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As needy men take money, good or bad;

God's word they had not, but the priest's they had.

Yet, whate'er false conveyances they made,

The lawyer still was certain to be paid.

385

In those dark times they learned their knack so well,
That by long use they grew infallible.

At last, a knowing age began to inquire

If they the Book or that did them inspire ;*

*

And making narrower search they found, though late,

390

That what they thought the priest's was their estate,

Taught by the will produced, the written word,

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Each was ambitious of the obscurest place,

No measure ta'en from Knowledge, all from GRACE,
Study and pains were now no more their care,
Texts were explained by fasting and by prayer:

* Compare line 166 of "The Medal:"

"The text inspires not them, but they the text inspire."

This was the fruit the private spirit brought,
Occasioned by great zeal and little thought.
While crowds unlearned, with rude devotion warm,
About the sacred viands buzz and swarm;
The fly-blown text creates a crawling brood

415

And turns to maggots what was meant for food.*

420

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'Tis some relief, that points not clearly known
Without much hazard may be let alone;
And after hearing what our Church can say,
If still our reason runs another way,
That private reason 'tis more just to curb
Than by disputes the public peace disturb.
For points obscure are of small use to learn:
But common quiet is mankind's concern.

445

Thus have I made my own opinions clear,
Yet neither praise expect nor censure fear;
And this unpolished rugged verse I chose
As fittest for discourse and nearest prose;
For while from sacred truth I do not swerve,
Tom Sternhold's or Tom Shadwell's rhymes will serve.

* A passage of "Hudibras" was probably in Dryden's mind:

"So, ere the storm of war broke out,

Religion spawned a various rout

Of petulant capricious sects,

The maggots of corrupted texts.'

"

Part 3, canto 2, line 7.

450

455

The versifier of the Psalms with Hopkins. See Dryden's contemptuous allusion to this metrical version of the Psalms in "Absalom and Achitophel," part 2, line 403.

THRENODIA AUGUSTALIS.

A FUNERAL-PINDARIC POEM.

TO THE HAPPY MEMORY OF KING CHARLES II.

BY JOHN DRYDEN,

SERVANT TO HIS LATE MAJESTY AND TO THE PRESENT KING.

"Fortunati ambo, si quid mea carmina possunt,

Nulla dies unquam memori vos eximet ævo!
VIRG. En. ix. 441

INTRODUCTORY NOTE.

Charles II. died on February 6, 1685. This poem was published about a month after the date, March 9, is in manuscript on the title-page in the copy of the first edition in the British Museum, and that was probably the day of publication. Dryden's name and description of himself on the title-page have been printed here with the title "Servant to his of this poem, as his Virgilian motto is connected with the words, late Majesty and to the present King." He had not announced his official position 66 Britannia on the title-page of "Religio Laici," nor did he afterwards on that of Rediviva," the poem written to celebrate the birth of a son to James II.; in both those title-pages it is simply, "Written by Mr. Dryden." "Absalom and Achitophel" The title-pages of and the Satires which succeeded it were published anonymously. "Annus Mirabilis" and other preceding poems, published before he and Historiographer Royal, had borne the author's name as Esquire."

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John Dryden,

There were some

A second edition of this poem appeared in the course of 1685. changes of the text in the second edition, which are mostly improvements, and which, it may be presumed, were all authorised. The poem was next reprinted, after an interval of sixteen years, in the folio volume of Dryden's Poems, published in the year It is remarkable that passages, changed after his death, 1701, by Jacob Tonson.

in the second edition from the first, reappear in this third edition as they stood in the first: and there is a new alteration in this third edition which deserves special mention. The two lines in the description of Charles's last moments, 187, 8, which stand in the two editions of 1685.

And he who most performed and promised less,
Even Short himself forsook the unequal strife,"

were changed in Tonson's folio volume of 1701 into

"And they who most performed and promised less,
Even Short and Hobbes forsook the unequal strife."

Hobbes was a surgeon of eminence at the time of Dryden's death, and had attended Dryden in his last illness; but there is no other known mention of him among the medical men who attended the bedside of Charles II. This is a very suspicious change of the text in Tonson's volume of 1701. The text of 1701 was copied in the edition of the "Miscellany Poems" of 1716 and in Broughton's edition of 1743. The text of the second edition of 1685 is followed here. Tonson's folio volume is printed generally inaccurately.

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