless to explain;
You would postpone me to another reign;
Till when, you are content to be unjust:
Your part is to possess, and mine to trust;
A fair exchange proposed, of future chance
For present profit and inheritance.
Few words will serve to finish our dispute;
Who will not now repeal, would persecute.
To ripen green revenge your hopes attend,
Wishing that happier planet would ascend. [230]
For shame, let Conscience be your plea no more;}
To will hereafter, proves she might before; }
But she's a bawd to gain, and holds the door. }
Your care about your banks infers a fear[231]
Of threatening floods and inundations near;
If so, a just reprise would only be
Of what the land usurped upon the sea;
And all your jealousies but serve to show,
Your ground is, like your neighbour-nation, low.
To intrench in what you grant unrighteous laws,
Is to distrust the justice of your cause;
And argues, that the true religion lies
In those weak adversaries you despise.
Tyrannic force is that which least you fear;
The sound is frightful in a Christian's ear:
Avert it, heaven! nor let that plague be sent
To us from the dispeopled continent.
But piety commands me to refrain;
Those prayers are needless in this monarch's reign.
Behold how he protects your friends oppressed, }
Receives the banished, succours the distressed! [232]}
Behold, for you may read an honest open breast. }
He stands in day-light, and disdains to hide}
An act, to which by honour he is tied, }
A generous, laudable, and kingly pride. }
Your Test he would repeal, his peers restore;
This when he says he means, he means no more.
Well, said the Panther, I believe him just, }
And yet---- }
--And yet, 'tis but because you must; }
You would be trusted, but you would not trust. --}
The Hind thus briefly; and disdained to enlarge
On power of kings, and their superior charge,
As heaven's trustees before the people's choice; }
Though sure the Panther did not much rejoice }
To hear those echoes given of her once loyal voice. }
The matron wooed her kindness to the last,
But could not win; her hour of grace was past.
Whom, thus persisting, when she could not bring
To leave the Wolf, and to believe her king,
She gave her up, and fairly wished her joy
Of her late treaty with her new ally:
Which well she hoped would more successful prove,
Than was the Pigeon's and the Buzzard's love.
The Panther asked, what concord there could be
Betwixt two kinds whose natures disagree?
The dame replied: 'Tis sung in every street,
The common chat of gossips when they meet;
But, since unheard by you, 'tis worth your while
To take a wholesome tale, though told in homely style.
A plain good man, whose name is understood,[233]
(So few deserve the name of plain and good,)
Of three fair lineal lordships stood possessed,
And lived, as reason was, upon the best.
Inured to hardships from his early youth,
Much had he done and suffered for his truth:
At land and sea, in many a doubtful fight, }
Was never known a more adventurous knight, }
Who oftener drew his sword, and always for the right. }
As fortune would, (his fortune came, though late,)
He took possession of his just estate;
Nor racked his tenants with increase of rent,
Nor lived too sparing, nor too largely spent,
But overlooked his hinds; their pay was just,
And ready, for he scorned to go on trust:
Slow to resolve, but in performance quick;
So true, that he was awkward at a trick.
For little souls on little shifts rely, }
And cowards arts of mean expedients try; }
The noble mind will dare do any thing but lie. }
False friends, his deadliest foes, could find no way,
But shows of honest bluntness, to betray;
That unsuspected plainness he believed;
He looked into himself, and was deceived.
Some lucky planet sure attends his birth,
Or heaven would make a miracle on earth;
For prosperous honesty is seldom seen
To bear so dead a weight, and yet to win.
It looks as fate with nature's law would strive,
To show plain-dealing once an age may thrive;
And, when so tough a frame she could not bend,
Exceeded her commission, to befriend.
This grateful man, as heaven increased his store,
Gave God again, and daily fed his poor.
His house with all convenience was purveyed;
The rest he found, but raised the fabric where he prayed;[234]
And in that sacred place his beauteous wife
Employed her happiest hours of holy life.
Nor did their alms extend to those alone,
Whom common faith more strictly made their own;
A sort of Doves[235] were housed too near their hall,
Who cross the proverb, and abound with gall.
Though some, 'tis true, are passively inclined,
The greater part degenerate from their kind;
Voracious birds, that hotly bill and breed,
And largely drink, because on salt they feed.
Small gain from them their bounteous owner draws;}
Yet, bound by promise, he supports their cause, }
As corporations privileged by laws. }
That house, which harbour to their kind affords,
Was built long since, God knows, for better birds;
But fluttering there, they nestle near the throne,}
And lodge in habitations not their own, }
By their high crops and corny gizzards known. }
Like Harpies, they could scent a plenteous board,
Then to be sure they never failed their lord:
The rest was form, and bare attendance paid;
They drunk, and eat, and grudgingly obeyed.
The more they fed, they ravened still the more;
They drained from Dan, and left Beersheba poor.
All this they had by law, and none repined;
The preference was but due to Levi's kind:
But when some lay-preferment fell by chance,
The Gourmands made it their inheritance.
When once possessed, they never quit their claim,
For then 'tis sanctified to heaven's high name;
And hallowed thus, they cannot give consent,
The gift should be profaned by worldly management.
Their flesh was never to the table served,
Though 'tis not thence inferred the birds were starved;
But that their master did not like the food,
As rank, and breeding melancholy blood.
Nor did it with his gracious nature suit,
E'en though they were not doves, to persecute:
Yet he refused, (nor could they take offence,)
Their glutton kind should teach him abstinence.
Nor consecrated grain their wheat he thought,
Which, new from treading, in their bills they brought;
But left his hinds each in his private power,
That those who like the bran might leave the flower.
He for himself, and not for others, chose,
Nor would he be imposed on, nor impose;
But in their faces his devotion paid, }
And sacrifice with solemn rites was made,}
And sacred incense on his altars laid. }
Besides these jolly birds, whose corpse impure
Repaid their commons with their salt manure,
Another farm he had behind his house,
Not overstocked, but barely for his use;
Wherein his poor domestic poultry fed,
And from his pious hands received their bread. [236]
Our pampered Pigeons, with malignant eyes,
Beheld these inmates, and their nurseries;
Though hard their fare, at evening, and at morn,
(A cruise of water and an ear of corn,)
Yet still they grudged that _modicum_, and thought
A sheaf in every single grain was brought.
Fain would they filch that little food away,
While unrestrained those happy gluttons prey;
And much they grieved to see so nigh their hall,
The bird that warned St Peter of his fall;[237]
That he should raise his mitred crest on high,
And clap his wings, and call his family
To sacred rites; and vex the Ethereal powers
With midnight mattins at uncivil hours;
Nay more, his quiet neighbours should molest,
Just in the sweetness of their morning rest.
Beast of a bird, supinely when he might
Lie snug and sleep, to rise before the light!
What if his dull forefathers used that cry,
Could he not let a bad example die?
The world was fallen into an easier way;
This age knew better than to fast and pray.
Good sense in sacred worship would appear,
So to begin, as they might end the year.
Such feats in former times had wrought the falls
Of crowing chanticleers in cloistered walls.
Expelled for this, and for their lands, they fled; }
And sister Partlet, with her hooded head,[238] }
Was hooted hence, because she would not pray a-bed. }
The way to win the restiff world to God,
Was to lay by the disciplining rod,
Unnatural fasts, and foreign forms of prayer;
Religion frights us with a mein severe.
'Tis prudence to reform her into ease,
And put her in undress, to make her please;
A lively faith will bear aloft the mind,
And leave the luggage of good works behind.
Such doctrines in the Pigeon-house were taught;
You need not ask how wondrously they wrought;
But sure the common cry was all for these,
Whose life and precepts both encouraged ease.
Yet fearing those alluring baits might fail,
And holy deeds o'er all their arts prevail,
(For vice, though frontless, and of hardened face,
Is daunted at the sight of awful grace,)
An hideous figure of their foes they drew, }
Nor lines, nor looks, nor shades, nor colours true; }
And this grotesque design exposed to public view. [239]}
One would have thought it some Egyptian piece,}
With garden-gods, and barking deities, }
More thick than Ptolemy has stuck the skies. }
All so perverse a draught, so far unlike,
It was no libel where it meant to strike.
Yet still the daubing pleased, and great and small,
To view the monster, crowded Pigeon-hall.
There Chanticleer was drawn upon his knees,
Adorning shrines, and stocks of sainted trees;[240]
And by him, a mishapen, ugly race,
The curse of God was seen on every face:
No Holland emblem could that malice mend,[241]
But still the worse the look, the fitter for a fiend.
The master of the farm, displeased to find
So much of rancour in so mild a kind,
Enquired into the cause, and came to know,
The passive church had struck the foremost blow;
With groundless fears, and jealousies possest, }
As if this troublesome intruding guest }
Would drive the birds of Venus[242] from their nest. }
A deed his inborn equity abhorred;
But interest will not trust, though God should plight his word.
A law, the source of many future harms,
Had banished all the poultry from the farms;
With loss of life, if any should be found
To crow or peck on this forbidden ground.
That bloody statute chiefly was designed
For Chanticleer the white, of clergy kind;[243]
But after-malice did not long forget
The lay that wore the robe and coronet. [244]
For them, for their inferiors and allies,
Their foes a deadly Shibboleth devise;
By which unrighteously it was decreed, }
That none to trust, or profit, should succeed, }
Who would not swallow first a poisonous wicked weed;}
Or that, to which old Socrates was cursed,[245]
Or henbane juice to swell them till they burst.
The patron, as in reason, thought it hard }
To see this inquisition in his yard, }
By which the sovereign was of subjects' use debarred. }
All gentle means he tried, which might withdraw
The effects of so unnatural a law;
But still the dove-house obstinately stood
Deaf to their own, and to their neighbours' good;
And which was worse, if any worse could be,
Repented of their boasted loyalty;
Now made the champions of a cruel cause,
And drunk with fumes of popular applause:
For those whom God to ruin has designed,
He fits for fate, and first destroys their mind. [246]
New doubts indeed they daily strove to raise,
Suggested dangers, interposed delays,
And emissary Pigeons had in store,
Such as the Meccan prophet used of yore,[247]
To whisper counsels in their patron's ear,
And veiled their false advice with zealous fear.
The master smiled to see them work in vain,
To wear him out, and make an idle reign:
He saw, but suffered their protractive arts,
And strove by mildness to reduce their hearts;
But they abused that grace to make allies, }
And fondly closed with former enemies; }
For fools are doubly fools, endeavouring to be wise. }
After a grave consult what course were best,
One, more mature in folly than the rest,
Stood up, and told them, with his head aside,
That desperate cures must be to desperate ills applied:
And therefore, since their main impending fear
Was from the increasing race of Chanticleer,
Some potent bird of prey they ought to find,
A foe professed to him, and all his kind:
Some hagard Hawk, who had her eyry nigh,
Well pounced to fasten, and well winged to fly;
One they might trust, their common wrongs to wreak.
The Musquet and the Coystrel were too weak,
Too fierce the Falcon; but, above the rest,
The noble Buzzard[248] ever pleased me best:
Of small renown, 'tis true; for, not to lie,
We call him but a Hawk by courtesy.
