Yet still he found his fortune at a stay,
Whole droves of blockheads choking up his
They took, but not rewarded, his advice;
Villain and wit exact a double price.

way;

Power was his aim; but thrown from that pretence,
The wretch turned loyal in his own defence,
And malice reconciled him to his prince.
Him in the anguish of his soul he served;
Rewarded faster still than he deserved.
Behold him now exalted into trust;
His counsel's oft convenient, seldom just;
Even in the most sincere advice he gave,
He had a grudging still to be a knave.
The frauds he learned in his fanatic years
Made him uneasy in his lawful gears.
At best, as little honest as he could,
And, like white witches, mischievously good;*
To his first bias longingly he leans,

And rather would be great by wicked means.
Thus framed for ill, he loosed our triple hold;
Advice unsafe, precipitous, and bold.

From hence those tears! that Ilium of our woe!
Who helps a powerful friend, fore-arms a foe.
What wonder if the waves prevail so far,

When he cut down the banks that made the bar?
Seas follow but their nature, to invade;
But he, by art, our native strength betrayed.
So Samson to his foe his force confessed,
And, to be shorn, lay slumbering on her breast.
But when this fatal counsel, found too late,
Exposed its author to the public hate;
When his just sovereign, by no impious way
Could be seduced to arbitrary sway;
Forsaken of that hope, he shifts his sail,

*The comparison of his best and most politic counsels to the cures effected by those called white witches, whom it was unlawful to consult, because, even in accomplishing innocent purposes, they used infernal arts, is poignantly severe.-SCOTT.

Drives down the current with a popular gale,
And shows the fiend confessed without a veil.
He preaches to the crowd, that power is lent,
But not conveyed, to kingly government;
That claims successive bear no binding force;
That coronation oaths are things of course;
Maintains the multitude can never err;
And sets the people in the papal chair.
The reason's obvious,-interest never lies;
The most have still their interest in their eyes;
The power is always theirs, and power is ever wise.
Almighty crowd! thou shortenest all dispute;
Power is thy essence; wit thy attribute!
Nor faith nor reason make thee at a stay;

Thou leap'st o'er all eternal truths in thy Pindaric way!*
Athens, no doubt, did righteously decide,

When Phocion and when Socrates were tried;
As righteously they did those dooms repent;
Still they were wise, whatever way they went:
Crowds err not, though to both extremes they run;
To kill the father, and recal the son.

Some think the fools were most as times went then,
But now the world's o'erstocked with prudent men.
The common cry is even religion's test,—
The Turk's is at Constantinople best,

Idols in India, Popery at Rome,

And our own worship only true at home.

And true but for the time, 'tis hard to know
How long we please it shall continue so;

* Dryden was unmercifully attacked and ridiculed for this monster line. Scott quotes a passage from Hickeringell which makes lumbering work of it. Another illustration he gives is more curious. The same circumstance is noticed by Tom Brown, who says 'it is the longest line in Christendom, except one, which went round some old hangings, representing the history of Pharaoh and Moses, and measured forty-six good feet of metre, running thus :

'Why, was he not a rascal,

Who refused to suffer the children of Israel to go into the wilderness, with their wives and families, to eat the paschal"

This side to-day, and that to-morrow burns;
So all are God-Almighties in their turns.*
A tempting doctrine, plausible and new;
What fools our fathers were, if this be true!
Who, to destroy the seeds of civil war,
Inherent right in monarchs did declare;
And, that a lawful power might never cease,
Secured succession, to secure our peace.
Thus property and sovereign sway, at last,
In equal balances were justly cast;

