Cowley's hand, I happily escaped both for myself, and those that held correspondence with me. That time was too hot and busy for such idle speculations: but after I had the good fortune to wait upon your majesty in Holland and France, you were pleased sometimes to give me arguments to divert and put off the evil hours of our banishment, which now and then fell not short of your majesty's expectation. After, when your majesty, departing from St. Germains to Jersey, was pleased freely (without my asking) to confer upon me that place wherein I have now the honour to serve you, I then gave over poetical lines, and made it my business to draw such others as might be more serviceable to your majesty, and I hope more lasting. Since that time I never disobeyed my old master's commands till this summer at the Wells, my retirement there tempting me to divert those melancholy thoughts, which the new apparitions of foreign invasion and domestic discontent gave us: but these clouds being now happily blown over, and our sun clearly shining out again, I have recovered the relapse, it being suspected that it would have proved the epidemical disease of age, which is apt to fall back into the follies of youth; yet Socrates, Aristotle, and Cato did the same; and Scaliger saith, that fragment of Aristotle was beyond any thing that Pindar or Homer ever wrote. I will not call this a dedication, for those epistles are commonly greater absurdities than any that come after; for what author can reasonably believe, that fixing the great name of some eminent patron in the forehead of his book can charm away censure, and that the first leaf should be a curtain to draw over and hide all the deformities that stand behind it; neither have 1 any need of such shifts, for most of the parts of this body have already had your majesty's view, and having past the test of so clear and sharp-sighted a judgment, which has as good a title to give law in matters of this nature as in any other, they who shall presume to dissent from your majesty, will do more wrong to their own judgment than their judgment can do to me : and for those latter parts which have not yet received your majesty's favourable aspect, if they who have seen them do not flatter me (for I dare not trust my own judgment) they will make it appear, that it is not with me as with most of mankind, who never forsake their darling vices, till their vices forsake them; and that this divorce was not frigiditatis causa, but an act of choice, and not of necessity. Therefore, sir, I shall only call it an humble petition, that your majesty will please to pardon this new amour to my old mistress, and my disobedience to his commands, to whose memory I look up with great reverence and devotion: and making a serious reflection upon that wise advice, it carries much greater weight with it now, than when it was given; for when age and experience has so ripened man's discretion as to make it fit for use, either in private or public affairs, nothing blasts and corrupts the fruit of it so much as the empty, airy reputation of being nimis poëta; and therefore I shall take my leave of the Muses, as two of my preTE decessors did, saying, POEMS BY SIR JOHN DENHAM. COOPER'S HILL. SURE there are poets which did never dream And as courts make not kings, but kings the court, So where the Muses and their train resort, A poet, thou Parnassus art to me. Or zeal more fierce than they, thy fall conspire, While luxury, and wealth, like war and peace, Beauty with strength) above the valley swells Than which, a nobler weight no mountain bears, But Atlas only which supports the spheres. When Nature's hand this ground did thus ad vance, 'Twas guided by a wiser power than Chance ; A crown of such majestic towers doth grace race Do homage to her, yet she cannot boast Whose state and wealth, the business and the Among that numerous, and celestial host, crowd, Seems at this distance but a darker cloud: And is, to him who rightly things esteems, No other in effect than what it seems: More heroes than can Windsor, nor doth Fame's Where, with like haste, though several ways, Whether to Cæsar, Albanact, or Brute, they run, Some to undo, and some to be undone; 1 Mr. Waller. The British Arthur, or the Danish Cnute, (Though this of old no less contest did move, Than when for Homer's birth seven cities strove) Like him in birth, thou should'st be like in No crime so bold, but would be understood fame, As thine his fate, if mine had been his flame) But thee great Edward2, and thy greater son, And brought that son, which did the second bring. Then didst thou found that Order (whether love In after-times should spring a royal pair, sire shed, And all that since these sister nations bled, Endless itself, its liquid arms extends. But my fix'd thoughts my wandering eye betrays, Viewing a neighbouring hill, whose top of late What crime could any Christian king incense But wealth is crime enough to him that's poor; 2 Edward III. and the Black Prince. 3 Queen Philippa. The kings of France and Scotland. A real, or at least a seeming good: And thus to th' ages past he makes amends, In empty, airy contemplations dwell; Can knowledge have no bound, but must advance Parting from thence 'twixt anger, shame, and fear, Whose foam is amber, and their gravel gold; The mower's hopes, nor mock the plowman's toil: But god-like his unweary'd bounty flows; So that to us no thing, no place is strange, O could I flow like thee, and make thy streams |