I know he hates the Pigeon-house and Farm,
And more, in time of war, has done us harm:
But all his hate on trivial points depends;
Give up our forms, and we shall soon be friends.
For Pigeons' flesh he seems not much to care;
Cram'd Chickens are a more delicious fare.
On this high potentate, without delay,
I wish you would confer the sovereign sway;
Petition him to accept the government,
And let a splendid embassy be sent.
This pithy speech prevailed, and all agreed,
Old enmities forgot, the Buzzard should succeed.
Their welcome suit was granted, soon as heard, }
His lodgings furnished, and a train prepared, }
With B's upon their breast, appointed for his guard. }
He came, and, crowned with great solemnity,
God save king Buzzard! was the general cry.
A portly prince, and goodly to the sight,
He seemed a son of Anach for his height:
Like those whom stature did to crowns prefer,
Black-browed, and bluff, like Homer's Jupiter;
Broad-backed, and brawny-built for love's delight,
A prophet formed to make a female proselyte;[249]
A theologue more by need than genial bent,
By breeding sharp, by nature confident.
Interest in all his actions was discerned;
More learned than honest, more a wit than learned;
Or forced by fear, or by his profit led,
Or both conjoined, his native clime he fled;
But brought the virtues of his heaven along,
A fair behaviour, and a fluent tongue.
And yet with all his arts he could not thrive,
The most unlucky parasite alive;
Loud praises to prepare his paths he sent,
And then himself pursued his compliment;
But by reverse of fortune chased away,
His gifts no longer than their author stay;
He shakes the dust against the ungrateful race,
And leaves the stench of ordures in the place.
Oft has he flattered and blasphemed the same;
For in his rage he spares no sovereign's name:
The hero and the tyrant change their style,
By the same measure that they frown or smile. [250]
When well received by hospitable foes,
The kindness he returns, is to expose;
For courtesies, though undeserved and great, }
No gratitude in felon-minds beget; }
As tribute to his wit, the churl receives the treat. }
His praise of foes is venomously nice; }
So touched, it turns a virtue to a vice;[251] }
"A Greek, and bountiful, forewarns us twice. "[252]}
Seven sacraments he wisely does disown,
Because he knows confession stands for one;
Where sins to sacred silence are conveyed,
And not for fear, or love, to be betrayed:
But he, uncalled, his patron to controul,
Divulged the secret whispers of his soul;
Stood forth the accusing Satan of his crimes,
And offered to the Moloch of the times. [253]
Prompt to assail, and careless of defence,
Invulnerable in his impudence,
He dares the world; and, eager of a name,
He thrusts about, and jostles into fame.
Frontless, and satire-proof, he scowers the streets,
And runs an Indian-muck at all he meets. [254]
So fond of loud report, that, not to miss }
Of being known, (his last and utmost bliss,)}
He rather would be known for what he is. }
Such was, and is, the Captain of the Test,[255]}
Though half his virtues are not here expressed; }
The modesty of fame conceals the rest. }
The spleenful Pigeons never could create
A prince more proper to revenge their hate;
Indeed, more proper to revenge, than save;
A king, whom in his wrath the Almighty gave:
For all the grace the landlord had allowed, }
But made the Buzzard and the Pigeons proud; }
Gave time to fix their friends, and to seduce the crowd. }
They long their fellow-subjects to inthral, }
Their patron's promise into question call,[256] }
And vainly think he meant to make them lords of all. }
False fears their leaders failed not to suggest,
As if the Doves were to be dispossessed;
Nor sighs, nor groans, nor goggling eyes did want,
For now the Pigeons too had learned to cant.
The house of prayer is stocked with large increase;
Nor doors, nor windows, can contain the press,
For birds of every feather fill the abode;
E'en atheists out of envy own a God,
And, reeking from the stews, adulterers come,
Like Goths and Vandals to demolish Rome.
That conscience, which to all their crimes was mute,
Now calls aloud, and cries to persecute:
No rigour of the laws to be released,
And much the less, because it was their Lord's request;
They thought it great their sovereign to controul,
And named their pride, nobility of soul.
'Tis true, the Pigeons, and their prince elect,
Were short of power, their purpose to effect;
But with their quills did all the hurt they could,
And cuff'd the tender Chickens from their food:
And much the Buzzard in their cause did stir, }
Though naming not the patron, to infer, }
With all respect, he was a gross idolater. [257]}
But when the imperial owner did espy,
That thus they turned his grace to villainy,
Not suffering wrath to discompose his mind, }
He strove a temper for the extremes to find,}
So to be just, as he might still be kind; }
Then, all maturely weighed, pronounced a doom
Of sacred strength for every age to come. [258]
By this the Doves their wealth and state possess,
No rights infringed, but license to oppress:
Such power have they as factious lawyers long
To crowns ascribed, that kings can do no wrong.
But since his own domestic birds have tried
The dire effects of their destructive pride,
He deems that proof a measure to the rest, }
Concluding well within his kingly breast, }
His fowls of nature too unjustly were opprest. [259]}
He therefore makes all birds of every sect }
Free of his farm, with promise to respect }
Their several kinds alike, and equally protect. }
His gracious edict the same franchise yields }
To all the wild increase of woods and fields, }
And who in rocks aloof, and who in steeples builds:}
To Crows the like impartial grace affords,
And Choughs and Daws, and such republic birds;
Secured with ample privilege to feed,
Each has his district, and his bounds decreed;
Combined in common interest with his own,
But not to pass the Pigeons' Rubicon.
Here ends the reign of this pretended Dove;}
All prophecies accomplished from above, }
For Shiloh comes the sceptre to remove. }
Reduced from her imperial high abode,
Like Dionysius to a private rod,[260]
The passive church, that with pretended grace}
Did her distinctive mark in duty place, }
Now touched, reviles her Maker to his face. }
What after happened is not hard to guess; }
The small beginnings had a large increase, }
And arts and wealth succeed the secret spoils of peace. }
'Tis said, the Doves repented, though too late,
Become the smiths of their own foolish fate:[261]
Nor did their owner hasten their ill hour,
But, sunk in credit, they decreased in power;
Like snows in warmth that mildly pass away,
Dissolving in the silence of decay. [262]
The Buzzard, not content with equal place,
Invites the feathered Nimrods of his race,
To hide the thinness of their flock from sight,
And all together make a seeming goodly flight:
But each have separate interests of their own;
Two Czars are one too many for a throne.
Nor can the usurper long abstain from food;
Already he has tasted Pigeon's blood,
And may be tempted to his former fare,[263]
When this indulgent lord shall late to heaven repair.
Bare benting times, and moulting months may come,
When, lagging late, they cannot reach their home;
Or rent in schism, (for so their fate decrees,)
Like the tumultuous college of the bees,
They fight their quarrel, by themselves opprest,
The tyrant smiles below, and waits the falling feast. --
Thus did the gentle Hind her fable end,
Nor would the Panther blame it, nor commend;
But, with affected yawnings at the close,
Seemed to require her natural repose;
For now the streaky light began to peep,
And setting stars admonished both to sleep.
The Dame withdrew, and, wishing to her guest
The peace of heaven, betook herself to rest:
Ten thousand angels on her slumbers wait,
With glorious visions of her future state.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 184: Note I. ]
[Footnote 185: The Declaration of Indulgence. ]
[Footnote 186: The Convocation. ]
[Footnote 187: The adherence of the church of England to the interests
of James, while he was an exile at Brussels, and the Bill of Exclusion
against him was in dependence, is here, as in other places, made the
subject of panegyric. Had the church joined with the sectaries, the
destruction of the Catholics, at the time of the plot, would have been
inevitable. ]
[Footnote 188: The church of England complained, with great reason, of
the coldness which they experienced from James, in whose behalf they
had exerted themselves so successfully. ]
[Footnote 189: An old sea-term, signifying to run before the wind. ]
[Footnote 190: _Une querelle Allemande_ is the well-known French
phrase for a quarrel picked without cause. The Hind insinuates, that
the Panther, conscious of superior force, meant to take such cause of
quarrel at the English Catholics, as Louis had raked up against the
Huguenots, which, therefore, might be styled rather a French than a
German quarrel. ]
[Footnote 191: Note II. ]
[Footnote 192: Note III. ]
[Footnote 193: The different parts of the body were assigned to
different planets. The old almanacks have a naked figure in front,
surrounded by the usual planetary emblems, which dart their rays on the
parts which they govern. What Scorpio claims, if not apparent from the
context, may be there found. ]
[Footnote 194: Note IV. ]
[Footnote 195: Alluding to the charges brought against Dryden himself
by Stillingfleet. See Note V. ]
[Footnote 196: Note VI. ]
[Footnote 197: Note VII. ]
[Footnote 198: This is our author's own averment in his "Defence of the
Papers of the Duchess of York. " See Note VIII. ]
[Footnote 199: The latitudinarian, or moderate clergy above-mentioned,
and particularly Stillingfleet. ]
[Footnote 200: Note IX. ]
[Footnote 201: Note X. ]
[Footnote 202: Stillingfleet's Vindication, which contains the
imputations complained of by Dryden, bears this licence: "_Imprimatur_,
Henricus Maurice Rmo. P. D. Wilhelmo Archiep. Cant. a sacris. January
10, 1686. "]
[Footnote 203: In these, and in the following beautiful lines, the
poet, who had complained of Stillingfleet's having charged him with
atheism, expresses his resolution to submit to this reproach with
Christian meekness, and without retaliation. ]
[Footnote 204: Stillingfleet. See Note XI. ]
[Footnote 205: Note XII. ]
[Footnote 206: See Introduction, p. 114; also Note VIII. ]
[Footnote 207: The penal laws, though suspended by the king's
Declaration of Indulgence, were not thereby abrogated. ]
[Footnote 208: Note XII. ]
[Footnote 209: ----_Sinistra cava prædixit ab ilice Cornix. _]
[Footnote 210: Alluding to the table of Icarus:
_Icarus Icariis nomina fecit aquis. _
Chelidonian, from χελιδὼν a _swallow_. ]
[Footnote 211: Otherwise called _martlets_. DRYDEN. ]
[Footnote 212: A parody on Lee's famous rant in "Œdipus. "
"May there not be a glimpse, one starry spark,
But gods meet gods, and jostle in the dark. "
]
[Footnote 213: An old Saxon word for a village.
]
[Footnote 214: It is a vulgar idea, that a dead swallow, suspended in
the air, intimates a change of wind, by turning its bill to the point
from which it is to blow. ]
[Footnote 215: Note XIV. ]
[Footnote 216: Century White, See Note XV. ]
[Footnote 217: The Hind intimates, that, as the sunshine of Catholic
prosperity, in the fable, depended upon the king's life, there existed
those among her enemies, who would fain have it shortened. But from
this insinuation she exempts the church of England, and only expresses
her fears, that her passive principles would incline her to neutrality. ]
[Footnote 217a: Note C: Note XVI. ]
[Footnote 218: Louis XIV. whose revocation of the Edict of Nantes
has been so frequently alluded to. As that monarch did not proceed
to the extremity of capital punishment against the Huguenots, Dryden
contends his edicts were more merciful than the penal laws, by which
mass-priests are denounced as guilty of high treason. ]
[Footnote 219: Note XVII. ]
[Footnote 220: The poet alludes to the enchantress Duessa, who, when
disrobed by Prince Arthur, was changed from a beautiful woman into
A loathly wrinkled hag, ill-favoured, old,
Whose secret filth good manners biddeth not be told.
