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

115

120

125

130

735

When neither wrong nor right are in their power!
Already they have lost their best defence,
The benefit of laws which they dispense.

140

No justice to their righteous cause allowed,

But baffled by an arbitrary crowd;

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

145

Mumbling to make the cross-grained thistles pass, t
Might laugh again to see a jury chaw
The prickles of unpalatable law.

*This substantive, brave, taken from the French, a favourite word with Dryden, has not survived in our language; it has been superseded by bravo.

"The people's brave, the politician's tool."

It occurs frequently in Dryden's plays:

Absalom and Achitophel, 967.

"Morat's too insolent, too much a brave."

Aurengzebe, act 1, sc. 1.

This refers to Marcus Licinius Crassus (grandson of the wealthy Crassus who acquired the name of Dives, and grandfather of the celebrated Triumvir), who was called Agelastus, because he never laughed (Plin. Hist. Nat. vii. 19). Cicero (de Finibus, v. 30) says that he laughed once in his life, but does not mention the cause of his one laugh. Tertullian, in his Treatise on the Soul, says that Crassus died from a fit of laughter, and later writers give as the cause of his laughter that mentioned by Dryden.

Both forms chaw and chew occur in the early editions of Dryden's works. This rhyme occurs again in Dryden's Translation of the Seventh Eclogue of Virgil, 60:

"Deformed like him who chaws Sardinian herbage to contract his jaws."

The witnesses that, leech-like, lived on blood,
Sucking for them were 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,

150

155

160

165

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.

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

170

175

* Med'cinally in Dryden's text, and the i of the second syllable of medicinally must be elided in pronunciation. In the third edition of 1692 med'cinal is printed for medicinally. Could medicinal be read here, it would be an improvement; the second and third syllables being of course both short. The edition of 1692 is a mere reprint of that of 1684, and med'cinal probably is a misprint. The word occurs twice in "Threnodia Augustalis" (lines 111 and 170), and it must be pronounced there in both places med’c'nal. But it is spelt in both places med'cinal; the spelling also of Milton:

The use of inquire here for search into or investigate is a Latinism. Oracle, it must be remembered, is a word of three syllables, and the second syllable long, as in oraculum and the French oracle. This line is printed in the early editions:

"Twas framed at first our oracle t' enquire."

The plural rhymes with seas in Dryden's Translation of the Æneid, ix. 164:

See note on line 106 of pronounced ora-kels:

"Their fates I fear not or vain oracles,

'Twas given to Venus they should cross the seas."

"Astræa Redux." But a rhyme in Hudibras requires the word to be

"And like the devil's oracles

Put into dogrel rhymes his spells."

Part 2, canto 3, 374.

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

Court.

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 e'en 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 men who no conspiracy would find,
Who doubts but, had it taken, they had joined?
Joined in a mutual covenant of defence,
At first without, at last against their Prince?
If sovereign right by sovereign power they scan,
The same bold maxim holds in God and man:
God were not safe; his thunder could they shun,
He should be forced to crown another son.
Thus, when the heir was from the vineyard thrown,
The rich possession was the murderers' own. †

* The "head" was Sir John Moore, elected Lord Mayor in 1681, who zealously supported the The two gouty hands" were the two Whig sheriffs, Thomas Pilkington and Samuel Sir John Moore is the Ziloah of the Second Part of "Absalom and Achitophel," where he is described as encumbered with a viler pair of assistants than Cornish and Bethel:

Shute.

"This year did Ziloah rule Jerusalem
And boldly all sedition's surges stem,
Howe'er encumbered with a viler pair
Than Ziph or Shimei to assist the chair."

+ See the parable of the lord of the vineyard and the husbandmen, St. Matthew xxi. 33-39Scott, following Derrick, has wrongly printed murderer's.

In vain to sophistry they have recourse;
By proving theirs no plot they prove 'tis worse,
Unmasked rebellion, and audacious force,
Which, though not actual, yet all eyes may see
'Tis working, in the immediate power to be;
For from pretended grievances they rise
First to dislike, and after to despise ;
Then, Cyclop-like, in human flesh to deal,
Chop up a minister at every meal;

220

225

Perhaps not wholly to melt down the king,

But clip his regal rights within the ring;

From thence to assume the power of peace and war

230

And ease him by degrees of public care.

Yet, to consult his dignity and fame,

He should have leave to exercise the name,

And hold the cards while Commons played the game.

For what can power give more than food and drink,

235

And, though the climate, vexed with various winds,

Works through our yielding bodies on our minds,

The wholesome tempest purges what it breeds

To recommend the calmness that succeeds.

255

But thou, the pander of the people's hearts,
(O crooked soul and serpentine in arts!)
Whose blandishments a loyal land have whored,
And broke the bonds she plighted to her lord,
What curses on thy blasted name will fall,

260

Which age to age their legacy shall call,

For all must curse the woes that must descend on all !
Religion thou hast none : thy mercury

Has passed through every sect, or theirs through thee.

But what thou givest, that venom still remains,

265

And the poxed nation feels thee in their brains.

What else inspires the tongues and swells the breasts
Of all thy bellowing renegado priests,

And frogs, and toads, and all the tadpole train

Will croak to Heaven for help from this devouring crane. 305
The cut-throat sword and clamorous gown shall jar

In sharing their ill-gotten spoils of war;

* Stum, new wine used for fermenting old or dull wine. horically:

Oldham employs the verb meta

"As the poor drunkard, when wine stums his brains,
Anointed with that liquor, thinks he reigns."

Letter from the Country, &c.

+ Conventicle has the accent always on the third syllable in Dryden and in his time: it was pronounced conventickle.

"He used to lay about and stickle
Like ram or bull at conventicle."

Hudibras, part 1, canto 2, 437.

In this poem Dryden departed from his custom of an before words beginning with h. The a here might have been regarded as a misprint, but that in the Preface we have a Hugonot twice. See p. 125.