Page images
PDF
EPUB

I will not rake the dunghill of thy crimes,
For who would read thy life that reads thy rhymes?
But of King David's foes, be this the doom,
May all be like the young man Absalom!
And for my foes may this their blessing be,
To talk like Doeg, and to write like thee.

THE MEDAL. 1682.

Pow'r was his aim: but thrown from that pretence,
The wretch turn'd loyal in his own defence;

And malice reconcil'd him to his prince.
Him, in the anguish of his soul he serv'd;
Rewarded faster still than he deserv'd.
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 learn'd in his fanatic years
Made him uneasy in his lawful gears.
At best as little honest as he could,
And, like white witches, mischievously good.
To his first bias longingly he leans;
And rather would be great by wicked means.

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 call'd thee Nile; the parallel will stand:
Thy tides of wealth o'erflow the fatten❜d land;
Yet monsters from thy large increase we find,
Engender'd on the slime thou leav'st behind.

Sedition has not wholly seiz'd 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.
Thy military chiefs are brave and true;
Nor are thy disenchanted burghers few.
The head is loyal which thy heart commands,
But what's a head with two such gouty hands?
The wise and wealthy love the surest way,
And are content to thrive and to obey.
But wisdom is to sloth too great a slave;
None are so busy as the fool and knave.

Our temp'rate isle will no extremes sustain,
Of pop'lar sway or arbitrary reign:

But slides between them both into the best,
Secure in freedom, in a monarch blest.

And though the climate, vex'd with various winds,
Works through our yielding bodies on our minds,
The wholesome tempest purges what it breeds,
To recommend the calmness that succeeds.

[blocks in formation]

All human things are subject to decay,
And when fate summons, monarchs must obey.
This Flecknoe found, who, like Augustus, young
Was call'd to empire, and had govern'd long;
In prose and verse, was own'd without dispute,
Through all the realms of nonsense, absolute.
This aged prince, now flourishing in peace,
And blest with issue of a large increase;
Worn out with bus'ness, did at length debate
To settle the succession of the state:

And pond'ring, which of all his sons was fit
To reign, and wage immortal war with wit,
Cried, 'Tis resolv'd; for nature pleads, that he
Should only rule, who most resembles me.
Shadwell alone my perfect image bears,
Mature in dulness from his tender
years:
Shadwell alone, of all my sons, is he,
Who stands confirm'd in full stupidity.
The rest to some faint meaning make pretence,
But Shadwell never deviates into sense.
Some beams of wit on other souls may fall,
Strike through, and make a lucid interval;
But Shadwell's genuine night admits no ray,
His rising fogs prevail upon the day.
Besides, his goodly fabric fills the eye,
And seems design'd for thoughtless majesty:
Thoughtless as monarch oaks, that shade the plain,
And spread in solemn state supinely reign.
Heywood and Shirley were but types of thee,
Thou last great prophet of tautology.

Great Fletcher never treads in buskins here,
Nor greater Jonson dares in socks appear;
But gentle Simkin just reception finds
Amidst this monument of vanish'd minds:
Pure clinches the suburban muse affords,
And Panton waging harmless war with words.
Here Flecknoe, as a place to fame well known,
Ambitiously design'd his Shadwell's throne.
For ancient Decker prophesied long since,
That in this pile should reign a mighty prince,
Born for a scourge of wit, and flail of sense.

The hoary prince in majesty appear'd,
High on a throne of his own labours rear'd.

At his right hand our young Ascanius sate,
Rome's other hope, and pillar of the state.
His brows thick fogs, instead of glories, grace,
And lambent dulness play'd around his face.
As Hannibal did to the altars come,

Swore by his sire, a mortal foe to Rome;
So Shadwell swore, nor should his vow be vain,
That he till death true dulness would maintain;
And, in his father's right, and realm's defence,
Ne'er to have peace with wit, nor truce with sense.

When did his muse from Fletcher scenes purloin,
As thou whole Eth'redge dost transfuse to thine?
But so transfus'd, as oil and waters flow,
His always floats above, thine sinks below.
This is thy province, this thy wond'rous way,
New humours to invent for each new play:
This is that boasted bias of thy mind,
By which, one way, to dulness 'tis inclin'd:
Which makes thy writings lean on one side still,
And, in all changes, that way bends thy will.
Nor let thy mountain-belly make pretence
Of likeness; thine's a tympany of sense.
A tun of man in thy large bulk is writ,
But sure thou'rt but a kilderkin of wit.
Like mine, thy gentle numbers feebly creep;
Thy tragic muse gives smiles, thy comic sleep.
With whate'er gall thou sett'st thyself to write,
Thy inoffensive satires never bite.

In thy felonious heart though venom lies,
It does but touch thy Irish pen, and dies.

M

RELIGIO LAICI. 1682.

Dim as the borrow'd beams of moon and stars,
To lonely, weary, wand'ring travellers,

Is reason to the soul: and, as on high,
Those rolling fires discover but the sky,
Not light us here; so reason's glimm'ring ray
Was lent, not to assure our doubtful way,
But guide us upward to a better day.
And as those nightly tapers disappear

When day's bright lord ascends our hemisphere;
So pale grows reason at religion's sight;
So dies, and so dissolves in supernatʼral light.

Then for the style, majestic and divine,
It speaks no less than God in ev'ry line:
Commanding words; whose force is still the same
As the first fiat that produc'd our frame.
All faiths beside, or did by arms ascend;

Or sense indulg'd has made mankind their friend:
This only doctrine does our lusts oppose:
Unfed by nature's soil, in which it grows;
Cross to our int' rests, curbing sense and sin,
Oppress'd without, and undermin'd within,
It thrives through pain; its own tormentors tires;
And with a stubborn patience still aspires.
To what can reason such effects assign
Transcending nature, but to laws divine?

Shall I speak plain, and in a nation free
Assume an honest layman's liberty?
I think, according to my little skill,
To my own mother-church submitting still,

« PreviousContinue »