SPENSER'S _Fairy Queen_, Book I, canto 8.
]
[Footnote 221: Note XVIII. ]
[Footnote 222: The fiend in the Book of Tobit, who haunted Raguel's
daughter, is frighted away, by fumigation, by Tobias her bridegroom.
Thus, Milton:
----Better pleased
Than Asmodeus with the fishy fume,
That drove him, though enamoured, from the spouse
Of Tobit's son, and with a vengeance sent
From Media post to Egypt, there fast bound.
_Par. Lost_, Book IV.
]
[Footnote 223: A proverbial expression, taken from our author's
alteration of the "Tempest. " See Vol. III. p. 176. ]
[Footnote 224: Æneid, lib. vii. 1. 213. ]
[Footnote 225: Note XIX. ]
[Footnote 226: Two pamphlets were published, urging the necessity of
an alliance between the church of England and the Dissenters; and
warmly exhorting the latter not to be cajoled to serve the purposes
of their joint enemies of Rome, by the pretended toleration which was
held out as a snare to them. One of these, called "Reflections on the
Declaration of Indulgence," is ascribed to Burnet; the other, called
"Advice to Dissenters," is supposed to come from the masterly pen of
Halifax. ]
[Footnote 227: Ον Βριαρεων καλέουσι θεοι, ανδρες δε τεπαντες Αιγααιων. ]
[Footnote 228: Note XX. ]
[Footnote 229: The power claimed, and liberally exercised, by the king,
of dispensing with the penal statutes. ]
[Footnote 230: That is, wishing the accession of the Prince of Orange,
then the presumptive heir of the crown. ]
[Footnote 231: Note XXI. ]
[Footnote 232: The refugee Huguenots. See Note XXII. ]
[Footnote 233: James II. See Note XXIII. ]
[Footnote 234: The Catholic chapel in Whitehall. ]
[Footnote 235: The clergy of the church of England, and those of London
in particular. See Note XXIV. ]
[Footnote 236: The Catholic clergy, maintained by King James. ]
[Footnote 237: The cock is made an emblem of the regular clergy of
Rome, on account of their nocturnal devotions and mattins. ]
[Footnote 238: The Nuns. ]
[Footnote 239: Note XXV. ]
[Footnote 240: The worship of images, charged upon the Romish church by
Protestants as idolatrous. ]
[Footnote 241: Note XXVI. ]
[Footnote 242: The Doves. ]
[Footnote 243: The laws imposing the penalty of high treason on priests
saying mass in England. ]
[Footnote 244: The Roman Catholic nobility, excluded from the House of
Peers by the imposition of the test. ]
[Footnote 245: Hemlock. ]
[Footnote 246: _Quos Jupiter vult perdere, prius dementat. _]
[Footnote 247: The foolish fable of Mahomet accustoming a pigeon to
pick peas from his ear, to found his pretensions to inspiration, is
well known. ]
[Footnote 248: Gilbert Burnet, D. D. afterwards Bishop of Salisbury.
See Note XXVII. ]
[Footnote 249: Note XXVIII. ]
[Footnote 250: Note XXIX. ]
[Footnote 251: Note XXX. ]
[Footnote 252: ----_timeo Danaos et dona ferentes. _ Æneid, II. lib. ]
[Footnote 253: Note XXXI. ]
[Footnote 254: Note XXXII. ]
[Footnote 255: Note XXXIII. ]
[Footnote 256: The promise to maintain the church of England, made in
James's first proclamation after his accession; and which the church
party alleged he had now broken. Note XXXIV. ]
[Footnote 257: See note XXXIII. ]
[Footnote 258: Declaration of indulgence. Note XXXV. ]
[Footnote 259: Note XXXVI. ]
[Footnote 260: The tyrant of Syracuse, who, after being dethroned,
taught a school at Corinth. ]
[Footnote 261: _Quisque suæ fortunæ faber. _ SALLUST. ]
[Footnote 262: Note XXXVII. ]
[Footnote 263: Note XXXVIII. ]
NOTES
ON
THE HIND AND THE PANTHER.
PART III.
Note I.
_And mother Hubbard, in her homely dress,
Has sharply blamed a British Lioness;
That queen, whose feast the factious rabble keep,
Exposed obscenely naked, and asleep. _--P. 197.
The poet, in the beginning of this canto, anticipates the censure of
those who might blame him for introducing into his fables animals not
natives of Britain, where the scene was laid. He vindicates himself
by the example of Æsop and Spenser. The latter, in "Mother Hubbard's
Tale," exhibits at length the various arts by which, in his time,
obscure and infamous characters rose to eminence in church and state.
This is illustrated by the parable of an Ape and a Fox, who insinuate
themselves into various situations, and play the knaves in all. At
length,
Lo, where they spied, how, in a gloomy glade,
The Lion, sleeping, lay in secret shade;
His crown and sceptre lying him beside,
And having doft for heat his dreadful hide.
The adventurers possess themselves of the royal spoils, with which the
Ape is arrayed; who forthwith takes upon himself the dignity of the
monarch of the beasts, and, by the counsels of the Fox, commits every
species of oppression, until Jove, incensed at the disorders which
his tyranny had introduced, sends Mercury to awaken the Lion from his
slumber:
Arise! said Mercury, thou sluggish beast,
That here liest senseless, like the corpse deceast;
The whilst thy kingdom from thy head is rent,
And thy throne royal with dishonour blent.
The Lion rouses himself, hastens to court, and avenges himself of the
usurpers. --There is no doubt, that, under this allegory, Spenser meant
to represent the exorbitant power of Lord Burleigh; and he afterwards
complains, that his verse occasioned his falling into a "mighty peer's
displeasure. " The Lion, therefore, whose negligence is upbraided by
Mercury, was Queen Elizabeth. Dryden calls her,
The queen, whose feast the factious rabble keep;
because the tumultuous pope-burnings of 1680 and 1681 were solemnized
on Queen Elizabeth's night. The poet had probably, since his change
of religion, laid aside much of the hereditary respect with which
most Englishmen regard Queen Bess; for, in the pamphlets of the
Romanists, she is branded as "a known bastard, who raised this prelatic
protestancy, called the church of England, as a prop to supply the
weakness of her title. "[264]
Spenser's authority is only appealed to by Dryden as justifying the
introduction of lions and other foreign animals into a British fable.
But I observed in the introduction, that it also furnishes authority,
at least example, for those aberrations from the character and
attributes of his brute actors, with which the critics taxed Dryden;
for nothing in "The Hind and the Panther" can be more inconsistent with
the natural quality of such animals, than the circumstance of a lion,
or any other creature, going to sleep without his skin, on account of
the sultry weather.
Note II.
_You know my doctrine, and I need not say
I will not, but I cannot, disobey.
On this firm principle I ever stood;
He of my sons, who fails to make it good,
By one rebellious act renounces to my blood. _--P. 202.
The memorable judgment and decree of the university of Oxford, passed
in the Convocation 21st July, 1683, condemns, as heretical, all works
which teach or infer the lawfulness of resistance to lawful governors,
even when they become tyrants, or in case of persecution for religion,
or infringement on the laws of the country, or, in short, in any case
whatever; and after the various authorities for these and other tenets
have been given and denounced as false, seditious, heretical, and
impious, the decree concludes with the following injunctions:
"Lastly, we command and strictly enjoin all and singular readers,
tutors, catechists, and others, to whom the care and trust of
institution of youth is committed, that they diligently instruct
and ground their scholars in that most necessary doctrine, which in
a manner is the badge and character of the church of England, of
submitting to every ordinance of man for the Lord's sake, whether it be
to the king as supreme, or unto governors, as unto them that are sent
by him, for the punishment of evil doers, and for the praise of them
that do well: Teaching, that this submission and obedience is to be
clear, absolute, and without exception of any state or order of men. "
Note III.
_Your sons of latitude, that court your grace,}
Though most resembling you in form and face, }
Are far the worst of your pretended race. }
And, but I blush your honesty to blot,
Pray God you prove them lawfully begot!
For in some Popish libels I have read,
The Wolf has been too busy in your bed. _--P. 202.
During the latter years of the reign of Charles the Second, the
dissensions of the state began to creep into the church. By far the
greater part of the clergy, influenced by the ancient union of church
and king, were steady in their adherence to the court interest. But
a party began to appear, who were distinguished from their brethren
by the name of _Moderate Divines_, which they assumed to themselves,
and by that of Latitudinarians, which the high churchmen conferred
upon them. The chief amongst these were Tillotson, Stillingfleet,
and Burnet. They distinguished themselves by a less violent ardour
for the ceremonies, and even the government, of the church; for all
those particulars, in short, by which she is distinguished from other
Protestant congregations. Stillingfleet carried these condescensions
so far, as to admit in his tract, called _Irenicum_, that, although
the original church was settled in a constitution of bishops, priests,
and deacons, yet as the apostles made no positive law upon this
subject, it remained free to every Christian congregation to alter
or to retain that form of church government. In conformity with this
opinion, he, in conjunction with Tillotson and others, laid a plan
for an accommodation with the Presbyterians, in 1668; and, in order
to this comprehension, he was willing to have made such sacrifices in
the point of ordination, &c. that the House of Commons took the alarm,
and passed a vote, prohibiting even the introduction of a bill for
such a purpose. As, on the one hand, the tenets of the moderate clergy
approximated those of the Calvinists; so, on the other, their antipathy
and opposition to the church of Rome was more deeply rooted, in
proportion to the slighter value which they attached to the particulars
in which that of England resembled her. It flowed naturally from this
indulgence to the Dissenters, and detestation of the Romanists, that
several of the moderate clergy participated deeply in the terrors
excited by the Roman Catholic plot, and looked with a favourable eye
on the bill which proposed to exclude the Duke of York from the throne
as a professor of that obnoxious religion. Being thus, as it were, an
opposition party, it cannot be supposed that the low church divines
united cordially with their high-flying brethren in renouncing the
right of resisting oppression, or in professing passive obedience to
the royal will. They were of opinion, that there was a mutual compact
between the king and subject, and that acts of tyranny, on the part
of the former, absolved the latter from his allegiance. This was
particularly inculcated by the reverend Samuel Johnson (See Vol. IX. p.
369. ) in "Julian the Apostate," and other writings which were condemned
by the Oxford decree. As the dangers attending the church, from the
measures of King James, became more obvious, and the alternative of
resistance or destruction became an approaching crisis, the low church
party acquired numbers and strength from those who thought it better at
once to hold and assert the lawfulness of opposition to tyranny, than
to make professions of obedience beyond the power of human endurance to
make good.
