Swift, in his "Directions for making a Birth-day Song," has done a service in exposing to ridicule the unmeaning and fulsome lavished on sovereigns, analogous to that of Cervantes in laughing down knight-errantry. The following extract from that poem will remind the reader of many flatteries detailed in the preceding pages, especially those regarding the poetry and beauty of Elizabeth, the wrong sustained by the saints and angels from the prolongation of the life of Charles II., and, in particular, as concerns the transactions discussed in this work, the justice of James.

“Thus, your encomium, to be strong,
Must be applied directly wrong:
A tyrant for his mercy praise,
And crown a royal dunce with bays;
A squinting monkey load with charms,
And paint a coward fierce in arms.
Is he to avarice inclined?

Extol him for his generous mind:
And when we starve for want of corn,
Come out with Amalthea's horn.

For all experience this evinces

The only art of pleasing Princes.

For Princes love you should descant

On virtues which they know they want."

Swift, in another poem, his " Rhapsody," seems to give poetry credit for sincerity in writing of deceased sovereigns.

"A Prince the moment he is crown'd

Inherits every virtue round,

As emblems of the sovereign power,

Like other baubles in the Tower.

Is generous, valiant, just, and wise,
And so continues till he dies:
His humble Senate this professes:
In all their speeches, votes, addresses.
But once you fix him in a tomb,
His virtues fade, his vices bloom,

And each perfection wrong imputed,

Is fully at his death confuted.
The loads of poems in his praise
Ascending, make one funeral blaze;
His panygerics then are ceased,
He grows a tyrant, dunce, or beast.

As soon as you can hear his knell,
This God on earth turns devil in hell.
And, lo! his ministers of state,
Transform'd to imps, his levy wait,
Where, in the scenes of endless woe,
They ply their former arts below;
And as they sail in Charon's boat,
Contrive to bribe the judge's vote.
To Cerberus they give a sop,

His treble barking mouth to stop.
Or in the ivory-gate of dreams,
Perfect Excise and South-Sea schemes,
Or hire their party pamphleteers
To set Elysium by the ears.

Then, poet! if you mean to thrive,
Employ your muse on kings alive,
With prudence gathering up a cluster
Of all the virtues you can muster,
Which form'd into a garland sweet,
Lay humbly at your monarch's feet,
Who, as the odours reach his throne,
Will smile, and think them all his own.
For law and gospel doth determine,
All virtues lodge in royal ermine,
(I mean the oracles of both,
Who shall depose it upon oath.)

Your garland in the following reign,
Change but the names, will do agan."

It is conceived that Swift was writing with reference to the two first Princes of the House of Brunswick, the flattery of whom was not a way to the hearts of their heirs apparent. Thus the following lines on the bringing of Queen Elizabeth's body from Richmond, where she died, to Whitehall, will not be suspected of being written with a view to ingratiate the poet with King James, any more than they were likely to captivate the Muses.

"The queen was brought by water to Whitehall,

At every stroke the oars tears let fall

Men clung about the barge; fish under water

Wept out their eyes of pearl, and swome blind after.

I think the bargemen might, with easier thighs,

Have rowed her thither in her people's eyes.

For howsoe'er, thus much my thoughts have scann'd,
Shad come by water, had she come by land."

And the writer of an elegy on Prince Henry, son of James I., who relates the following singular manner in which his poem was brought to a close, was probably equally free from the vice of court flattery:

"Farewell! Perforce, I cease to mourn,

For tears my ink to water turn."

Swift advises his birth-day bard (and the advice may be thought worthy of consideration under the present reign,) to bestow a portion of his praises on royal children.

"Three graces, by Lucina brought her;
Just three, and every grace a daughter.
Here many a king his heart and crown
Shall at their snowy feet lay down.
In royal robes they came by dozens,
To court their English German cousins.
Bends a pair of princely babies,

Now struts his little Highness

With so much beauty, show me any maid
That could resist this charming Ganymede.
Then cut him out a world of work,
To conquer Spain, and quell the Turk:
Foretell his empire crowned with bays,
And golden times and halcyon days,
And swear his line shall reign the nation
For ever-till the conflagration.
But now it comes into my mind
We left a little Duke behind:

A Cupid in his face and size,

And only wants to want his eyes."

Addison, who, in his ingenious allegorical verses addressed to Sir Godfrey on his picture of King George I., could prate of the king's godlike form, and thus conclude his poem,

"This wonder of the sculptor's hand
Produced, his art was at a stand:

For who would hope new fame to raise,

Or risk his well-established praise,

That his high genius to approve,

Had drawn a George, or carved a Jove,"

takes the following courtier-like view of the perspective prospect of

a numerous and increasing family of royal children: In casting our eyes over the nation's darlings, as they are placed according to their ages and heights, and turning in our thoughts the probability of their number being doubled or trebled, Addison bids us to reflect that, "We are like men entertained with the view of a spacious landscape, where the eye passes over one pleasing prospect into another, till the sight is lost by degrees in a succession of delightful objects, and leaves us in the persuasion that there remain still more behind."