The silvan scenes of herds and flocks, And fruitful plains and barren rocks, Of shallow brooks, that flowed so clear The bottom did the top appear; Of deeper, too, and ampler floods, Which, as in mirrors, showed the woods; Of lofty trees, with sacred shades, And perspectives of pleasant glades, Where nymphs of brightest form appear, And shaggy satyrs standing near, Which them at once admire and fear. The ruins, too, of some majestic piece, Boasting the power of ancient Rome or Greece, Whose statues, friezes, columns, broken lie, And, though defaced, the wonder of the eye; What nature, art, bold fiction, e'er durst frame, Her forming hand gave feature to the name. So strange a concourse ne'er was seen before, But when the peopled ark the whole creation bore.

7

The scene then changed; with bold erected look Our martial king the sight with reverence strook : For, not content to express his outward part, Her hand called out the image of his heart: His warlike mind, his soul devoid of fear, His high-designing thoughts were figured there, As when, by magic, ghosts are made appear. Our phoenix queen was portrayed, too, so bright, Beauty alone could beauty take so right: Her dress, her shape, her matchless grace, Were all observed, as well as heavenly face. With such a peerless majesty she stands,

As in that day she took the crown from sacred hands;
Before a train of heroines was seen,

In beauty foremost, as in rank, the queen.
Thus nothing to her genius was denied,
But like a ball of fire, the further thrown,

Still with a greater blaze she shone,

And her bright soul broke out on every side. What next she had designed, Heaven only knows: To such immoderate growth her conquest rose, That fate alone its progress could oppose.

8

Now all those charms, that blooming grace,
The well-proportioned shape, and beauteous face,
Shall never more be seen by mortal eyes;
In earth the much-lamented virgin lies.
Not wit, nor piety could fate prevent;
Nor was the cruel destiny content
To finish all the murder at a blow,
To sweep at once her life, and beauty too;
But, like a hardened felon, took a pride
To work more mischievously slow,
And plundered first, and then destroyed.
O double sacrilege on things divine,
To rob the relic, and deface the shrine!
But thus Orinda died: *

Heaven, by the same disease did both translate;
As equal were their souls, so equal was their fate.

9

Meantime, her warlike brother on the seas
His waving streamers to the winds displays,
And vows for his return, with vain devotion, pays.
Ah, generous youth! that wish forbear,

The winds too soon will waft thee here!
Slack all thy sails, and fear to come,

Alas, thou knowest not, thou art wrecked at home!
No more shalt thou behold thy sister's face,

Thou hast already had her last embrace.
But look aloft, and if thou kennest from far,
Among the Pleiads, a new kindled star,

* Mrs. Katherine Philips-the matchless Orinda,' whose poems were published in folio after her decease-died also of small-pox.

If any sparkles than the rest more bright,
"Tis she that shines in that propitious light.

ΙΟ

When in mid-air the golden trump shall sound,
To raise the nations under ground;

When, in the Valley of Jehosophat,

The judging God shall close the book of fate,
And there the last assizes keep,

For those who wake, and those who sleep;
When rattling bones together fly
From the four corners of the sky;

When sinews o'er the skeletons are spread,
Those clothed with flesh, and life inspires the dead;
The sacred poets first shall hear the sound,
And foremost from the tomb shall bound,
For they are covered with the lightest ground;
And straight, with inborn vigour, on the wing,
Like mounting larks, to the new morning sing.
There thou, sweet saint, before the choir shall go,
As harbinger of Heaven, the way to show,
The way which thou so well hast learned below.*

* Dr. J. Warton has utterly condemned this ode, in opposition to the opinion of Dr. Johnson, which, he says, exhibits an unaccountable perversity of judgment, and want of taste for true poetry.' He pronounces the first stanza, which Johnson selected for special admiration, to be absolutely unintelligible. His note upon the poem, however most readers may demur to its justice, is curious on account of its allusions to Johnson. Examples of bad writing, of timid expressions, violent metaphors, far-sought conceits, hyperbolical adulation, unnatural amplifications, interspersed, as usual, with fine lines, might be collected from this applauded ode, so very inferior in all respects to the divine Ode on St. Cecilia's Day. But such a paradoxical judgment cannot be wondered at in a critic that despised the Lycidas of Milton, and the Bard of Gray. I have been censured, I am informed, for contradicting some of Johnson's critical opinions. As I knew him well, I ever respected his talents, and more so his integrity; but a love of paradox and contradiction, at the bottom of which was vanity, gave an unpleasant tincture to his manners, and made his conversation boisterous and offensive. I often used to tell the mild and sensible Sir Joshua Reynolds, that he and his friends had contributed to spoil Johnson, by constantly and cowardly assenting to all he advanced on

81

TO MR. NORTHLEIGH,

AUTHOR OF THE 'PARALLEL,' ON HIS TRIUMPH OF THE BRITISH MONARCHY.

[MR. NORTHLEIGH was a law student in the Inner Temple, who wrote some tracts on the Tory side that attracted attention. He afterwards became a physician. He was eight-andtwenty when he published the book which drew from Dryden this compliment on his precocity. It was entitled, The Triumph of our Monarchy over the Plots and Principles of our Rebels and Republicans, being Remarks on their most eminent Libels. 1685.]

SO Joseph, yet a youth, expounded well

The boding dream, and did the event foretell; Judged by the past, and drew the Parallel. Thus early Solomon the truth explored, The right awarded, and the babe restored. Thus Daniel, ere to prophesy he grew, The perjured Presbyters did first subdue, And freed Susanna from the canting crew. Well may our monarchy triumphant stand, While warlike James protects both sea and land ; And, under covert of his sevenfold shield, Thou send'st thy shafts to scour the distant field. By law thy powerful pen has set us free; Thou studiest that, and that may study thee.

any subject. Mr. Burke only kept him in order, as did Mr. Beauclerc also, sometimes by his playful wit. It was a great pleasure for Beauclerc to lay traps for him, to induce him to oppose and contradict one day what he had maintained on a former.'

82

THE HIND AND THE PANTHER.

A POEM. IN THREE PARTS.

PART THE FIRST.

[LITTLE more than four years elapsed between the publication of the Religio Laici and the Hind and the Panther, which was licensed on the 11th of April, 1687, but which Mr. Malone informs us was written in the preceding year. In the interval, Dryden had embraced the Roman-catholic religion. An indication of the change that was taking place in his opinions may be detected in the last stanza of the Threnodia Augustalis; and in the Hind and the Panther he throws off all disguise and hesitation, and, with the usual zeal of the proselyte, assails the church he had renounced.

The form selected is ill suited to his purpose. Employing the machinery of a fable, without being able to maintain its attractions, or work out its moral, he collects an assembly of beasts, as representatives of the different denominations, and through this clumsy contrivance raises the whole controversy between the two churches and the branch sects of Protestantism. Thus, the Roman-catholic Church is represented by the 'milk white hind,' and the Church of England by the 'spotted panther' (the contrast conveying a hint of infallibility on the one side, and error on the other); while the 'bloody bear' represents the Independents; the quaking hare,' the Quakers; the buffoon ape,' the Free-thinkers; the bristled baptist boar,' the Anabaptist; false Reynard,' the Unitarians; and the wolf, the Presbytery; king James II. figuring in the midst of the strange congregation as the 'British Lion Pursuing this zoological allegory into the regions of mythology, he completes the scheme by presenting the founder of Christianity under the character of Pan. The incongruity of the design was effectively ridiculed by a host