This party was of course deeply hated by the Catholics, and hence
the severity with which they are treated by Dryden, who objects to
them as the illegitimate offspring of the Panther by the Wolf, and
traces to their Presbyterian origin their indifference to the fasts
and ascetic observances of the more rigid high-churchmen, and their
covert disposition to resist regal domination. Their adherence to
the English communion he ascribes only to the lucre of gain, and
endeavours, if possible, to draw an odious distinction between them
and the rest of the church. Stillingfleet, whom this motive could not
escape, had already complained of Dryden's designing any particular
class of the clergy by a party name. "From the common people, we come
to churchmen, to see how he uses them. And he hath soon found out a
faction among them, whom he charges with juggling designs: but romantic
heroes must be allowed to make armies of a field of thistles, and to
encounter windmills for giants. He would fain be the instrument to
divide our clergy, and to fill them with suspicions of one another.
And to this end he talks of men of latitudinarian stamp: for it goes
a great way towards the making divisions, to be able to fasten a name
of distinction among brethren; this being to create jealousies of each
other. But there is nothing should make them more careful to avoid such
names of distinction, than to observe how ready their common enemies
are to make use of them, to create animosities by them; which hath made
this worthy gentleman to start this different character of churchmen
among us; as though there were any who were not true to the principles
of the church of England, as by law established: If he knows them, he
is better acquainted with them than the answerer is; for he professes
to know none such. But who then are these men of the latitudinarian
stamp? To speak in his own language, they are a sort of ergoteerers,
who are for a _concedo_ rather than a _nego_. And now, I hope, they are
all well explained; or, in other words of his, they are, saith he, for
drawing the nonconformists to their party, _i. e. _ they are for having
no nonconformists. And is this their crime? But they would take the
headship of the church out of the king's hands: How is that possible?
They would (by his own description) be glad to see differences
lessened, and all that agree in the same doctrine to be one entire
body. But this is that which their enemies fear, and this politician
hath too much discovered; for then such a party would be wanting, which
might be played upon the church of England, or be brought to join with
others against it. But how this should touch the king's supremacy, I
cannot imagine. As for his desiring loyal subjects to consider this
matter, I hope they will, and the more for his desiring it; and assure
themselves, that they have no cause to apprehend any juggling designs
of their brethren; who, I hope, will always show themselves to be loyal
subjects, and dutiful sons of the church of England. "--_Vindication of
the Answer to some late Papers_, p. 104.
Note IV.
_Think you, your new French proselytes are come
To starve abroad, because they starved at home? _
* * * * *
_Mark with what management their tribes divide,
Some stick to you, and some to t'other side,
That many churches may for many mouths provide. _ P. 203.
The Huguenot clergy, who took refuge in England after the recal
of the edict of Nantes, did not all adhere to the same Protestant
communion. There had been long in London what was called the Walloon
church, exclusively dedicated to this sort of worship. Many conformed
to the church of England; and, having submitted to new ordination,
some of them obtained benefices: others joined in communion with the
Presbyterians, and dissenters of various kinds. Dryden insinuates,
that had the church of England presented vacancies sufficient for the
provision of these foreign divines, she would probably have had the
honour of attracting them all within her pale. The reformed clergy
of France were far from being at any time an united body. "It might
have been expected," says Burnet, "that those unhappy contests between
Lutherans, Calvinists, Arminians, and Anti-Arminians, with some minuter
disputes that have enflamed Geneva and Switzerland, should have been
at least suspended while they had a common enemy to deal with, against
whom their whole force united was scarce able to stand. But these
things were carried on rather with more eagerness and sharpness than
ever. " _History of his Own Times_, Book IV.
Note V.
_Some sons of mine, who bear upon their shield
Three steeples argent, in a sable field,
Have sharply taxed your converts, who, unfed,
Have followed you for miracles of bread. _ P. 203.
The three steeples argent obviously alludes to the pluralities enjoyed,
perhaps by Stillingfleet, and certainly by some of the divines of
the established church, who were not on that account less eager in
opposing the intrusion of the Roman clergy, and stigmatising those who,
at this crisis, thought proper to conform to the royal faith. These
converts were neither numerous nor respectable; and, whatever the Hind
is pleased to allege in the text, posterity cannot but suspect the
disinterestedness of their motives. Obadiah Walker, and a very few of
the university of Oxford, embraced the Catholic faith, conforming at
the same time to the forms of the church of England, as if they wished
to fulfil the old saying, of having two strings to one bow. --The Earls
of Perth and Melfort, with one or two other Scottish nobles, took the
same step. Of the first, who must otherwise have failed in a contest
which he had with the Duke of Queensberry, it was wittily said by
Halifax, that "his faith had made him whole. " And, in general, as my
countrymen are not usually credited by their brethren of England for
an extreme disregard to their own interest, the Scottish converts were
supposed to be peculiarly attracted to Rome by the miracle of the
loaves and fishes. [265] But it may be said for these unfortunate peers,
that if they were dazzled by the momentary sunshine which gleamed on
the Catholic church, they scorned to desert her in the tempest which
speedily succeeded. Whereas, we shall do a kindness to Lord Sunderland,
if we suppose that he became a convert to Popery, merely from views of
immediate interest, and not with the premeditated intention of blinding
and betraying the monarch, who trusted him. Dryden must be supposed,
however, chiefly interested in the vindication of his own motives for a
change of religion.
Note VI.
_Such who themselves of no religion are,
Allured with gain, for any will declare;
Bare lies with bold assertions they can face,
But dint of argument is out of place;
The grim logician puts them in a fright,
'Tis easier far to flourish than to fight. _ P. 203.
Dryden here puts into the mouth of the Panther some of the severe
language which Stillingfleet had held towards him in the ardour of
controversy. He had, in direct allusion to our author, (for he quotes
his poetry,) expressed himself thus harshly:
"If I thought there were no such thing in the world as true religion,
and that _the priests of all religions are alike_,[266] I might have
been as nimble a convert, and as early a defender of the royal papers,
as any one of these champions. For why should not one who believes no
religion, declare for any? But since I do verily believe, that not only
there is such a thing as true religion, but that it is only to be found
in the books of the Holy Scripture, I have reason to inquire after the
best means of understanding such books, and thereby, if it may be, to
put an end to the controversies of Christendom. "[267]
"But our _grim logician_ proceeds from immediate and original to
concomitant causes, which he saith were revenge, ambition, and
covetousness. But the skill of logicians used to lie in proving; but
this is not our author's talent, for not a word is produced to that
purpose. If bold sayings, and confident declarations, will do the
business, he is never unprovided; but if you expect any reason from
him, he begs your pardon. He finds how ill the character of a grim
logician suits with his inclination. "[268] Again, "But if I will not
allow his affirmations for proofs for his part, he will act the grim
logician; no, and in truth it becomes him so ill, that he doth well to
give it over. "[269] And in the beginning of his "Vindication," alluding
to a term used by the defender of the king's papers, Stillingfleet
says: "But lest I be again thought to have a mind to flourish before I
offer to pass, as the champion speaks in his proper language, I shall
apply myself to the matter before us. "[270]
Note VII.
_Thus our eighth Henry's marriage they defame;
Divorcing from the church to wed the dame:
Though largely proved, and by himself professed,
That conscience, conscience would not let him rest. _
* * * * *
_For sundry years before he did complain,
And told his ghostly confessor his pain. _ P. 204.
This is a continuation of the allusion to Stillingfleet's
"Vindication," who had attempted to place Henry VIII. 's divorce from
Catherine of Arragon to the account of his majesty's tender conscience.
A herculean task! but the readers may take it in the words of the Dean
of St Paul's:
"And now this gentleman sets himself to _ergoteering_;[271] and looks
and talks like any grim logician, of the causes which produced it,
and the effects which it produced. 'The schism led the way to the
Reformation, for breaking the unity of Christ's church, which was the
foundation of it: but the immediate cause of this, which produced the
separation of Henry VIII. from the church of Rome, was the refusal of
the pope to grant him a divorce from his first wife, and to gratify
his desires in a dispensation for a second marriage. '
"_Ergo_: The first cause of the Reformation, was the satisfying an
inordinate and brutal passion. But is he sure of this?
If you condemn that prince of tyranny,
Whose mandate forced your Gallic friends to fly,[218]
Make not a worse example of your own, }
Or cease to rail at causeless rigour shown, }
And let the guiltless person throw the stone. }
His blunted sword your suffering brotherhood
Have seldom felt; he stops it short of blood:
But you have ground the persecuting knife,
And set it to a razor-edge on life.
Cursed be the wit, which cruelty refines, }
Or to his father's rod the scorpion joins! }
Your finger is more gross than the great monarch's loins. }
But you, perhaps, remove that bloody note,
And stick it on the first reformers' coat.
Oh let their crime in long oblivion sleep;
'Twas theirs indeed to make, 'tis yours to keep!
Unjust, or just, is all the question now;
'Tis plain, that, not repealing, you allow.
To name the Test would put you in a rage;
You charge not that on any former age,
But smile to think how innocent you stand,
Armed by a weapon put into your hand.
Yet still remember, that you wield a sword,
Forged by your foes against your sovereign lord;
Designed to hew the imperial cedar down,
Defraud succession, and dis-heir the crown. [219]
To abhor the makers, and their laws approve,
Is to hate traitors, and the treason love.
What means it else, which now your children say,
We made it not, nor will we take away?
Suppose some great oppressor had, by slight}
Of law, disseised your brother of his right, }
Your common sire surrendering in a fright; }
Would you to that unrighteous title stand,
Left by the villain's will to heir the land?
More just was Judas, who his Saviour sold; }
The sacrilegious bribe he could not hold, }
Nor hang in peace, before he rendered back the gold. }
What more could you have done, than now you do,
Had Oates and Bedlow and their plot been true?
Some specious reasons for those wrongs were found;}
The dire magicians threw their mists around, }
And wise men walked as on enchanted ground. }
But now when time has made the imposture plain, }
(Late though he followed truth, and limping held her train,}
What new delusion charms your cheated eyes again? }
The painted harlot might a while bewitch,
But why the hag uncased, and all obscene with itch? [220]
The first reformers were a modest race;
Our peers possessed in peace their native place,
And when rebellious arms o'erturned the state,
They suffered only in the common fate;
But now the sovereign mounts the regal chair,
And mitred seats are full, yet David's bench is bare. [221]
Your answer is, they were not dispossest;
They need but rub their mettle on the Test
To prove their ore;--'twere well if gold alone
Were touched and tried on your discerning stone;
But that unfaithful test unfound will pass
The dross of Atheists, and sectarian brass;
As if the experiment were made to hold
For base production, and reject the gold.
Thus men ungodded may to places rise,
And sects may be preferred without disguise;
No danger to the church or state from these,
The Papist only has his writ of ease.
No gainful office gives him the pretence
To grind the subject, or defraud the prince.
Wrong conscience, or no conscience, may deserve
To thrive, but ours alone is privileged to starve.
Still thank yourselves, you cry; your noble race
We banish not, but they forsake the place;
Our doors are open:--true, but ere they come,
You toss your 'censing test, and fume the room;
As if 'twere Toby's rival to expel,
And fright the fiend who could not bear the smell. [222]
To this the Panther sharply had replied,}
But having gained a verdict on her side, }
She wisely gave the loser leave to chide; }
Well satisfied to have the _but and peace_,[223]}
And for the plaintiff's cause she cared the less, }
Because she sued _in forma pauperis_; }
Yet thought it decent something should be said,
For secret guilt by silence is betrayed;
So neither granted all, nor much denied,
But answered with a yawning kind of pride:
Methinks such terms of proffered peace you bring,
As once Æneas to the Italian king:[224]
By long possession all the land is mine; }
You strangers come with your intruding line,}
To share my sceptre, which you call to join. }
You plead like him an ancient pedigree,
And claim a peaceful seat by fate's decree.
