14. The meaning of the last three lines is, Till the Island might by new maps be shown thick of conquests, &c. as the galaxy is sown with stars.' Thick of is one of Dryden's frequent Gallicisms. It occurs again in his

Palamon and Arcite, Bk. i. 230:

'He through a little window cast his sight,

Though thick of bars, that gave a scanty light,'

This stanza has puzzled some editors, who have made changes. A semicolon or colon is placed at the end of the first line, and Till' at the beginning of the second is changed into Still,' in the edition in the State Poems, in Broughton's, the Wartons', and Aldine editions. Scott, first edition (1808), also has a stop at the end of the first line.

15. Aulus Gellius, in the Noctes Atticae (lib. iii. c. 6), describes this quality of the palm of thriving under oppressive weights; and, quoting Plutarch, he says that this is why the palm has been chosen as the emblem of victory, 'quoniam ingenium eiusmodi ligni est, ut ingentibus opprimentibusque non cedat.' The palm is the date-palm of the East, and the palm of Scripture, Phoenix dactylifera. The righteous shall flourish like the palm

tree' (Psalm xcii. 120).

'Well did he know how palms by oppression speed

Victorious and the victor's sacred meed;

The burden lifts them higher.' Cowley, Davideis, Bk. i.

16. 3. Bologna's walls. Guicciardini relates that, when the French were besieged in Bologna in 1512 by the Papal, Spanish, and Venetian forces, a mine laid by the besiegers blew up a part of the walls on which stood a chapel dedicated to the Holy Virgin, and that this, after being carried up so high in air that the besiegers saw through the breach into the town, fell down again exactly into its old place, and that there was no sign of injury. (Storia d'Italia, lib. x.) See Roscoe's Life of Leo X, ii. 101.

17. 2. treacherous Scotland. 'Treacherous' on account of the rising of 1648, under the Duke of Hamilton, for Charles I, and the war afterwards carried on by the Scots for Charles II, which ended, after the defeat of Charles at Worcester, in the complete subjugation of Scotland. Eighteen months later, when Dryden suddenly transferred all his enthusiasm to Charles, Scottish treachery' would be regarded by him as virtue.

18. 3. mien, pronounced mine to rhyme with shine. Spelt mine in the edition of 1659 with Waller's and Sprat's poems, and in the other spelt mien. It is spelt and pronounced mine in the following couplet of Marvell,

And everything so wished and fine

Starts forth withal to its bonne mine.'

Appleton House (Works, iii. 220). The word introduced from the French mine is elsewhere spelt meen in Dryden, in accordance with the French pronunciation. See The Hind and the Panther, Part i. 33, where it is spelt 'meen' in the original edition, and

rhymes with seen.' In a song in Covent Garden Drollery, bonne mine' is Anglicised,

P. 32, Second Edition, 1672.

19. 4. sovereign, all-powerful. 'A sovereign remedy,' in The Flower and the Leaf, 422.

To me thy tears are sovereign.'

Rival Ladies, Act iii. Sc. I.

"'Cause there are pestilent airs which kill men

In health, must these be soveraigne as suddenly
To cure in sickness?' Suckling, Brennoralt, p. 20, 1638.
'The most sovereign prescription in Galen.'

Shakespeare, Coriolanus, Act ii. Sc. I.

20. There was a temple of Jupiter Feretrius in Rome, said to have been built by Romulus, who was also said to have given that title to Jupiter in offering to him the spoils taken from Acro, King of the Caeninenses, whom he had slain in battle. Romulus is further said to have ordained that the spoils taken by a Roman general from an enemy's general whom he had slain should be given to Jupiter Feretrius: such spoils were called ' 'spolia opima' (Livy i. 10). In the history of Rome there were only two subsequent cases of 'spolia opima.' Dryden here seems to mean that all spoils of war were given to Jupiter Feretrius, which was not the case: and he again betrays the same idea in translating exuviae bellorum' of Juvenal (Sat. x. 133):

'The spoils of war brought to Feretrian Jove.' Virgil, alluding to the third instance of 'spolia opima,' those gained by Marcellus, assigns the offering to Romulus (Aen. vi. 860):

'Tertiaque arma patri suspendet capta Quirino.' Dryden's translation of this line gives them to Jupiter Feretrius: 'And the third spoils shall grace Feretrian Jove.'

