Observe the war, in every annual course; What has been done, was done with British force: Namur subdued, is England's palm alone; * The rest besieged, but we constrained the town: Thus Hannibal, with foreign laurels won, To Carthage was recalled, too late to keep his own. A patriot both the king and country serves; Of each our laws the certain limit show; * Our poet had originally accompanied his praises of the British soldiers with some aspersions on the cowardice of the Dutch, their allies. These he omitted at his cousin's desire, who deemed them disrespectful to King William. In short, he complains he had corrected his verses so far, that he feared he had purged the spirit out of them; as Bushby used to whip a boy so long, till he made him a confirmed blockhead. When both are full, they feed our blessed abode; Such was your generous grandsire; free to grant As not to lend the king against his laws; Who, while thou shar'st their lustre, lend'st them thine, Vouchsafe this picture of thy soul to see; Which when I miss, my own defects I show: + Sir Robert Bevile, maternal grandfather to John Driden of Chesterton, seems to have been imprisoned for resisting some of Charles I.'s illegal attempts to raise supplies without the authority of parliament. Perhaps our author now viewed his opposition to the royal will as more excusable than he would have thought it in the reigns of Charles II. or of James II. It is thought, that the hard usage which Sir Robert Bevile met on this score, decided our poet's uncle, his son-in-law, in his violent attachment to Cromwell. The reader will perhaps doubt, whether Mr Dryden's account Praise-worthy actions are by thee embraced, of his cousin Chesterton's accomplishments as a justice of peace, fox-hunter, and knight of the shire, even including his prudent abstinence from matrimony, were quite sufficient to justify this classification. EPISTLE THE SIXTEENTH. TO SIR GODFREY KNELLER. PRINCIPAL PAINTER TO HIS MAJESTY. THE well-known Sir Godfrey Kneller was a native of Lubec, but settled in London about 1674. He was a man of genius; but, according to Walpole, he lessened his reputation, by making it subservient to his fortune. No painter was more distinguished by the great, for ten sovereigns sate to him. What may tend longer to preserve his reputation, no painter ever received more incense from the praise of poets. Dryden, Pope, Addison, Prior, Tickell, Steele, all wrote verses to him in the tone of extravagant eulogy. Those addressed to Kneller by Addison, in which the series of the heathen deities is, with unexampled happiness, made to correspond with that of the British monarchs painted by the artist, are not only the best production of that elegant poet, but of their kind the most felicitous ever written. Sir Godfrey Kneller died 27th November, 1723. Dryden seems to have addressed the following epistle to Sir Godfrey Kneller, as an acknowledgment for the copy of the Chandos' portrait of Shakespeare, mentioned in the verses. It would appear that, upon other occasions, Sir Godfrey repaid the tributes of the poets, by the productions of his pencil. There is great luxuriance and richness of idea and imagery in the epistle. EPISTLE THE SIXTEENTH. ONCE I beheld the fairest of her kind, Such are thy pictures, Kneller, such thy skill, Comes out, and meets thy pencil in the draught, Yet, when we walk, they shoot before the sight; So near, they almost conquer in the strife; |