contrary principles, must praise this action, as the most eminent for piety, not only in this degenerate age, but almost in any of the former; when men were made de meliore luto; when examples of charity were frequent, and when they were in being, Teucri pulcherrima proles, magnanimi heroes nati melioribus annis. No envy can detract from this: it will fhine in history; and like fwans, grow whiter the longer it endures and the name of ORMOND will be more celebrated in his captivity, than in his greatest triumphs.

But all actions of your grace are of a piece; as waters keep the tenor of their fountains: your compaflion is general, and has the fame effect as well on enemies as friends. It is fo much in your nature to do good, that your life is but one continued act of placing benefits on many, as the fun is always carrying his light to fome part or other of the world: and were it not that your reafon guides you where to give, I might almoft fay that you could not help bestowing more, than is confifting with the fortune of a private man, or with the will of any but an Alexander.

What

What wonder is it then, that being born for a bleffing to mankind, your supposed death in that engagement was fo generally lamented through the nation! The concernment for it was as univerfal as the lofs: and though the gratitude might be counterfeit in fome, yet the tears of all were real. Where every man deplored his private part in that calamity, and even thofe, who had not tafted of your favours, yet built fo much on the fame of your beneficence, that they bemoaned the lofs of their expectations.

your

This brought the untimely death of great father into fresh remembrance; as if the fame decree had paffed on two short fucceffive generations of the virtuous; and I repeated to myself the fame verses, which I had formerly applied to him: Oftendunt terris hunc tantùm fata, nec ultrà effe finunt. But to the joy not only of all good men, but of mankind in general, the unhappy omen took not place. You are ftill living to enjoy the bleffings and applause of all the good you have performed, the prayers of multitudes whom you have obliged, for your long profperity; and that your VOL. III. power

a

power of doing generous and charitable actions may be as extended as your will; which is by none more zealously defired than by

Your GRACE'S

most humble,

moft obliged, and

moft obedient Servant,

JOHN DRYDEN.

PREFIXED TO THE

FABLES.

IT

T is with a poet as with with a man who defigns to build, and is very exact, as he supposes, in cafting up the coft beforehand; but generally speaking, he is mistaken in his account, and reckons fhort in the expence he first intended: he alters his mind as the work proceeds, and will have this or that convenience more, of which he had not thought when he began. So has it happened to me: I have built a houfe, where I intended but a lodge: yet with better fuccefs than a certain nobleman, who, beginning with a dog-kennel, never lived to finish the palace he had contrived.

From tranflating the first of Homer's Iliads (which I intended as an effay to the whole work) I proceeded to the tranflation of the twelfth book of Ovid's Metamorphofes, because it contains, among other things, the causes, the beginning, and ending of the Trojan war: here I ought in reason to have stopped; but the speeches of Ajax and Ulyffes lying next in my way, I could not balk them. When I had compaffed them, I was so taken with the former part of the fifteenth book, (which is the mafter-piece of the whole Metamorphofes) that I enjoined myself the pleafing task of rendering it into English. And now

I found, by the number of my verfes, that they began to fwell into a little volume; which gave me an occafion of looking backward en fome beauties of my author, in his former books: there occurred to me the hunting of the boar, Cinyras and Myrrha, the good-natur'd ftory of Baucis and Philemon, with the reft, which I hope I have translated closely enough, and given them the fame turn of verfe which they had in the original; and this, I may say without vanity, is not the talent of every poet: he who has arrived the nearest to it, is the ingenious and learned Sandys, the beft verfifier of the former age; if I may properly call it by that name, which was the former part of this concluding century. For Spenfer and Fairfax both flourished in the reign of queen Elizabeth; great mafters in our language; and who faw much farther into the beauties of our numbers, than those who immediately followed them, Milton was the poetical fon of Spenfer, and Mr. Waller of Fairfax; for we have our lineal descents and clans, as well as other families: Spenfer more than once infinuates, that the foul of Chaucer was transfused into his body; and that he was begotten by him two hundred years after his decease. Milton has acknowledged to me, that Spenfer was his original; and many befides myself have heard our famous Waller own, that he derived the harmony of his numbers from the Godfrey of Bulloign, which was turned into English by Mr. Fairfax. But to return having done with Ovid for this time, it came into my mind, that our old English poet Chaucer in many things refembled him, and that with no disadvantage on the fide of the modern author, as I shall endeavour to prove when I compare them: and as I am, and always have been ftudious to promote

the