[In the third report of the Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts, p. 193, there is printed the following excerpt from a letter of R. Powys to Matthew Prior, dated July 14, 1698 :]

Mr. Godfrey Kneller has drawn at length the picture of your friend Jacob Tonson, which he shewed Mr. Dryden, who desired to give a touch of his pensill, and underneath it writ these 3 verses:

With leering look, bull faced and freckled fair,
With frowsy pores poisoning the ambient air,
With two left leggs and Judas coloured hair.

LINES TO MRS. CREED

[Mrs. Elizabeth Creed was the granddaughter of Sir John Pickering and of Susan, sister of Erasmus Driden, the poet's father. She was born in 1642. Malone (I, 1; 341, 342) prints the following anecdote, from a manuscript note which he conjectures to have been written by a daughter of Mrs. Creed. Words in brackets were supplied by Malone. The date of the lines of course cannot be determined; they are printed in the present place for convenience.]

Conversation one day after dinner, at Mrs. Creed's, running upon the or[igin of names],

Mr. Dryden bowed to the good old lady, and spoke extempore the f[ollowing verses]:

So much religion in your name doth dwell,
Your soul must needs with piety excel.

Thus naines, like [well-wrought] pictures drawn of old,
Their owners' nature and their story told.-
Your name but half expresses; for in you

Belief and practice do together go.

My prayers shall be, while this short life endures,
These may go hand in hand with you and yours;
Till faith hereafter is in vision drown'd,
And practice is with endless glory crown'd.

THE MONUMENT OF A FAIR MAIDEN LADY WHO DIED AT BATH AND IS THERE INTERR'D

[This epitaph was first printed, with title as above, in the volume of Fables, 1700. It is found on a mural tablet in Bath Abbey, where it is preceded by the following words:

"Here lyes the Body of Mary, third Daughter of Richard Frampton of Moreton in Dorsetshire, Esq and of Iane his Wife, sole Daughter of S Francis Cottington of Founthill in Wilts, who was born Ianuary ye Jet 1679. And Dyed after Seven Weeks sickness on the 6 of 7ber 1698. This Monument was Erected by Cath. Frampton, her second Sister and Executress in testimony of her Grief, Affection, and Gratitude."

The tablet is surmounted by a bust of Mary Frampton.

The text above is from a copy of the tablet, kindly furnished the present editor by the Reverend S. A. Boyd, Rector of Bath. The text of the poem follows that printed in the Fables.]

poems from those of other men; and have accordingly made me their peculiar care. May it be permitted me to say, that as your grandfather and father were cherish'd and adorn'd with honors by two successive monarchs, so I have been esteem'd and patroniz'd by the grandfather, the father, and the son, descended from one of the most ancient, most conspicuous, and most deserving families in Europe.

'Tis true that by delaying the payment of my last fine, when it was due by your Grace's accession to the titles and patrimonies of your house, I may seem, in rigor of law, to have made a forfeiture of my claim; yet my heart has always been devoted to your service; and since you have been graciously pleas'd, by your permission of this address, to accept the tender of my duty, 't is not yet too late to lay these poems at your feet.

The world is sensible that you worthily succeed, not only to the honors of your ancestors, but also to their virtues. The long chain of magnanimity, courage, easiness of access, and desire of doing good, even to the prejudice of your fortune, is so far from being broken in your Grace, that the precious metal yet runs pure to the newest link of it; which I will not call the last, because I hope and pray it may descend to late posterity; and your flourishing youth, and that of your excellent duchess, are happy omens of my wish.

'Tis observ'd by Livy and by others that some of the noblest Roman families retain'd a resemblance of their ancestry, not only in their shapes and features, but also in their manners, their qualities, and the distinguishing characters of their minds. Some lines were noted for a stern, rigid virtue, salvage, haughty, parsimonious, and unpopular: others were more sweet and affable, made of a more pliant paste, humble, courteous, and obliging; studious of doing charitable offices, and diffusive of the goods which they enjoy'd. The last of these is the proper and indelible character of your Grace's family. God Almighty has endued you with a softness, a beneficence, an attractive behavior winning on the hearts of others; and so sensible of their misery, that the wounds of fortune seem not inflicted on them, but on yourself. You are so ready to redress, that you almost prevent their wishes, and always exceed their expectations; as if what was yours was not your own, and not given you to possess, but to bestow on wanting merit. But this is a topic which I must cast in shades, lest I offend your modesty, which is so far from being ostentations of the good you do that it blushes even to have it known; and therefore I must leave you to the satisfaction and testimony of your own conscience, which, tho' it be a silent panegyric, is yet the best.

You are so easy of access, that Poplicola was not more, whose doors were open'd on the outside to save the people even the common civility of asking entrance; where all were equally admitted; where nothing that was reasonable was denied; where misfortune was a powerful recommendation, and where, I can scarce forbear saying, that want itself was a powerful mediator, and was next to merit.

The history of Peru assures us that their Incas, above all their titles, esteem'd that the highest, which call'd them Lovers of the Poor: a name more glorious than the Felix, Pius, and Augustus of the Roman emperors; which were epithets of flattery, deserv'd by few of them, and not running in a blood, like the perpetual gentleness and inherent goodness of the Ormond family.

Gold, as it is the purest, so it is the softest and most ductile of all metals. Iron, which is the hardest, gathers rust, corrodes itself, and is therefore subject to corruption; it was never intended for coins and medals, or to bear the faces and inscriptions of the great. Indeed 't is fit for armor, to bear off insults, and preserve the wearer in the day of battle; but the danger once repell'd, 't is laid aside by the brave, as a garment too rough for civil conversation: a necessary guard in war, but too harsh and cumbersome in peace, and which keeps off the embraces of a more human life.

