Hampton-Court he was pleased to command me to stay privately at London, to send to him and receive from him all his letters from and to all his correspondents at home and abroad; and I was furnished with nine several ciphers in order to it; which trust I performed with great safety to the persons with whom we corresponded: but about nine months after, being discovered by their knowledge of Mr. Cowley's hand, I happily escaped, both for myself and those that held correspondence with me. That time was too hot and busy for such idle speculations: but after I had the good fortune to wait upon your Majesty in Holland and France, you were pleased sometimes to give me arguments to divert and put off the evil hours of our banishment, which now and then fell not short of your Majesty's expectation.

After, when your Majesty, departing from St. Germains to Jersey, was pleased freely (without my asking) to confer upon me that place wherein I have now the honour to serve you, I then gave over poetical lines, and made it my business to draw such others as might be more serviceable to your Majesty, and I hope more lasting. Since that time I never disobeyed my old master's commands till this summer at the Wells, my retirement there tempting me to divert those melancholy thoughts which the new apparitions of foreign invasion and domestic discontent gave us but these clouds being now happily blown over, and our sun clearly shining out again, I have

recovered the relapse, it being suspected that it would have proved the epidemical disease of age, which is apt to fall back into the follies of youth: yet Socrates, Aristotle, and Cato, did the same; and Scaliger saith, that fragment of Aristotle was beyond any thing that Pindar or Homer ever wrote. I will not call this a Dedication, for those epistles are commonly greater absurdities that any that come after; for what author can reasonably believe that fixing the great name of some eminent patron in the forehead of his book can charm away censure, and that the first leaf should be a curtain to draw over and hide all the deformities that stand behind it? neither have I any need of such shifts, for most of the parts of this body have already had your Majesty's view; and having past the test of so clear and sharp-sighted a judgment, which has as good a title to give law in matters of this nature as in any other, they who shall presume to dissent from your Majesty will do more wrong to their own judgment than their judgment can da to me and for those latter parts which have not yet received your Majesty's favourable aspect, if they who have seen them do not flatter me, (for I dare not trust my own judgment) they will make it appear that it is not with me as with most of mankind, who never forsake their darling vices till their vices forsake them; and that this divorce was not frigiditatis causa, but an act of choice, and not of necessity. Therefore, Sir, I

that their numbers were not small the success of this negociation gives sufficient evidence.

Mr. Denham returned into England about the year 1652, and what estate the Civil war and the gamesters had left him being sold by order of the Parliament, he was kindly entertained by the Earl of Pembroke at Wilton, with whom he continued near twelve months.

At the Restoration, Inigo Jones being dead, he obtained, what many missed, the reward of his loyalty, being made surveyor of the King's Buildings, and at the coronation of Charles II. dignified with the order of the Bath.

After the Restoration he wrote the poem upon Prudence and Justice, and perhaps some of his other pieces; and, as he appears, whenever any serious question comes before him, to have been a man of piety, he consecrated his poetical powers to religion, and made a metrical version of the Psalms of David. In this attempt he failed: but in sacred poetry who has succeeded?

From the indulgence of his royal master, joined to public esteem, there was reason to hope our Author might now be happy but human felicity is short and uncertain: upon some discontent arising from a second marriage Sir John Denham became disordered in his understanding; but recovering from that disorder, he continued in great esteem for his

poetical abilities, not only at court, but with all persons of taste and erudition; for he afterwards wrote his excellent poem upon the death of Cowley. Butler lampooned him for his lunacy; but it is not known whether the malignant lines were then made public, nor what provocation incited Butler to do that which no provocation can excuse.

Sir John Denham died at his office near Whitehall in March 1668, and was interred in Westminster-Abbey, near the tomb of Chaucer, Spenser, and Cowley.

Denham is deservedly considered as one of the fathers of English poetry. "Denham and Waller," says Prior, "improved our versification, and Dry"den perfected it." He has given specimens of various composition, descriptive, ludicrous, didactic, and sublime.

He appears to have had, in common with all mankind, the ambition of being, upon proper occasions, a merry fellow; and, in common with most of them, to have been by nature, or by early habits, debarred from it. Nothing is less exhilerating than the ludicrousness of Denham. He does not fail for want of efforts; he is familiar, he is gross; but he is never merry, unless the Speech against Peace in the Close Committee be excepted. For grave burlesque, however, his imitation of Davenant shews him to have been well qualified.

Of his more elevated occasional poems there is perhaps none that does not deserve commendation. In the verses to Fletcher is an image that has since been often adopted. The lines are,

Nor need thy juster title the foul guilt

Of eastern kings, who, to secure their reign,

Must have their brothers, sons, and kindred, slain.

After Denham, Orrery, in one of his prologues,

"Poets are sultans, if they had their will,
"For every author would his brother kill."

And Pope,

"Should such a man, too fond to rule alone,

"Bear, like the Turk, no brother near the throne.

But this is not the best of his little pieces; it is excelled by his poem to Fanshaw, and his elegy on Cowley. This elegy on the death of Cowley was his last, and, among his shorter works, his best performance: the numbers are musical, and the thoughts are just.

His praise of Fanshaw's version of Guarini contains a very sprightly and judicious character of a good translator:

That servile path thou nobly dost decline,

Of tracing word by word, and line by line, &c.

Cooper's Hill is the work that confers upon him the rank and dignity of an original author. He