In ready pomp your sacrificer stands,
To unite the Trojan and the Latin bands;
And, that the league more firmly may be tied,
Demand the fair Lavinia for your bride.
Thus plausibly you veil the intended wrong,
But still you bring your exiled gods along;
And will endeavour, in succeeding space,
Those household puppets on our hearths to place.
Perhaps some barbarous laws have been preferred;
I spake against the Test, but was not heard.
These to rescind, and peerage to restore, }
My gracious sovereign would my vote implore; }
I owe him much, but owe my conscience more. --}
Conscience is then your plea, replied the dame,
Which, well-informed, will ever be the same.
But yours is much of the camelion hue,
To change the dye with every distant view.
When first the Lion sat with awful sway,
Your conscience taught your duty to obey:[225]
He might have had your statutes and your Test;
No conscience but of subjects was professed.
He found your temper, and no farther tried,
But on that broken reed, your church, relied.
In vain the sects essayed their utmost art, }
With offered treasure to espouse their part; }
Their treasures were a bribe too mean to move his heart. }
But when, by long experience, you had proved,
How far he could forgive, how well he loved;
(A goodness that excelled his godlike race,
And only short of heaven's unbounded grace;
A flood of mercy that o'erflowed our isle,
Calm in the rise, and fruitful as the Nile,)
Forgetting whence your Egypt was supplied,
You thought your sovereign bound to send the tide;
Nor upward looked on that immortal spring,
But vainly deemed, he durst not be a king.
Then Conscience, unrestrained by fear, began
To stretch her limits, and extend the span;
Did his indulgence as her gift dispose,
And made a wise alliance with her foes. [226]
Can Conscience own the associating name, }
And raise no blushes to conceal her shame? }
For sure she has been thought a bashful dame. }
But if the cause by battle should be tried,}
You grant she must espouse the regal side; }
O Proteus conscience, never to be tied! }
What Phœbus from the Tripod shall disclose,
Which are, in last resort, your friends or foes?
Homer, who learned the language of the sky,
The seeming Gordian knot would soon untie;
Immortal powers the term of Conscience know,[227]
But Interest is her name with men below. --
Conscience or Interest be't, or both in one,
(The Panther answered in a surly tone;)
The first commands me to maintain the crown,
The last forbids to throw my barriers down.
Our penal laws no sons of yours admit,
Our Test excludes your tribe from benefit.
These are my banks your ocean to withstand,
Which, proudly rising, overlooks the land,
And, once let in, with unresisted sway,
Would sweep the pastors and their flocks away.
Think not my judgment leads me to comply
With laws unjust, but hard necessity:
Imperious need, which cannot be withstood,
Makes ill authentic, for a greater good.
Possess your soul with patience, and attend;
A more auspicious planet may ascend;[228]
Good fortune may present some happier time,
With means to cancel my unwilling crime;
(Unwilling, witness all ye powers above! )
To mend my errors, and redeem your love:
That little space you safely may allow;
Your all-dispensing power protects you now. [229]
Hold, said the Hind, 'tis needless to explain;
You would postpone me to another reign;
Till when, you are content to be unjust:
Your part is to possess, and mine to trust;
A fair exchange proposed, of future chance
For present profit and inheritance.
Few words will serve to finish our dispute;
Who will not now repeal, would persecute.
To ripen green revenge your hopes attend,
Wishing that happier planet would ascend. [230]
For shame, let Conscience be your plea no more;}
To will hereafter, proves she might before; }
But she's a bawd to gain, and holds the door. }
Your care about your banks infers a fear[231]
Of threatening floods and inundations near;
If so, a just reprise would only be
Of what the land usurped upon the sea;
And all your jealousies but serve to show,
Your ground is, like your neighbour-nation, low.
To intrench in what you grant unrighteous laws,
Is to distrust the justice of your cause;
And argues, that the true religion lies
In those weak adversaries you despise.
Tyrannic force is that which least you fear;
The sound is frightful in a Christian's ear:
Avert it, heaven! nor let that plague be sent
To us from the dispeopled continent.
But piety commands me to refrain;
Those prayers are needless in this monarch's reign.
Behold how he protects your friends oppressed, }
Receives the banished, succours the distressed! [232]}
Behold, for you may read an honest open breast. }
He stands in day-light, and disdains to hide}
An act, to which by honour he is tied, }
A generous, laudable, and kingly pride. }
Your Test he would repeal, his peers restore;
This when he says he means, he means no more.
Well, said the Panther, I believe him just, }
And yet---- }
--And yet, 'tis but because you must; }
You would be trusted, but you would not trust. --}
The Hind thus briefly; and disdained to enlarge
On power of kings, and their superior charge,
As heaven's trustees before the people's choice; }
Though sure the Panther did not much rejoice }
To hear those echoes given of her once loyal voice. }
The matron wooed her kindness to the last,
But could not win; her hour of grace was past.
Whom, thus persisting, when she could not bring
To leave the Wolf, and to believe her king,
She gave her up, and fairly wished her joy
Of her late treaty with her new ally:
Which well she hoped would more successful prove,
Than was the Pigeon's and the Buzzard's love.
The Panther asked, what concord there could be
Betwixt two kinds whose natures disagree?
The dame replied: 'Tis sung in every street,
The common chat of gossips when they meet;
But, since unheard by you, 'tis worth your while
To take a wholesome tale, though told in homely style.
A plain good man, whose name is understood,[233]
(So few deserve the name of plain and good,)
Of three fair lineal lordships stood possessed,
And lived, as reason was, upon the best.
Inured to hardships from his early youth,
Much had he done and suffered for his truth:
At land and sea, in many a doubtful fight, }
Was never known a more adventurous knight, }
Who oftener drew his sword, and always for the right. }
As fortune would, (his fortune came, though late,)
He took possession of his just estate;
Nor racked his tenants with increase of rent,
Nor lived too sparing, nor too largely spent,
But overlooked his hinds; their pay was just,
And ready, for he scorned to go on trust:
Slow to resolve, but in performance quick;
So true, that he was awkward at a trick.
For little souls on little shifts rely, }
And cowards arts of mean expedients try; }
The noble mind will dare do any thing but lie. }
False friends, his deadliest foes, could find no way,
But shows of honest bluntness, to betray;
That unsuspected plainness he believed;
He looked into himself, and was deceived.
Some lucky planet sure attends his birth,
Or heaven would make a miracle on earth;
For prosperous honesty is seldom seen
To bear so dead a weight, and yet to win.
It looks as fate with nature's law would strive,
To show plain-dealing once an age may thrive;
And, when so tough a frame she could not bend,
Exceeded her commission, to befriend.
This grateful man, as heaven increased his store,
Gave God again, and daily fed his poor.
His house with all convenience was purveyed;
The rest he found, but raised the fabric where he prayed;[234]
And in that sacred place his beauteous wife
Employed her happiest hours of holy life.
Nor did their alms extend to those alone,
Whom common faith more strictly made their own;
A sort of Doves[235] were housed too near their hall,
Who cross the proverb, and abound with gall.
Though some, 'tis true, are passively inclined,
The greater part degenerate from their kind;
Voracious birds, that hotly bill and breed,
And largely drink, because on salt they feed.
Small gain from them their bounteous owner draws;}
Yet, bound by promise, he supports their cause, }
As corporations privileged by laws. }
That house, which harbour to their kind affords,
Was built long since, God knows, for better birds;
But fluttering there, they nestle near the throne,}
And lodge in habitations not their own, }
By their high crops and corny gizzards known. }
Like Harpies, they could scent a plenteous board,
Then to be sure they never failed their lord:
The rest was form, and bare attendance paid;
They drunk, and eat, and grudgingly obeyed.
The more they fed, they ravened still the more;
They drained from Dan, and left Beersheba poor.
All this they had by law, and none repined;
The preference was but due to Levi's kind:
But when some lay-preferment fell by chance,
The Gourmands made it their inheritance.
When once possessed, they never quit their claim,
For then 'tis sanctified to heaven's high name;
And hallowed thus, they cannot give consent,
The gift should be profaned by worldly management.
Their flesh was never to the table served,
Though 'tis not thence inferred the birds were starved;
But that their master did not like the food,
As rank, and breeding melancholy blood.
Nor did it with his gracious nature suit,
E'en though they were not doves, to persecute:
Yet he refused, (nor could they take offence,)
Their glutton kind should teach him abstinence.
Nor consecrated grain their wheat he thought,
Which, new from treading, in their bills they brought;
But left his hinds each in his private power,
That those who like the bran might leave the flower.
He for himself, and not for others, chose,
Nor would he be imposed on, nor impose;
But in their faces his devotion paid, }
And sacrifice with solemn rites was made,}
And sacred incense on his altars laid. }
Besides these jolly birds, whose corpse impure
Repaid their commons with their salt manure,
Another farm he had behind his house,
Not overstocked, but barely for his use;
Wherein his poor domestic poultry fed,
And from his pious hands received their bread. [236]
Our pampered Pigeons, with malignant eyes,
Beheld these inmates, and their nurseries;
Though hard their fare, at evening, and at morn,
(A cruise of water and an ear of corn,)
Yet still they grudged that _modicum_, and thought
A sheaf in every single grain was brought.
Fain would they filch that little food away,
While unrestrained those happy gluttons prey;
And much they grieved to see so nigh their hall,
The bird that warned St Peter of his fall;[237]
That he should raise his mitred crest on high,
And clap his wings, and call his family
To sacred rites; and vex the Ethereal powers
With midnight mattins at uncivil hours;
Nay more, his quiet neighbours should molest,
Just in the sweetness of their morning rest.
Beast of a bird, supinely when he might
Lie snug and sleep, to rise before the light!
What if his dull forefathers used that cry,
Could he not let a bad example die?
The world was fallen into an easier way;
This age knew better than to fast and pray.
Good sense in sacred worship would appear,
So to begin, as they might end the year.
Such feats in former times had wrought the falls
Of crowing chanticleers in cloistered walls.
Expelled for this, and for their lands, they fled; }
And sister Partlet, with her hooded head,[238] }
Was hooted hence, because she would not pray a-bed. }
The way to win the restiff world to God,
Was to lay by the disciplining rod,
Unnatural fasts, and foreign forms of prayer;
Religion frights us with a mein severe.
'Tis prudence to reform her into ease,
And put her in undress, to make her please;
A lively faith will bear aloft the mind,
And leave the luggage of good works behind.
Such doctrines in the Pigeon-house were taught;
You need not ask how wondrously they wrought;
But sure the common cry was all for these,
Whose life and precepts both encouraged ease.