For this reason, my Lord, tho' you have courage in a heroical degree, yet I ascribe it to you but as your second attribute: mercy, beneficence, and compassion claim precedence, as they are first in the divine nature. An intrepid courage, which is inherent in your Grace, is at best but a holiday kind of virtue, to be seldom exercis'd, and never but in cases of necessity; affability, mildness, tenderness, and a word which I would fain bring back to its original signification of virtue, I mean good-nature, are of daily use: they are the bread of mankind, and staff of life: neither sighs, nor tears, nor groans, nor curses of the vanquish'd, follow acts of compassion and of charity; but a sincere pleasure and serenity of mind in him who performs an action of mercy, which cannot suffer the misfortunes of another without redress, lest they should bring a kind of contagion along with them, and pollute the happiness which he enjoys.

Yet since the perverse tempers of mankind, since oppression on one side, and ambition on the other, are sometimes the unavoidable occasions of war; that courage, that magnanimity and resolution, which is born with you, cannot be too much commended. And here it grieves me that I am scanted in the pleasure of dwelling on many of your actions; but aidéouai Tpwas is an expression which Tully often uses, when

he would do what he dares not, and fears the censure of the Romans.

I have sometimes been forc'd to amplify on others; but here, where the subject is so fruitful that the harvest overcomes the reaper, I am shorten'd by my chain, and can only see what is forbidden me to reach; since it is not permitted me to commend you according to the extent of my wishes, and much less is it in my power to make my commendations equal to your merits.

Yet in this frugality of your praises, there are some things which I cannot omit, without detracting from your character. You have so form'd your own education, as enables you to pay the debt you owe your country, or, more properly speaking, both your countries; because you were born, I may almost say, in purple, at the Castle of Dublin, when your grandfather was Lord Lieutenant, and have since been bred in the Court of England.

If this address had been in verse, I might have call'd you, as Claudian calls Mercury, Numen commune, gemino faciens commercia mundo. The better to satisfy this double obligation, you have early cultivated the genius you have to arms, that when the service of Britain or Ireland shall require your courage and your conduct, you may exert them both to the benefit of either country. You began in the cabinet what you afterwards practic'd in the camp; and thus both Lucullus and Cæsar (to omit a crowd of shining Romans) form'd themselves to the war by the study of history, and by the examples of the greatest captains, both of Greece and Italy, before their time. I name those two commanders in particular, because they were better read in chronicle than any of the Roman leaders; and that Lucullus in particular, having only the theory of war from books, was thought fit, without practice, to be sent into the field against the most formidable enemy of Rome. Tully indeed was call'd the Learn'd Consul in derision; but then he was not born a soldier: his head was turn'd another way; when he read the tactics, he was thinking on the bar, which was his field of battle. The knowledge of warfare is thrown away on a general who dares not make use of what he knows. I commend it only in a man of courage and of resolution: in him it will direct his martial spirit, and teach him the way to the best victories, which are those that are least bloody, and which, tho' achiev'd by the hand, are manag'd by the head. Science distinguishes a man of honor from one of those athletic brutes whom undeservedly we call heroes. Curst be the poet who first honor'd with that name a mere Ajax, a man-killing idiot. The Ulysses of Ovid upbraids his ignorance, that he understood not the shield for

which he pleaded: there was engraven on it plans of cities, and maps of countries, which Ajax could not comprehend, but look'd on them as stupidly as his fellow beast, the lion. But on the other side, your Grace has given yourself the education of his rival; you have studied every spot of ground in Flanders, which for these ten years past has been the scene of battles and of sieges. No wonder if you perform'd your part with such applause on a theater which you understood so well.

If I design'd this for a poetical encomium, it were easy to enlarge on so copious a subject; but confining myself to the severity of truth, and to what is becoming me to say, I must not only pass over many instances of your military skill, but also those of your assiduous diligence in the war; and of your personal bravery, attended with an ardent thirst of honor; a long train of generosity; profuseness of doing good; a soul unsatisfied with all it has done; and an unextinguish'd desire of doing more. But all this is matter for your own historians; I am, as Virgil says, Spatiis exclusus iniquis.

Yet not to be wholly silent of all your charities, I must stay a little on one action, which preferr'd the relief of others to the consideration of yourself. When, in the battle of Landen, your heat of courage (a fault only pardonable to your youth) had transported you so far before your friends that they were unable to follow, much less to succor you; when you were not only dangerously, but, in all appearance, mortally wounded; when in that desperate condition you were made prisoner, and carried to Namur, at that time in possession of the French; then it was, my Lord, that you took a considerable part of what was remitted to you of your own revenues, and, as a memorable instance of your heroic charity, put it into the hands of Count Guiscard, who was governor of the place, to be distributed among your fellow prisoners. The French commander, charm'd with the greatness of your soul, accordingly consign'd it to the use for which it was intended by the donor; by which means the lives of so many miserable men were sav'd, and a comfortable provision made for their subsistence, who had otherwise perish'd, had not you been the companion of their misfortune; or rather sent by Providence, like another Joseph, to keep out famine from invading those whom in humility you call'd your brethren. How happy was it for those poor creatures, that your Grace was made their fellow sufferer! And how glorious for you, that you chose to want, rather than not relieve the wants of others! The heathen poet, in commending the charity of Dido to the Trojans, spoke like a Christian :

Non ignara mali, miseris succurrere disco.