he prefers the version of Ogilby to mine, the world has made him the same com pliment; for it is agreed on all hands that he writes even below Ogilby. That, you will say, is not easily to be done: but what cannot Milbourn bring about? I am satisfied, however, that while he and I live together, I shall not be thought the worst poet of the age. It looks as if I had desired him underhand to write so ill against me; but, upon my honest word, I have not bribed him to do me this service, and am wholly guiltless of his pamphlet. 'Tis true, I should be glad if I could persuade him to continue his good offices, and write such another critique on anything of mine; for I find by experience he has a great stroke with the reader, when he condemns any of my poems, to make the world have a better opinion of them. He has taken some pains with my poetry; but nobody will be persuaded to take the same with his. If I had taken to the church (as he affirms, but which was never in my thoughts), I should have had more sense, if not more grace, than to have turned myself out of my benefice by writing libels on my parishioners. But his account of my manners and my principles are of a piece with his cavils and his poetry: and so I have done with him for ever. As for the City Bard or Knight Physician, I hear his quarrel to me is, that I was the author of " Absalom and Achitophel," which he thinks is a little hard on his fanatic patrons in London. But I will deal the more civilly with his two poems, because nothing ill is to be spoken of the dead: and therefore peace be to the manes of his Arthurs.* I will only say, that it was not for this noble knight that I drew the plan of an epic poem on King Arthur, in my preface to the translation of Juvenal. The guardian angels of kingdoms were machines too ponderous for him to manage; and therefore he rejected them, as Dares did the whirlbats of Eryx, when they were thrown before him by Entellus. Yet from that preface he plainly took his hint: for he began immediately upon the story; though he had the baseness not to acknowledge his benefactor, but, instead of it, to traduce me in a libel. I shall say the less of Mr. Collier, because in many things he has taxed me justly; and I have pleaded guilty to all thoughts and expressions of mine, which can be truly argued of obscenity, profaneness, or immorality; and retract them. If he be my enemy, let him triumph; if he be my friend, as I have given him no personal occasion to be otherwise, he will be glad of my repentance. It becomes me not to draw my pen in the defence of a bad cause, when I have so often drawn it for a good one. Yet it were not difficult to prove that in many places he has perverted my meaning by his glosses; and interpreted my words into blasphemy and bawdry, of which they were not guilty; besides that he is too much given to horse-play in his raillery; and comes to battle like a dictator from the plough. I will not say, The zeal of God's house has eaten him up; but I am sure it has devoured some part of his good manners and civility. It might also be doubted whether it were altogether zeal, which prompted him to this rough manner of proceeding; perhaps it became not one of his function to rake into the rubbish of ancient and modern plays; a divine might have employed his pains to better Prince Arthur" and "King Arthur." * Blackmore's two epic poems, + See Virgil's Eneas, vv. 394, seq. Entellus with the "cestus: of Eryx. gauntlets in his Translation of Virgil. Translated by Dryden : In the Trojan games in Sicily Dares refused to fight "The gloves of death, with seven distinguished folds purpose than in the nastiness of Plautus and Aristophanes; whose examples, as they excuse not me, so it might be possibly supposed, that he read them not without some pleasure. They who have written commentaries on these poets, or on Horace, Juvenal, or Martial, have explained some vices, which without their interpretation had been unknown to modern times. Neither has he judged impar tially betwixt the former age and us. There is more bawdry in one play of Fletcher's, called "The Custom of the Country," than in all ours together. Yet this has been often acted on the stage in my remembrance. Are the times so much more reformed now than they were five and twenty years ago? If they are, I congratulate the amendment of our morals. But I am not to prejudice the cause of my fellow-poets, though I abandon my own defence they have some of them answered for themselves, and neither they nor I can think Mr. Collier so formidable an enemy that we should shun him. He has lost ground at the latter end of the day, by pursuing his point too far, like the Prince of Condé at the battle of Senneffe: from immoral plays to no plays, ab abusu ad usum non valet consequentia. But being a party, I am not to erect myself into a judge. As for the rest of those who have written against me, they are such scoundrels that they deserve not the least notice to be taken of them. Blackmore and Milbourn are only distinguished from the crowd by being remembered to their infamy. 