Yet fearing those alluring baits might fail,
And holy deeds o'er all their arts prevail,
(For vice, though frontless, and of hardened face,
Is daunted at the sight of awful grace,)
An hideous figure of their foes they drew, }
Nor lines, nor looks, nor shades, nor colours true; }
And this grotesque design exposed to public view. [239]}
One would have thought it some Egyptian piece,}
With garden-gods, and barking deities, }
More thick than Ptolemy has stuck the skies. }
All so perverse a draught, so far unlike,
It was no libel where it meant to strike.
Yet still the daubing pleased, and great and small,
To view the monster, crowded Pigeon-hall.
There Chanticleer was drawn upon his knees,
Adorning shrines, and stocks of sainted trees;[240]
And by him, a mishapen, ugly race,
The curse of God was seen on every face:
No Holland emblem could that malice mend,[241]
But still the worse the look, the fitter for a fiend.
The master of the farm, displeased to find
So much of rancour in so mild a kind,
Enquired into the cause, and came to know,
The passive church had struck the foremost blow;
With groundless fears, and jealousies possest, }
As if this troublesome intruding guest }
Would drive the birds of Venus[242] from their nest. }
A deed his inborn equity abhorred;
But interest will not trust, though God should plight his word.
A law, the source of many future harms,
Had banished all the poultry from the farms;
With loss of life, if any should be found
To crow or peck on this forbidden ground.
That bloody statute chiefly was designed
For Chanticleer the white, of clergy kind;[243]
But after-malice did not long forget
The lay that wore the robe and coronet. [244]
For them, for their inferiors and allies,
Their foes a deadly Shibboleth devise;
By which unrighteously it was decreed, }
That none to trust, or profit, should succeed, }
Who would not swallow first a poisonous wicked weed;}
Or that, to which old Socrates was cursed,[245]
Or henbane juice to swell them till they burst.
The patron, as in reason, thought it hard }
To see this inquisition in his yard, }
By which the sovereign was of subjects' use debarred. }
All gentle means he tried, which might withdraw
The effects of so unnatural a law;
But still the dove-house obstinately stood
Deaf to their own, and to their neighbours' good;
And which was worse, if any worse could be,
Repented of their boasted loyalty;
Now made the champions of a cruel cause,
And drunk with fumes of popular applause:
For those whom God to ruin has designed,
He fits for fate, and first destroys their mind. [246]
New doubts indeed they daily strove to raise,
Suggested dangers, interposed delays,
And emissary Pigeons had in store,
Such as the Meccan prophet used of yore,[247]
To whisper counsels in their patron's ear,
And veiled their false advice with zealous fear.
The master smiled to see them work in vain,
To wear him out, and make an idle reign:
He saw, but suffered their protractive arts,
And strove by mildness to reduce their hearts;
But they abused that grace to make allies, }
And fondly closed with former enemies; }
For fools are doubly fools, endeavouring to be wise. }
After a grave consult what course were best,
One, more mature in folly than the rest,
Stood up, and told them, with his head aside,
That desperate cures must be to desperate ills applied:
And therefore, since their main impending fear
Was from the increasing race of Chanticleer,
Some potent bird of prey they ought to find,
A foe professed to him, and all his kind:
Some hagard Hawk, who had her eyry nigh,
Well pounced to fasten, and well winged to fly;
One they might trust, their common wrongs to wreak.
The Musquet and the Coystrel were too weak,
Too fierce the Falcon; but, above the rest,
The noble Buzzard[248] ever pleased me best:
Of small renown, 'tis true; for, not to lie,
We call him but a Hawk by courtesy.
I know he hates the Pigeon-house and Farm,
And more, in time of war, has done us harm:
But all his hate on trivial points depends;
Give up our forms, and we shall soon be friends.
For Pigeons' flesh he seems not much to care;
Cram'd Chickens are a more delicious fare.
On this high potentate, without delay,
I wish you would confer the sovereign sway;
Petition him to accept the government,
And let a splendid embassy be sent.
This pithy speech prevailed, and all agreed,
Old enmities forgot, the Buzzard should succeed.
Their welcome suit was granted, soon as heard, }
His lodgings furnished, and a train prepared, }
With B's upon their breast, appointed for his guard. }
He came, and, crowned with great solemnity,
God save king Buzzard! was the general cry.
A portly prince, and goodly to the sight,
He seemed a son of Anach for his height:
Like those whom stature did to crowns prefer,
Black-browed, and bluff, like Homer's Jupiter;
Broad-backed, and brawny-built for love's delight,
A prophet formed to make a female proselyte;[249]
A theologue more by need than genial bent,
By breeding sharp, by nature confident.
Interest in all his actions was discerned;
More learned than honest, more a wit than learned;
Or forced by fear, or by his profit led,
Or both conjoined, his native clime he fled;
But brought the virtues of his heaven along,
A fair behaviour, and a fluent tongue.
And yet with all his arts he could not thrive,
The most unlucky parasite alive;
Loud praises to prepare his paths he sent,
And then himself pursued his compliment;
But by reverse of fortune chased away,
His gifts no longer than their author stay;
He shakes the dust against the ungrateful race,
And leaves the stench of ordures in the place.
Oft has he flattered and blasphemed the same;
For in his rage he spares no sovereign's name:
The hero and the tyrant change their style,
By the same measure that they frown or smile. [250]
When well received by hospitable foes,
The kindness he returns, is to expose;
For courtesies, though undeserved and great, }
No gratitude in felon-minds beget; }
As tribute to his wit, the churl receives the treat. }
His praise of foes is venomously nice; }
So touched, it turns a virtue to a vice;[251] }
"A Greek, and bountiful, forewarns us twice. "[252]}
Seven sacraments he wisely does disown,
Because he knows confession stands for one;
Where sins to sacred silence are conveyed,
And not for fear, or love, to be betrayed:
But he, uncalled, his patron to controul,
Divulged the secret whispers of his soul;
Stood forth the accusing Satan of his crimes,
And offered to the Moloch of the times. [253]
Prompt to assail, and careless of defence,
Invulnerable in his impudence,
He dares the world; and, eager of a name,
He thrusts about, and jostles into fame.
Frontless, and satire-proof, he scowers the streets,
And runs an Indian-muck at all he meets. [254]
So fond of loud report, that, not to miss }
Of being known, (his last and utmost bliss,)}
He rather would be known for what he is. }
Such was, and is, the Captain of the Test,[255]}
Though half his virtues are not here expressed; }
The modesty of fame conceals the rest. }
The spleenful Pigeons never could create
A prince more proper to revenge their hate;
Indeed, more proper to revenge, than save;
A king, whom in his wrath the Almighty gave:
For all the grace the landlord had allowed, }
But made the Buzzard and the Pigeons proud; }
Gave time to fix their friends, and to seduce the crowd. }
They long their fellow-subjects to inthral, }
Their patron's promise into question call,[256] }
And vainly think he meant to make them lords of all. }
False fears their leaders failed not to suggest,
As if the Doves were to be dispossessed;
Nor sighs, nor groans, nor goggling eyes did want,
For now the Pigeons too had learned to cant.
The house of prayer is stocked with large increase;
Nor doors, nor windows, can contain the press,
For birds of every feather fill the abode;
E'en atheists out of envy own a God,
And, reeking from the stews, adulterers come,
Like Goths and Vandals to demolish Rome.
That conscience, which to all their crimes was mute,
Now calls aloud, and cries to persecute:
No rigour of the laws to be released,
And much the less, because it was their Lord's request;
They thought it great their sovereign to controul,
And named their pride, nobility of soul.
'Tis true, the Pigeons, and their prince elect,
Were short of power, their purpose to effect;
But with their quills did all the hurt they could,
And cuff'd the tender Chickens from their food:
And much the Buzzard in their cause did stir, }
Though naming not the patron, to infer, }
With all respect, he was a gross idolater. [257]}
But when the imperial owner did espy,
That thus they turned his grace to villainy,
Not suffering wrath to discompose his mind, }
He strove a temper for the extremes to find,}
So to be just, as he might still be kind; }
Then, all maturely weighed, pronounced a doom
Of sacred strength for every age to come. [258]
By this the Doves their wealth and state possess,
No rights infringed, but license to oppress:
Such power have they as factious lawyers long
To crowns ascribed, that kings can do no wrong.
But since his own domestic birds have tried
The dire effects of their destructive pride,
He deems that proof a measure to the rest, }
Concluding well within his kingly breast, }
His fowls of nature too unjustly were opprest. [259]}
He therefore makes all birds of every sect }
Free of his farm, with promise to respect }
Their several kinds alike, and equally protect. }
His gracious edict the same franchise yields }
To all the wild increase of woods and fields, }
And who in rocks aloof, and who in steeples builds:}
To Crows the like impartial grace affords,
And Choughs and Daws, and such republic birds;
Secured with ample privilege to feed,
Each has his district, and his bounds decreed;
Combined in common interest with his own,
But not to pass the Pigeons' Rubicon.
Here ends the reign of this pretended Dove;}
All prophecies accomplished from above, }
For Shiloh comes the sceptre to remove. }
Reduced from her imperial high abode,
Like Dionysius to a private rod,[260]
The passive church, that with pretended grace}
Did her distinctive mark in duty place, }
Now touched, reviles her Maker to his face. }
What after happened is not hard to guess; }
The small beginnings had a large increase, }
And arts and wealth succeed the secret spoils of peace. }
'Tis said, the Doves repented, though too late,
Become the smiths of their own foolish fate:[261]
Nor did their owner hasten their ill hour,
But, sunk in credit, they decreased in power;
Like snows in warmth that mildly pass away,
Dissolving in the silence of decay. [262]
The Buzzard, not content with equal place,
Invites the feathered Nimrods of his race,
To hide the thinness of their flock from sight,
And all together make a seeming goodly flight:
But each have separate interests of their own;
Two Czars are one too many for a throne.
Nor can the usurper long abstain from food;
Already he has tasted Pigeon's blood,
And may be tempted to his former fare,[263]
When this indulgent lord shall late to heaven repair.
Bare benting times, and moulting months may come,
When, lagging late, they cannot reach their home;
Or rent in schism, (for so their fate decrees,)
Like the tumultuous college of the bees,
They fight their quarrel, by themselves opprest,
The tyrant smiles below, and waits the falling feast. --
Thus did the gentle Hind her fable end,
Nor would the Panther blame it, nor commend;
But, with affected yawnings at the close,
Seemed to require her natural repose;
For now the streaky light began to peep,
And setting stars admonished both to sleep.