But this new Jehu spurs the hot-mouthed horse,
Instructs the beast to know his native force,
To take the bit between his teeth, and fly
To the next headlong steep of anarchy.
Too happy England, if our good we knew,
Would we possess the freedom we pursue!
The lavish government can give no more;
Yet we repine, and plenty makes us poor.
God tried us once; our rebel fathers fought;
He glutted them with all the power they sought:
Till, mastered by their own usurping brave,
The free-born subject sunk into a slave.
We loathe our manna, and we long for quails;
Ah, what is man, when his own wish prevails!
How rash, how swift to plunge himself in ill,
Proud of his power, and boundless in his will!
That kings can do no wrong, we must believe;
None can they do, and must they all receive?
Help, heaven! or sadly we shall see an hour
When neither wrong nor right are in their power!
Already they have lost their best defence,
The benefit of laws, which they dispense;
No justice to their righteous cause allowed,
But baffled by an arbitrary crowd;

* It must be admitted that the charges of blasphemy and atheism so often brought against Dryden were abundantly justified by the coarse irreverence of such lines as these.

And medals graved, their conquest to record,
The stamp and coin of their adopted lord.

The man who laughed but once, to see an ass Mumbling to make the cross-grained thistles pass,* Might laugh again to see a jury chaw

The prickles of unpalatable law.

The witnesses, that, leech like, lived on blood,
Sucking for them was medicinally good;
But when they fastened on their festered sore,
Then justice and religion they forswore;
Their maiden oaths debauched into a whore.
Thus men are raised by factions, and decried;
And rogue and saint distinguished by their side;
They rack even Scripture to confess their cause,
And plead a call to preach in spite of laws.
But that's no news to the poor injured page,
It has been used as ill in every age;
And is constrained with patience all to take,
For what defence can Greek and Hebrew make?
Happy who can this talking trumpet seize;
They make it speak whatever sense they please!
'Twas framed at first our oracle, to inquire;
But since our sects in prophecy grow higher,
The text inspires not them, but they the text inspire.
London, thou great emporium of our isle,

O thou too bounteous, thou too fruitful Nile!
How shall I praise or curse to thy desert?
Or separate thy sound from thy corrupted part?
I called thee Nile; the parallel will stand:
Thy tides of wealth o'erflow the fattened land;
Yet monsters from thy large increase we find,
Engendered on the slime thou leavest behind.
Sedition has not wholly seized on thee,
Thy nobler parts are from infection free.

The ass that made Crassus laugh, who never laughed before, by its painful attempt to eat thistles, was not exactly in the same condition as the juries, who chewed the prickles of arbitrary law very much against their own consent.

Of Israel's tribes thou hast a numerous band,
But still the Canaanite is in the land.

Thy military chiefs are brave and true,
Nor are thy disenchanted burghers few.
The head is loyal which thy heart commands,
But what's a head with two such gouty hands?*
The wise and wealthy love the surest way,
And are content to thrive, and to obey.
But wisdom is to sloth too great a slave;
None are so busy as the fool and knave.
Those let me curse; what vengeance will they urge,
Whose ordures neither plague nor fire can purge?
Nor sharp experience can to duty bring,
Nor angry Heaven, nor a forgiving king!
In gospel-phrase, their chapmen they betray;
Their shops are dens, the buyer is their prey;
The knack of trades is living on the spoil;
They boast even when each other they beguile.
Customs to steal is such a trivial thing,
That 'tis their charter to defraud their king.
All hands unite, of every jarring sect;
They cheat the country first, and then infect.
They for God's cause their monarchs dare dethrone,
And they'll be sure to make his cause their own.
Whether the plotting Jesuit laid the plan
Of murdering kings, or the French Puritan,
Our sacrilegious sects their guides outgo,
And kings and kingly power would murder too.
What means their traitorous combination less,
Too plain to evade, too shameful to confess?
But treason is not owned when 'tis descried;
Successful crimes alone are justified.

*The head was Sir John Moore, the mayor, and the two gouty hands,' Shute and Pilkington (against whom the Duke of York proceeded for damages) were the sheriffs. They were not the only gouty members of the Whig party. Shaftesbury was a martyr to gout. 'He died,' says Macintosh, 'clustering together all the agonies that wrought upon him in the end, of restless ambition, disappointment, and the gout.' The malady was strictly impartial, for Dryden himself sank under it.