1 TO HER GRACE THE DUCHESS OF ORMOND, WITH THE FOLLOWING POEM OF PALAMON AND ARCITE FROM CHAUCER. MADAM, The bard who first adorned our native tongue What power the charms of beauty had of old; Inspired by two fair eyes that sparkled like your own. If Chaucer by the best idea wrought, And poets can divine each other's thought, * Hor. Sat. i. 10. + Dryden here says of Chaucer in reference to Virgil what Juvenal said of Virgil in reference to Homer: "Conditor Iliadis cantabitur, atque Maronis The fairest nymph before his eyes he set ; Who three contending princes made her prize, Like her, of equal kindred to the throne, At length have rolled around the liquid space, From the same point of heaven their course advance, 15 20 And move in measures of their former dance; 25 Thus, after length of ages, she returns, Restored in you, and the same place adorns : Or you perform her office in the sphere, Born of her blood, and make a new Platonic year. And conquering Theseus from his side had sent Your generous lord, to guide the Theban government. A Palamon in him, in you an Emily. Already have the Fates your path prepared, The ready Nereids heard, and swam before 45 To smooth the seas; a soft Etesian gale‡ But just inspired, and gently swelled the sail; Portunus took his turn, whose ample hand Heaved up the lightened keel, and sunk the sand,§ 50 *Scott thinks this Plantagenet lady was Blanche, first wife of John, duke of Gaunt. Mr. Craik, in his "History of English Literature" (vol. ii. p. 162), suggests that it is more likely to be Joan, daughter of Edmund of Woodstock, earl of Kent, second son, of Edward I., famous as the Fair Maid of Kent, and married for the third and last time to Edward the Black Prince, by whom she was the mother of Richard II. She was firstly the wife of Thomas Holland, son of the Lord Holland, and secondly of William Montague, earl of Salisbury. Thus it may be explained how she made three contending princes her prize: and she is believed to be the Countess of Salisbury who gave the Order of the Garter its name. The daughter of the Duke of Beaufort linealy descended from Edward II, through John of Gaunt would be described as "of equal kindred to the throne" with the daughter of Edward I., and as "born of her blood." ↑ Fatal, in the sense of fated, destined. "Etesian gale," an annual wind here described as a soft one. § Portunus, the protector of harbours in Roman mythology. See "Astræa Redux,” 121, and note. This is an imitation of Virgil: "Et pater ipse manu magna Portunus euntem The land, if not restrained, had met your way,* His father and his grandsire known to fame; At your approach, they crowded to the port; The waste of civil wars, their towns destroyed, The saints with solemn shouts proclaimed the new accord. To sign inviolable peace restored; When at your second coming you appear, (For I foretell that millenary year) 55 60 65 70 75 80 The sharpened share shall vex the soil no more, 85 • This idea is carried further in "Astræa Redux," where the land, unrestrained, meets Charles on his way back to England to be king: + Kerns, Irish peasants. "It is no longer motion cheats your view; "The Irish kern" (Ann. Mirab. 157): "Like a shag-haired crafty kern.' " SHAKESPEARE, Henry VI. Part II. act iii. sc. 1. 1 "To hear the reins" is a classical expression, which has been lost in all the modern editions after Derrick, who changed hear into bear. "Fertur equis auriga, neque audit currus habenas." "The horse's ear," said Horace, "is in his bridled mouth." HOR. I Epod. xv. 13. The Duchess of Ormond had gone to Ireland in 1697, followed shortly after by the Duke. Pales the goddess of sheep-pastures, and Ceres of corn. The simile of the dove was similarly used by Dryden in complimenting the Queen of England on her coming to the theatre in 1682. See the Prologue, p. 136. Heaven from all ages has reserved for you 90 And bring our summers back to their forsaken land. Till the fair blessing we vouchsafe to send; Nor can we spare you long, though often we may lend. Now past the danger, let the learned begin The inquiry, where disease could enter in; What in the faultless frame they found to make their prey, 115 That Heaven alone, who mixed the mass, could tell 120 And forced from that fair temple to retire, Profanely set the holy place on fire. In vain your lord, like young Vespasian,+ mourned, 125 When the fierce flames the sanctuary burned; And I prepared to pay in verses rude A most detested act of gratitude: Even this had been your Elegy, which now Is offered for your health, the table of my vow.+ 130 * The Duchess had lately recovered from a fever. ↑ "Young Vespasian," the Emperor Titus, son of the Emperor Vespasian, who when young, serving under his father, directed the siege of Jerusalem and took it by storm, and is said to have wept at the destruction of the Temple. "The table of my vow;" votiva tabella (Horace, 2 Sat. i. 33), tabula votiva Horace, 1 Od v. 31. This tabula or tabella was a picture of a shipwreck placed by one who had escaped from it in the Temple of Neptune or some other sea-god. "Nonne animadvertis ex tot tabulis pictis |