THE MEDAL.

A SATIRE AGAINST SEDITION.

Of all our antic sights and pageantry
Which English idiots run in crowds to see,
The Polish Medal bears the prize alone;
A monster, more the favourite of the town
Than either fairs or theatres have shown.
Never did art so well with nature strive,
Nor ever idol seemed so much alive;
So like the man, so golden to the sight,
So base within, so counterfeit and light.
One side is filled with title and with face;
And, lest the king should want a regal place,
On the reverse a tower the town surveys,

O'er which our mounting sun his beams displays.
The word, pronounced aloud by shrieval voice,
Letamur, which in Polish is Rejoice,

The day, month, year, to the great act are joined,
And a new canting holiday designed.
Five days he sate for every cast and look,
Four more than God to finish Adam took.
But who can tell what essence angels are
Or how long Heaven was making Lucifer?
Oh, could the style that copied every grace
And ploughed such furrows for an eunuch face,
Could it have formed his ever-changing will,
The various piece had tired the graver's skill!
A martial hero first, with early care
Blown, like a pigmy by the winds, to war;
A beardless chief, a rebel ere a man,
So young his hatred to his Prince began."
Next this, (how wildly will ambition steer!)
A vermin wriggling in the usurper's ear,
Bartering his venal wit for sums of gold,

*

He cast himself into the saint-like mould;†

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Shaftesbury had begun on the King's side. In 1643, when he was already twenty-two, he raised a regiment of foot and a troop of horse at his own charge for the King, from whom he received commissions to be colonel of the first, captain of the second, and governor of Weymouth and Portland; he was also in that year appointed Sheriff of Dorsetshire for the King. In the beginning of the following year he went over to the side of the Parliament. This "rebel ere a man of twenty-three then performed military services in the West of England, under those early chiefs of the Parliament who had not proceeded against the King vigorously enough to please Dryden, when he sung the praises of Cromwell before the Restoration. See stanza 11 of the poem on Oliver Cromwell.

↑ Shaftesbury, then Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, was appointed a member of the Council of

Groaned, sighed, and prayed, while godliness was gain,

The loudest bag-pipe of the squeaking train.
But, as 'tis hard to cheat a juggler's eyes,
His open lewdness he could ne'er disguise.
There split the saint; for hypocritic zeal
Allows no sins but those it can conceal.
Whoring to scandal gives too large a scope ;
Saints must not trade, but they may interlope.
The ungodly principle was all the same;
But a gross cheat betrays his partner's game.
Besides, their pace was formal, grave, and slack ;
His nimble wit outran the heavy pack.
Yet still he found his fortune at a stay,

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Whole droves of blockheads choking up his way;

Power was his aim; but thrown from that pretence,

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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 counsels oft convenient, seldom just ;
Even in the most sincere advice he gave
He had a grudging still to be a knave.
The frauds he learnt in his fanatic years
Made him uneasy in his lawful gears.
At best, as little honest as he could,

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бо

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.)

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State after the dissolution of the Barebone's parliament in July 1653, and he continued to sit as member of this Council until December 1654, when he ceased to attend; and after this he was estranged from Cromwell, why is not known. The salary of each member of this Council was 1000l. a year, but a paper printed in Thurloe's State Papers (iii. 581) shows that Cooper never received any salary. A statement made by Shaftesbury himself after the Restoration, that he might freely speak because he never received any salary" (Parl. Hist. iv. 63) is thus by accident effectually confirmed. There is no authority, and probably no foundation, for the charge of "bartering his venal wit for sums of gold." Nor is there any truth in the imputation of his identifying himself with the " saints," because he was a member of the Barebone's parliament. He was an active member of a numerous moderate party in that assembly, which included Lord Lisle, Algernon Sydney's elder brother, afterwards earl of Leicester and a friend of Dryden; Edward Montagu, afterwards earl of Sandwich; Charles Howard, afterwards earl of Carlisle ; Rouse, the provost of Eton; Sir Charles Wolseley, and several officers of the army: and this party ultimately prevailed over the fanatics. Bishop Burnet says of Shaftesbury that he was of great use to Cromwell "in withstanding the enthusiasts of that time" (Own Time, i. 165). The insinuation that Shaftesbury's licentiousness was the cause of his separation from the saints is also without authority, and the charge of licentiousness itself, as applied to Shaftesbury at that early period of his life. is probably without foundation; while, as regards his later years, it may be safely said that the same accusation, grossly made by many revilers, one copying another, was a great exaggeration.

*

See note on line 175 of "Absalom and Achitophel" for Dryden's former laudations of the policy here denounced, and of Lord Clifford, one of its chief promoters.

From hence those tears, that Ilium of our woe :
Who helps a powerful friend forearms 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 confest,

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,
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.

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Almighty crowd! thou shortenest all dispute,

Power is thy essence, wit thy attribute!

Nor faith nor reason make thee at a stay,

Thou leapst o'er all eternal truths in thy Pindaric way! +
Athens, no doubt, did righteously decide,

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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 recall the son.

ICO

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,

IC5

A tempting doctrine, plausible and new ;
What fools our fathers were, if this be true!

"Forsaken of that hope;" a Gallicism. So in "Absalom and Achitophel," 568, in the description of Buckingham:

"He left not faction, but of that was left."

+ An Alexandrine of seven feet; Alexandrines of six feet are to be found in lines 90, 166, 262, and 305, and there is one in "Absalom and Achitophel," line 851. This long Alexandrine of seven feet has been ridiculed by some of Dryden's detractors; but ridicule in this instance is not reason.

K

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;

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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.

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

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*

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."

Absalom and Achitophel, 967.

It occurs frequently in Dryden's plays:

"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,

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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,

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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.

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

* 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 med'cinally. 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:

"Dire inflammation, which no cooling herb
Or med'cinal liquor can assuage."

Samson Agonistes, 626.

+ 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