which the author should seek to preserve; but in a poem of which elegance of expression and ingenuity of device are the principal attributes, an allusion to the customs of Greece, or of Rome, while it gives a classic air to the composition, seems as little misplaced, as an apt quotation from the authors in which they are recorded.

The first edition of this poem is printed in folio* by J. M. for Henry Herringman, 1660. It affords few and trifling corrections.

* [Astræa Redux. A Poem, on the Happy Restoration and Return of His Sacred Majesty Charles the Second. By John Driden.

Jam redit et virgo, redeunt Saturnia regna.

London: Printed by J. M. for Henry Herringman, and are to be sold at his Shop at the Blue Anchor in the Lower Walk of the New Exchange. 1660. —ED.]

ASTREA REDUX.

A POEM,

ON THE HAPPY RESTORATION AND RETURN OF HIS SACRE
MAJESTY, CHARLES THE SECOND.

1660.

Jam redit et virgo, redeunt Saturnia regna.

The last great age, foretold by sacred rhymes,
Renews its finished course; Saturnian times
Roll round again.

VIRG.

Now with a general peace the world was blest,
While ours, a world divided from the rest,
A dreadful quiet felt, and worser far
Than arms, a sullen interval of war.

Thus when black clouds draw down the lab'ring skies,

Ere yet abroad the winged thunder flies,
An horrid stillness first invades the ear,
And in that silence we the tempest fear.*
The ambitious Swede, like restless billows tost,
On this hand gaining what on that he lost,

* The small wits of the time made themselves very merry with this couplet; because stillness, being a mere absence of sound, could not, it was said, be personified, as an active

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Though in his life he blood and ruin breathed,
To his now guideless kingdom peace bequeathed;*
And heaven that seemed regardless of our fate,
For France and Spain did miracles create;
Such mortal quarrels to compose in peace,
As nature bred, and interest did increase.
We sighed to hear the fair Iberian bride
Must grow a lily to the lily's side; †

agent, or invader. Captain Ratcliff thus states the objection
in his "News from Hell:

Laureat, who was both learned and florid,

Was damned, long since, for "silence horrid;"

Nor had there been such clatter made,

But that this silence did "invade."

Invade! and so't might well, 'tis clear;

But what did it invade?-an ear.

And for some other things, 'tis true,

'We follow fate, that does pursue.'

In the "Dialogue in Bedlam," between Oliver's porter, fiddler, and poet, the first of these persons thus addresses L'Estrange and Dryden, "the scene being adorned with several of the poet's own flowers: "-

O glory, glory! who are these appear?
My fellow-servants, poet, fidler, here?

Old Hodge, the constant, Johny the sincere!
Who sent you hither? and, pray tell me, why?
A horrid silence does invade my eye,

While not one sound of voice from you I spy.

But, as Dr. Johnson justly remarks, we hesitate not to say, the world is invaded by darkness, which is a privation of light; and why not by silence, which is a privation of sound?

The royal line of Sweden has produced more heroic and chivalrous monarchs than any dynasty of Europe. The gallant Charles x., who is here mentioned, did not degenerate from his warlike stem. He was a nephew of the great Gustavus Adolphus; and, like him, was continually engaged in war, particularly against Poland and Austria. He died at Gottenburgh in 1660, and the peace of Sweden was soon afterwards restored by the treaty of Copenhagen.

†The death of Cromwell, and the unsettled state of England, prevented the execution of those ambitious schemes which Cardinal Mazarine, then prime minister of France, had hoped to accomplish by the assistance of Britain. The Cardinal was therefore, in 1659, induced to accede to the treaty of the Pyrenees, by which peace was restored betwixt

VOL. IX.

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25

While our cross stars denied us Charles his bed,
Whom our first flames and virgin love did wed. 20
For his long absence church and state did groan;
Madness the pulpit, faction seized the throne:
Experienced age in deep despair was lost,
To see the rebel thrive, the loyal crost:
Youth, that with joys had unacquainted been,
Envied grey hairs, that once good days had seen:
We thought our sires, not with their own content,
Had, ere we came to age, our portion spent.
Nor could our nobles hope their bold attempt,
Who ruined crowns, would coronets exempt:
For when, by their designing leaders taught
To strike at power, which for themselves they
sought,

The vulgar, gulled into rebellion, armed,
Their blood to action by the prize was warmed.
The sacred purple, then, and scarlet gown,
Like sanguine dye to elephants, was shewn.*
Thus, when the bold Typhoeus scaled the sky,
And forced great Jove from his own heaven to fly,
(What king, what crown, from treason's reach is
free,

If Jove and Heaven can violated be?)

France and Spain; the union being cemented by the marriage of the Infanta to Louis XIV. Charles I., then a needy fugitive, was in attendance upon the ministers of France and Spain, when they met on the frontiers for this great object; but he, who was soon to be so powerful a monarch, experienced on that occasion nothing but slights from Mazarine, and cold civility from Don Louis de Haro.

* This does not mean, as Derrick conceived, that these emblems of authority had as little effect upon the mob as if they had been shown to an elephant; but that the sight of them animated the people to such senseless fury as elephants, and many other animals, are said to show upon seeing any object of a red colour. [Christie supposes the sacred purple to refer to the Lords spiritual, and the scarlet gown to the Lords temporal.-ED.]

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35

40

The lesser gods, that shared his prosperous state,
All suffered in the exiled Thunderer's fate.
The rabble now such freedom did enjoy,
As winds at sea, that use it to destroy:
Blind as the Cyclops, and as wild as he,
They owned a lawless savage liberty,
Like that our painted ancestors so prized,
Ere empire's arts their breast had civilised.
How great were then our Charles his woes, who
thus

Was forced to suffer for himself and us!

He, tossed by fate, and hurried up and down,
Heir to his father's sorrows, with his crown,
Could taste no sweets of youth's desired age,
But found his life too true a pilgrimage.
Unconquered yet in that forlorn estate,
His manly courage overcame his fate:

His wounds he took, like Romans, on his breast,
Which by his virtue were with laurels drest.
As souls reach heaven, while yet in bodies pent,
So did he live above his banishment.
That sun, which we beheld with cozened eyes
Within the water, moved along the skies.
How easy 'tis, when destiny proves kind,
With full-spread sails to run before the wind!

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60

But those, that 'gainst stiff gales laveering* go, 65
Must be at once resolved, and skilful too.
He would not, like soft Otho, hope prevent,
But stayed, and suffered fortune to repent.†

* ["Laveer"=" louvoyer," to tack. Said to be borrowed from Dutch.-ED.]

The Emperor Otho, whose mind and manners exhibited so many contradictions, is described as one of the most effeminate of men in his outward habits; his mind, however, was active and energetic. "Non erat Othonis mollis et corpori similis animus.”—Taciti, Lib. i. Historiarum. He slew himself after the battle of Brixellum, in which he was vanquished