21. 2. in is wrongly changed into of in the edition in the State Poems, which is followed by Scott.

25. 3. confident is the spelling throughout Dryden of the word now spelt confidant, meaning 'one confided in.'

4. complexions, physical temperaments or humours. Compare

"Tis ill; though different your complexions are,

The family of heaven for men should war.'

Palamon and Arcite, Bk. iii. 422.

All dreams, as in old Galen I have read,

Are from repletion and complexion bred.'

The Cock and the Fox, 140.

See Shakespeare's Hamlet, 'the o'ergrowth of some complexion' (Act i. Sc. 4),

and The Merchant of Venice, 'it is the complexion of them all to leave the dam' (Act iii. Sc. 1).

27. 2. Commons, the people. Compare, in the Lines addressed to the Duchess of York,

'Like Commons, the nobility resort

In crowding heaps to fill your moving court.'

29. Cromwell in 1657 sent a force of six thousand men into Flanders to act with the French against the Spaniards. The Spaniards were defeated by the French and English at Dunkirk, June 17, 1658, and Dunkirk was ceded to England. The English thus became 'freemen of the Continent.' The Duke of York was with the Spanish army as a volunteer, and Dryden afterwards, with his accustomed versatility, eulogized the Duke as reflecting lustre on his country by serving against this force (Dedication of the Conquest of Granada, 1672). Dryden's lines on the British Lion are poor enough, but even their bathos is exceeded by Waller in his poem on the same occasion: 'Beneath the tropics is our language spoke,

And part of Flanders has received our yoke.'

30. 4. Alexander. The reigning Pope was Alexander VII.

31. In this stanza Dryden has altogether departed from truth. The reference can only be to the expedition sent out by Cromwell at the end of 1654, under Penn and Venables, to attack Spain in America and the West Indies, which was a failure. The armament did not get further than the West Indies, where it was repulsed from Hispaniola or St. Domingo; afterwards it took Jamaica, but it never crossed the Line nor reached gold-mines in South America. It is probable that Dryden wrote in ignorance as to Hispaniola and Jamaica being north of the equator. His writings contain other as great mistakes of carelessness.

34. 2. does, changed in the State Poems to doth, which has been copied in other editions, including Scott's.

4. the Vestal. Tarpeia, who was crushed by the shields of the Sabines, to whom she had betrayed the citadel of Rome.

35. 2. That was changed into The by Derrick, who has been followed by subsequent editors, including Scott. The change, though slight, is material. 'That giant-prince,' &c., clearly refers to an individual, and it is most probable that the reference is to the death of Blake, the great admiral, who had died about a twelvemonth before Cromwell, and had been buried with state in Westminster Abbey, September 4, 1657. There is no means of explaining from classical mythology the words 'giant-prince of all the watery herd.' Scott has understood the whole stanza as referring to the great storm which occurred at the time of Cromwell's death. The two last lines of the stanza are doubtless a poetical reference to the storm.

36. The first two months of Richard Cromwell's reign were serene, and there was no sign of danger or trouble for him till his Parliament met,

January 27, 1659. When Dryden wrote this poem in praise of Cromwell, there was a general expectation that his son Richard would easily maintain his power. But within a few months he lost the Protectorate; in eighteen months hence Charles Stuart was restored, and then Dryden was one of the first to extol the Stuarts and the Restoration, as is to be seen in the next poem Astræa Redux.

Line 2. Imitating Virgil:

Astrea Redux.

'Penitus toto divisos orbe Britannos.' Eclog. i. 67.

1. 3. A dreadful quiet, from Tacitus, dira quies' (Ann. i. 65).