The Dame withdrew, and, wishing to her guest
The peace of heaven, betook herself to rest:
Ten thousand angels on her slumbers wait,
With glorious visions of her future state.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 184: Note I. ]
[Footnote 185: The Declaration of Indulgence. ]
[Footnote 186: The Convocation. ]
[Footnote 187: The adherence of the church of England to the interests
of James, while he was an exile at Brussels, and the Bill of Exclusion
against him was in dependence, is here, as in other places, made the
subject of panegyric. Had the church joined with the sectaries, the
destruction of the Catholics, at the time of the plot, would have been
inevitable. ]
[Footnote 188: The church of England complained, with great reason, of
the coldness which they experienced from James, in whose behalf they
had exerted themselves so successfully. ]
[Footnote 189: An old sea-term, signifying to run before the wind. ]
[Footnote 190: _Une querelle Allemande_ is the well-known French
phrase for a quarrel picked without cause. The Hind insinuates, that
the Panther, conscious of superior force, meant to take such cause of
quarrel at the English Catholics, as Louis had raked up against the
Huguenots, which, therefore, might be styled rather a French than a
German quarrel. ]
[Footnote 191: Note II. ]
[Footnote 192: Note III. ]
[Footnote 193: The different parts of the body were assigned to
different planets. The old almanacks have a naked figure in front,
surrounded by the usual planetary emblems, which dart their rays on the
parts which they govern. What Scorpio claims, if not apparent from the
context, may be there found. ]
[Footnote 194: Note IV. ]
[Footnote 195: Alluding to the charges brought against Dryden himself
by Stillingfleet. See Note V. ]
[Footnote 196: Note VI. ]
[Footnote 197: Note VII. ]
[Footnote 198: This is our author's own averment in his "Defence of the
Papers of the Duchess of York. " See Note VIII. ]
[Footnote 199: The latitudinarian, or moderate clergy above-mentioned,
and particularly Stillingfleet. ]
[Footnote 200: Note IX. ]
[Footnote 201: Note X. ]
[Footnote 202: Stillingfleet's Vindication, which contains the
imputations complained of by Dryden, bears this licence: "_Imprimatur_,
Henricus Maurice Rmo. P. D. Wilhelmo Archiep. Cant. a sacris. January
10, 1686. "]
[Footnote 203: In these, and in the following beautiful lines, the
poet, who had complained of Stillingfleet's having charged him with
atheism, expresses his resolution to submit to this reproach with
Christian meekness, and without retaliation. ]
[Footnote 204: Stillingfleet. See Note XI. ]
[Footnote 205: Note XII. ]
[Footnote 206: See Introduction, p. 114; also Note VIII. ]
[Footnote 207: The penal laws, though suspended by the king's
Declaration of Indulgence, were not thereby abrogated. ]
[Footnote 208: Note XII. ]
[Footnote 209: ----_Sinistra cava prædixit ab ilice Cornix. _]
[Footnote 210: Alluding to the table of Icarus:
_Icarus Icariis nomina fecit aquis. _
Chelidonian, from χελιδὼν a _swallow_. ]
[Footnote 211: Otherwise called _martlets_. DRYDEN. ]
[Footnote 212: A parody on Lee's famous rant in "Œdipus. "
"May there not be a glimpse, one starry spark,
But gods meet gods, and jostle in the dark. "
]
[Footnote 213: An old Saxon word for a village.
]
[Footnote 214: It is a vulgar idea, that a dead swallow, suspended in
the air, intimates a change of wind, by turning its bill to the point
from which it is to blow. ]
[Footnote 215: Note XIV. ]
[Footnote 216: Century White, See Note XV. ]
[Footnote 217: The Hind intimates, that, as the sunshine of Catholic
prosperity, in the fable, depended upon the king's life, there existed
those among her enemies, who would fain have it shortened. But from
this insinuation she exempts the church of England, and only expresses
her fears, that her passive principles would incline her to neutrality. ]
[Footnote 217a: Note C: Note XVI. ]
[Footnote 218: Louis XIV. whose revocation of the Edict of Nantes
has been so frequently alluded to. As that monarch did not proceed
to the extremity of capital punishment against the Huguenots, Dryden
contends his edicts were more merciful than the penal laws, by which
mass-priests are denounced as guilty of high treason. ]
[Footnote 219: Note XVII. ]
[Footnote 220: The poet alludes to the enchantress Duessa, who, when
disrobed by Prince Arthur, was changed from a beautiful woman into
A loathly wrinkled hag, ill-favoured, old,
Whose secret filth good manners biddeth not be told.
SPENSER'S _Fairy Queen_, Book I, canto 8.
]
[Footnote 221: Note XVIII. ]
[Footnote 222: The fiend in the Book of Tobit, who haunted Raguel's
daughter, is frighted away, by fumigation, by Tobias her bridegroom.
Thus, Milton:
----Better pleased
Than Asmodeus with the fishy fume,
That drove him, though enamoured, from the spouse
Of Tobit's son, and with a vengeance sent
From Media post to Egypt, there fast bound.
_Par. Lost_, Book IV.
]
[Footnote 223: A proverbial expression, taken from our author's
alteration of the "Tempest. " See Vol. III. p. 176. ]
[Footnote 224: Æneid, lib. vii. 1. 213. ]
[Footnote 225: Note XIX. ]
[Footnote 226: Two pamphlets were published, urging the necessity of
an alliance between the church of England and the Dissenters; and
warmly exhorting the latter not to be cajoled to serve the purposes
of their joint enemies of Rome, by the pretended toleration which was
held out as a snare to them. One of these, called "Reflections on the
Declaration of Indulgence," is ascribed to Burnet; the other, called
"Advice to Dissenters," is supposed to come from the masterly pen of
Halifax. ]
[Footnote 227: Ον Βριαρεων καλέουσι θεοι, ανδρες δε τεπαντες Αιγααιων. ]
[Footnote 228: Note XX. ]
[Footnote 229: The power claimed, and liberally exercised, by the king,
of dispensing with the penal statutes. ]
[Footnote 230: That is, wishing the accession of the Prince of Orange,
then the presumptive heir of the crown. ]
[Footnote 231: Note XXI. ]
[Footnote 232: The refugee Huguenots. See Note XXII. ]
[Footnote 233: James II. See Note XXIII. ]
[Footnote 234: The Catholic chapel in Whitehall. ]
[Footnote 235: The clergy of the church of England, and those of London
in particular. See Note XXIV. ]
[Footnote 236: The Catholic clergy, maintained by King James. ]
[Footnote 237: The cock is made an emblem of the regular clergy of
Rome, on account of their nocturnal devotions and mattins. ]
[Footnote 238: The Nuns. ]
[Footnote 239: Note XXV. ]
[Footnote 240: The worship of images, charged upon the Romish church by
Protestants as idolatrous. ]
[Footnote 241: Note XXVI. ]
[Footnote 242: The Doves. ]
[Footnote 243: The laws imposing the penalty of high treason on priests
saying mass in England. ]
[Footnote 244: The Roman Catholic nobility, excluded from the House of
Peers by the imposition of the test. ]
[Footnote 245: Hemlock. ]
[Footnote 246: _Quos Jupiter vult perdere, prius dementat. _]
[Footnote 247: The foolish fable of Mahomet accustoming a pigeon to
pick peas from his ear, to found his pretensions to inspiration, is
well known. ]
[Footnote 248: Gilbert Burnet, D. D. afterwards Bishop of Salisbury.
See Note XXVII. ]
[Footnote 249: Note XXVIII. ]
[Footnote 250: Note XXIX. ]
[Footnote 251: Note XXX. ]
[Footnote 252: ----_timeo Danaos et dona ferentes. _ Æneid, II. lib. ]
[Footnote 253: Note XXXI. ]
[Footnote 254: Note XXXII. ]
[Footnote 255: Note XXXIII. ]
[Footnote 256: The promise to maintain the church of England, made in
James's first proclamation after his accession; and which the church
party alleged he had now broken. Note XXXIV. ]
[Footnote 257: See note XXXIII. ]
[Footnote 258: Declaration of indulgence. Note XXXV. ]
[Footnote 259: Note XXXVI. ]
[Footnote 260: The tyrant of Syracuse, who, after being dethroned,
taught a school at Corinth. ]
[Footnote 261: _Quisque suæ fortunæ faber. _ SALLUST. ]
[Footnote 262: Note XXXVII. ]
[Footnote 263: Note XXXVIII. ]
NOTES
ON
THE HIND AND THE PANTHER.
PART III.
Note I.
_And mother Hubbard, in her homely dress,
Has sharply blamed a British Lioness;
That queen, whose feast the factious rabble keep,
Exposed obscenely naked, and asleep. _--P. 197.
The poet, in the beginning of this canto, anticipates the censure of
those who might blame him for introducing into his fables animals not
natives of Britain, where the scene was laid. He vindicates himself
by the example of Æsop and Spenser. The latter, in "Mother Hubbard's
Tale," exhibits at length the various arts by which, in his time,
obscure and infamous characters rose to eminence in church and state.
This is illustrated by the parable of an Ape and a Fox, who insinuate
themselves into various situations, and play the knaves in all. At
length,
Lo, where they spied, how, in a gloomy glade,
The Lion, sleeping, lay in secret shade;
His crown and sceptre lying him beside,
And having doft for heat his dreadful hide.
The adventurers possess themselves of the royal spoils, with which the
Ape is arrayed; who forthwith takes upon himself the dignity of the
monarch of the beasts, and, by the counsels of the Fox, commits every
species of oppression, until Jove, incensed at the disorders which
his tyranny had introduced, sends Mercury to awaken the Lion from his
slumber:
Arise! said Mercury, thou sluggish beast,
That here liest senseless, like the corpse deceast;
The whilst thy kingdom from thy head is rent,
And thy throne royal with dishonour blent.
The Lion rouses himself, hastens to court, and avenges himself of the
usurpers. --There is no doubt, that, under this allegory, Spenser meant
to represent the exorbitant power of Lord Burleigh; and he afterwards
complains, that his verse occasioned his falling into a "mighty peer's
displeasure. " The Lion, therefore, whose negligence is upbraided by
Mercury, was Queen Elizabeth. Dryden calls her,
The queen, whose feast the factious rabble keep;
because the tumultuous pope-burnings of 1680 and 1681 were solemnized
on Queen Elizabeth's night. The poet had probably, since his change
of religion, laid aside much of the hereditary respect with which
most Englishmen regard Queen Bess; for, in the pamphlets of the
Romanists, she is branded as "a known bastard, who raised this prelatic
protestancy, called the church of England, as a prop to supply the
weakness of her title. "[264]
Spenser's authority is only appealed to by Dryden as justifying the
introduction of lions and other foreign animals into a British fable.
But I observed in the introduction, that it also furnishes authority,
at least example, for those aberrations from the character and
attributes of his brute actors, with which the critics taxed Dryden;
for nothing in "The Hind and the Panther" can be more inconsistent with
the natural quality of such animals, than the circumstance of a lion,
or any other creature, going to sleep without his skin, on account of
the sultry weather.
Note II.
_You know my doctrine, and I need not say
I will not, but I cannot, disobey.
On this firm principle I ever stood;
He of my sons, who fails to make it good,
By one rebellious act renounces to my blood. _--P. 202.
The memorable judgment and decree of the university of Oxford, passed
in the Convocation 21st July, 1683, condemns, as heretical, all works
which teach or infer the lawfulness of resistance to lawful governors,
even when they become tyrants, or in case of persecution for religion,
or infringement on the laws of the country, or, in short, in any case
whatever; and after the various authorities for these and other tenets
have been given and denounced as false, seditious, heretical, and
impious, the decree concludes with the following injunctions:
"Lastly, we command and strictly enjoin all and singular readers,
tutors, catechists, and others, to whom the care and trust of
institution of youth is committed, that they diligently instruct
and ground their scholars in that most necessary doctrine, which in
a manner is the badge and character of the church of England, of
submitting to every ordinance of man for the Lord's sake, whether it be
to the king as supreme, or unto governors, as unto them that are sent
by him, for the punishment of evil doers, and for the praise of them
that do well: Teaching, that this submission and obedience is to be
clear, absolute, and without exception of any state or order of men. "
Note III.