1. 7. An horrid stillness first invades the ear. This line has been much ridiculed, and, with all respect to Dr. Johnson, who has elaborately argued in favour of an invasion of the ear by stillness, the diction cannot be justified. The following, in ridicule of this line, occurs in a poem called News from Hell, by Captain Radcliffe:

'Laureat, who was both learned and florid,
Was damned long since for "silence horrid,"
Nor had there been such clutter made

But that this silence did invade.

Invade! and so it might well, that's clear,
But what did it invade?—an ear!'

The line is parodied and burlesqued in Duffet's Spanish Rogue (quoted in
Genest's History of the Stage, i. 162):

'A silent noise, methinks, invades my ear.'

Compare with Dryden's line one as objectionable in Cowley :

'A dreadful silence filled the hollow place.'

Davideis, Bk. i.

11. 9-12. Charles X of Sweden died February 12, 1660. He had succeeded Queen Christina in 1654. Sweden had been, during the greater part of his reign, and was at the time of his death, at war with Poland, Russia, Austria, Denmark, and Holland. His son being a minor, Charles X appointed by will regents, and on his death-bed exhorted these to restore peace to his kingdom. Peace was concluded with Denmark and Holland by the treaty of Oliva, May 1660, and with Austria, Prussia, and Poland by the treaty of Copenhagen in July 1660.

11. 17, 18. By the treaty of the Pyrenees, by which peace was made between France and Spain, November 1654, it was agreed that Louis XIV, king of France, should marry the Infanta Maria Theresa, eldest daughter of Philip IV, king of Spain.

1. 35. The sacred purple means the bishops, and the scarlet gown the peers.

1. 37. Typhoeus (Tupweùs), generally incorrectly printed Typhoeus. The Greeks also called him Tupas, whence Typhon, his usual name with the English poets. Roaring Typhon' (Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida, Act i. Sc. 3). Milton and Waller also call him Typhon:

By ancient Tarsus held.' Paradise Lost, i. 199.

'So Jove himself, when Typhon Heaven does brave,
Descends to visit Vulcan's smoky cave.'

Waller, To the King.

Typhoeus or Typhon, is a hundred-headed giant, of classical mythology, fabled to have once driven Jupiter and the gods from heaven. He was afterwards quelled by Jupiter with a thunderbolt, and stowed away, according to Homer, whom Milton follows, in Cilicia (Il. 783), but Virgil placed him under the islands Inarime and Prochyta, off the west coast of Italy, near Vesuvius (Aen. ix. 716).

1. 45. Cyclops, wrongly printed Cyclop in most modern editions, including Scott's. 'Cyclops' is both singular and plural with Dryden. It occurs in the plural in Threnodia Augustalis, 441:

'With hardening cold and forming heat,

The Cyclops did their strokes repeat.'

It is the same with corps, the usual spelling in Dryden of the word now spelt corpse; corps is both singular and plural.

1. 51. tossed by fate. Jactatus fatis' (Virg. Aen. iv. 3).

1. 61. cozened. couz'ned in the two early editions. The change of spelling does not affect the metre, the e of the last syllable being elided in pronunciation. So again, 'well-couzʼned,' line 128; ‘lengthned,' line 135; 'rip'ned,' line 89; and this is the usual, though not uniform, mode of printing words of this class through the early editions of all Dryden's works.

1. 65. laveering, tacking; a word of Dutch origin.
To catch opinion as a ship the wind,

Which blowing cross, the pilot backwards steers,
And, shifting sails, makes way when he laveers.'

Davenant, Works, p. 280, fol. 1673.

Spelt laver in Suckling, but the accent is on the last syllable :

1. 67. soft Otho. The Roman Emperor Otho, who committed suicide. He became emperor on the death of Galba, January, a.d. 69; Vitellius disputed his succession; and on the first defeat of his forces by those of Vitellius, he committed suicide at Brixellum, near Parma, in April, A.D. 69. Eutropius says of him that he was 'in privata vita mollis' (Bk. viii. c. 17);