_Your sons of latitude, that court your grace,}
Though most resembling you in form and face, }
Are far the worst of your pretended race. }
And, but I blush your honesty to blot,
Pray God you prove them lawfully begot!
For in some Popish libels I have read,
The Wolf has been too busy in your bed. _--P. 202.
During the latter years of the reign of Charles the Second, the
dissensions of the state began to creep into the church. By far the
greater part of the clergy, influenced by the ancient union of church
and king, were steady in their adherence to the court interest. But
a party began to appear, who were distinguished from their brethren
by the name of _Moderate Divines_, which they assumed to themselves,
and by that of Latitudinarians, which the high churchmen conferred
upon them. The chief amongst these were Tillotson, Stillingfleet,
and Burnet. They distinguished themselves by a less violent ardour
for the ceremonies, and even the government, of the church; for all
those particulars, in short, by which she is distinguished from other
Protestant congregations. Stillingfleet carried these condescensions
so far, as to admit in his tract, called _Irenicum_, that, although
the original church was settled in a constitution of bishops, priests,
and deacons, yet as the apostles made no positive law upon this
subject, it remained free to every Christian congregation to alter
or to retain that form of church government. In conformity with this
opinion, he, in conjunction with Tillotson and others, laid a plan
for an accommodation with the Presbyterians, in 1668; and, in order
to this comprehension, he was willing to have made such sacrifices in
the point of ordination, &c. that the House of Commons took the alarm,
and passed a vote, prohibiting even the introduction of a bill for
such a purpose. As, on the one hand, the tenets of the moderate clergy
approximated those of the Calvinists; so, on the other, their antipathy
and opposition to the church of Rome was more deeply rooted, in
proportion to the slighter value which they attached to the particulars
in which that of England resembled her. It flowed naturally from this
indulgence to the Dissenters, and detestation of the Romanists, that
several of the moderate clergy participated deeply in the terrors
excited by the Roman Catholic plot, and looked with a favourable eye
on the bill which proposed to exclude the Duke of York from the throne
as a professor of that obnoxious religion. Being thus, as it were, an
opposition party, it cannot be supposed that the low church divines
united cordially with their high-flying brethren in renouncing the
right of resisting oppression, or in professing passive obedience to
the royal will. They were of opinion, that there was a mutual compact
between the king and subject, and that acts of tyranny, on the part
of the former, absolved the latter from his allegiance. This was
particularly inculcated by the reverend Samuel Johnson (See Vol. IX. p.
369. ) in "Julian the Apostate," and other writings which were condemned
by the Oxford decree. As the dangers attending the church, from the
measures of King James, became more obvious, and the alternative of
resistance or destruction became an approaching crisis, the low church
party acquired numbers and strength from those who thought it better at
once to hold and assert the lawfulness of opposition to tyranny, than
to make professions of obedience beyond the power of human endurance to
make good.
This party was of course deeply hated by the Catholics, and hence
the severity with which they are treated by Dryden, who objects to
them as the illegitimate offspring of the Panther by the Wolf, and
traces to their Presbyterian origin their indifference to the fasts
and ascetic observances of the more rigid high-churchmen, and their
covert disposition to resist regal domination. Their adherence to
the English communion he ascribes only to the lucre of gain, and
endeavours, if possible, to draw an odious distinction between them
and the rest of the church. Stillingfleet, whom this motive could not
escape, had already complained of Dryden's designing any particular
class of the clergy by a party name. "From the common people, we come
to churchmen, to see how he uses them. And he hath soon found out a
faction among them, whom he charges with juggling designs: but romantic
heroes must be allowed to make armies of a field of thistles, and to
encounter windmills for giants. He would fain be the instrument to
divide our clergy, and to fill them with suspicions of one another.
And to this end he talks of men of latitudinarian stamp: for it goes
a great way towards the making divisions, to be able to fasten a name
of distinction among brethren; this being to create jealousies of each
other. But there is nothing should make them more careful to avoid such
names of distinction, than to observe how ready their common enemies
are to make use of them, to create animosities by them; which hath made
this worthy gentleman to start this different character of churchmen
among us; as though there were any who were not true to the principles
of the church of England, as by law established: If he knows them, he
is better acquainted with them than the answerer is; for he professes
to know none such. But who then are these men of the latitudinarian
stamp? To speak in his own language, they are a sort of ergoteerers,
who are for a _concedo_ rather than a _nego_. And now, I hope, they are
all well explained; or, in other words of his, they are, saith he, for
drawing the nonconformists to their party, _i. e. _ they are for having
no nonconformists. And is this their crime? But they would take the
headship of the church out of the king's hands: How is that possible?
They would (by his own description) be glad to see differences
lessened, and all that agree in the same doctrine to be one entire
body. But this is that which their enemies fear, and this politician
hath too much discovered; for then such a party would be wanting, which
might be played upon the church of England, or be brought to join with
others against it. But how this should touch the king's supremacy, I
cannot imagine. As for his desiring loyal subjects to consider this
matter, I hope they will, and the more for his desiring it; and assure
themselves, that they have no cause to apprehend any juggling designs
of their brethren; who, I hope, will always show themselves to be loyal
subjects, and dutiful sons of the church of England. "--_Vindication of
the Answer to some late Papers_, p. 104.
Note IV.
_Think you, your new French proselytes are come
To starve abroad, because they starved at home? _
* * * * *
_Mark with what management their tribes divide,
Some stick to you, and some to t'other side,
That many churches may for many mouths provide. _ P. 203.
The Huguenot clergy, who took refuge in England after the recal
of the edict of Nantes, did not all adhere to the same Protestant
communion. There had been long in London what was called the Walloon
church, exclusively dedicated to this sort of worship. Many conformed
to the church of England; and, having submitted to new ordination,
some of them obtained benefices: others joined in communion with the
Presbyterians, and dissenters of various kinds. Dryden insinuates,
that had the church of England presented vacancies sufficient for the
provision of these foreign divines, she would probably have had the
honour of attracting them all within her pale. The reformed clergy
of France were far from being at any time an united body. "It might
have been expected," says Burnet, "that those unhappy contests between
Lutherans, Calvinists, Arminians, and Anti-Arminians, with some minuter
disputes that have enflamed Geneva and Switzerland, should have been
at least suspended while they had a common enemy to deal with, against
whom their whole force united was scarce able to stand. But these
things were carried on rather with more eagerness and sharpness than
ever. " _History of his Own Times_, Book IV.
Note V.
_Some sons of mine, who bear upon their shield
Three steeples argent, in a sable field,
Have sharply taxed your converts, who, unfed,
Have followed you for miracles of bread. _ P. 203.
The three steeples argent obviously alludes to the pluralities enjoyed,
perhaps by Stillingfleet, and certainly by some of the divines of
the established church, who were not on that account less eager in
opposing the intrusion of the Roman clergy, and stigmatising those who,
at this crisis, thought proper to conform to the royal faith. These
converts were neither numerous nor respectable; and, whatever the Hind
is pleased to allege in the text, posterity cannot but suspect the
disinterestedness of their motives. Obadiah Walker, and a very few of
the university of Oxford, embraced the Catholic faith, conforming at
the same time to the forms of the church of England, as if they wished
to fulfil the old saying, of having two strings to one bow. --The Earls
of Perth and Melfort, with one or two other Scottish nobles, took the
same step. Of the first, who must otherwise have failed in a contest
which he had with the Duke of Queensberry, it was wittily said by
Halifax, that "his faith had made him whole. " And, in general, as my
countrymen are not usually credited by their brethren of England for
an extreme disregard to their own interest, the Scottish converts were
supposed to be peculiarly attracted to Rome by the miracle of the
loaves and fishes. [265] But it may be said for these unfortunate peers,
that if they were dazzled by the momentary sunshine which gleamed on
the Catholic church, they scorned to desert her in the tempest which
speedily succeeded. Whereas, we shall do a kindness to Lord Sunderland,
if we suppose that he became a convert to Popery, merely from views of
immediate interest, and not with the premeditated intention of blinding
and betraying the monarch, who trusted him. Dryden must be supposed,
however, chiefly interested in the vindication of his own motives for a
change of religion.
Note VI.
_Such who themselves of no religion are,
Allured with gain, for any will declare;
Bare lies with bold assertions they can face,
But dint of argument is out of place;
The grim logician puts them in a fright,
'Tis easier far to flourish than to fight. _ P. 203.
Dryden here puts into the mouth of the Panther some of the severe
language which Stillingfleet had held towards him in the ardour of
controversy. He had, in direct allusion to our author, (for he quotes
his poetry,) expressed himself thus harshly:
"If I thought there were no such thing in the world as true religion,
and that _the priests of all religions are alike_,[266] I might have
been as nimble a convert, and as early a defender of the royal papers,
as any one of these champions. For why should not one who believes no
religion, declare for any? But since I do verily believe, that not only
there is such a thing as true religion, but that it is only to be found
in the books of the Holy Scripture, I have reason to inquire after the
best means of understanding such books, and thereby, if it may be, to
put an end to the controversies of Christendom. "[267]
"But our _grim logician_ proceeds from immediate and original to
concomitant causes, which he saith were revenge, ambition, and
covetousness. But the skill of logicians used to lie in proving; but
this is not our author's talent, for not a word is produced to that
purpose. If bold sayings, and confident declarations, will do the
business, he is never unprovided; but if you expect any reason from
him, he begs your pardon. He finds how ill the character of a grim
logician suits with his inclination. "[268] Again, "But if I will not
allow his affirmations for proofs for his part, he will act the grim
logician; no, and in truth it becomes him so ill, that he doth well to
give it over. "[269] And in the beginning of his "Vindication," alluding
to a term used by the defender of the king's papers, Stillingfleet
says: "But lest I be again thought to have a mind to flourish before I
offer to pass, as the champion speaks in his proper language, I shall
apply myself to the matter before us. "[270]
Note VII.
_Thus our eighth Henry's marriage they defame;
Divorcing from the church to wed the dame:
Though largely proved, and by himself professed,
That conscience, conscience would not let him rest. _
* * * * *
_For sundry years before he did complain,
And told his ghostly confessor his pain. _ P. 204.
This is a continuation of the allusion to Stillingfleet's
"Vindication," who had attempted to place Henry VIII. 's divorce from
Catherine of Arragon to the account of his majesty's tender conscience.
A herculean task! but the readers may take it in the words of the Dean
of St Paul's:
"And now this gentleman sets himself to _ergoteering_;[271] and looks
and talks like any grim logician, of the causes which produced it,
and the effects which it produced. 'The schism led the way to the
Reformation, for breaking the unity of Christ's church, which was the
foundation of it: but the immediate cause of this, which produced the
separation of Henry VIII. from the church of Rome, was the refusal of
the pope to grant him a divorce from his first wife, and to gratify
his desires in a dispensation for a second marriage. '
"_Ergo_: The first cause of the Reformation, was the satisfying an
inordinate and brutal passion. But is he sure of this?
