ANNUS MIRABILIS: THE YEAR OF WONDERS, M.DC.LXVI. AN HISTORICAL POEM. TO THE METROPOLIS OF GREAT BRITAIN, The most renowned and late flourishing CITY OF LONDON, IN ITS REPRESENTATIVES, THE LORD mayor and court of aLDERMEN, THE SHERiffs, and COMMON COUNCIL OF IT. As perhaps I am the firft whoever presented a work of this nature to the metropolis of any nation; fo it is likewise consonant to justice, that he who was to give the first example of such a dedication, fhould begin it with that city, which has fet a pattern to all others of true loyalty, invincible courage, and unfhaken conftancy. Other cities have been praised for the same virtues, but I am much deceived if any have so dearly purchased their reputation; their fame has been won them by cheaper trials than an expensive, though necessary war, a consuming peftilence, and a more confuming fire. To submit yourselves with that humility to the judgments of heaven, and at the fame time to raise yourselves with that vigour above all human enemies; to be combated at once from above and from below, to be struct down and to triumph I know not whether fuch trials have been ever paralleled in any uation: the resolution and fucceffes of them never can be. Never had prince or people more mutual reason to love each other, if suffering for each other can endear affection. You have come together a pair of matchlefs lovers, through many difficulties; he, through a long exile, various traverses of fortune, and the interpofition of many rivals, who violently ravished and with-held you from him: and certainly you have had your share in fufferings. But Providence has caft upon you want of trade, that you might appear bountiful to your country's neceffities; and the reft of your afflictions are not more the effects of God's difpleasure (frequent examples of them having been in the reign of the most excellent princes) than occafions for the manifefting of your Christian and civil virtues. To you therefore this year of wonders is justly dedicated, because you have made it fo. You, who are to ftand a wonder to all years and ages, and who have built yourselves an immortal monument on your own ruins. You are now a Phoenix in her afhes; and, as far as humanity can approach, a great emblem of the suffering Deity: but Heaven never made so much piety and virtue to leave it miserable. I have heard, indeed, of some virtuous persons who have ended unfortunately, but never of any virtuous nation: Providence is engaged too deeply when the cause becomes fo general; and I cannot imagine it has refolved the ruin of that people at home, which it has blessed abroad with such successes. I am therefore to conclude, that your sufferings are at an end; and that one part of my poem has not been more an hiftory of your destruction, than the other a prophecy of your reftoration. The accomplishment of which happiness, as it is the wish of every true Englishmen, so it is by none more paffionately defired, than by, The greatest of your admirers, And most humble of your fervants, JOHN DRYDEN. I am so many ways obliged to you, and fo little able to return your favours, that, like those who owe too much, I can only live by getting farther into your debt. You have not only been careful of my fortune, which was the effect of your nobleness, but you have been folicitous of my reputation, which is that of your kindnefs. It is not long face I gave you the trouble of perufing a play for me, and now, inftead of an acknowledgment, I have given you a greater, in the correction of a Loem. But fince you are to bear this perfecution, I will at least give you the encouragement of a martyr; you could never fuffer in a nobler caufe. For I have chofen the most heroic fubject, which any poet could defire: I have taken upon me to defcribe the motives, the beginning, progrefs, and fucceffes, of a moft juft and neceffary war; in it, the care, management, and prudence of our king; the conduct and valour of a royal admiral, and of two incomparable generals; the invincible courage of cur captains and feamen; and three glorious, victories, the refult of all. After this, I have, in the fire, the most deplorable, but withal the greateft, argument that can be imagined: the deftruction being fo fwift, fo fudden, so vaft and miferable, as nothing can parallel in ftory. The former part of this poem, relating to the war, is but a due expi ation for my not having ferved my king and country in it. All gentlemen are almoft obliged to it and I know no reafon we should give that advantage to the commonality of England, to be foremost in brave actions, which the nobles of France would never fuffer in their peafants. I fhould not have written this but to a person who has been ever forward to appear in all employments whither his honour aud generofity have called him. The latter part of my poem, which defcribes the Fire, I owe, firft to the piety and fatherly affection of our monarch to his fuffering fubjects; and, in the fecond place, to the courage, loyalty, and magnanimity of the city; both which were fo confpicuous, that I wanted words to celebrate them as they deferve. I have called my poem Hiftorical, not Epic, though both the actions and actors are as much heroic as any poem can contain. But fince the action is not properly one, nor that accomplished in the laft fucceffes, I have judged it too bold a title for a few ftanzas, which are little more in number than a fingle Iliad, or the longest of the Eneids. For this reafon (I mean not of length, but broken action, tied too feverely to the laws of history) I am apt to agree with thofe, who rank Lucan, rather among hiftorians in verse, than Epic poets: in whofe room, if I am not deceived, Silius Italicus, though a worse writer, may more juftly be admitted. I have chofen to write my poem in quatrians, or flanzas of four in alternate thyme, because I have ever judged them more noble, and of greater dignity, both for the found and number, than any other verfe in ufe amongst us; in which I am fure I have your approbation. The learned languages have certainly a great advantage of us, in not being tied to the flavery of any rhyme; and were lefs conftrained in the quantity of every fyllable, which they might vary with fpondees or dactyls, befides fo many other helps of grammatical fi gures, for the lengthening or abreviation of them, than the modern are in the clofe of that one fyllable, which often confines, and more often cor. rupts, the fenfe of all the reft. Bnt in this neceffity of our rhymes, I have always found the couplet verfe moft eafy, though not fo proper for this occafion for there the work is fooner at an end, every two lines concluding the labour of the poet; but in quatrains he is to carry it farther on, and not only fo, but to bear along in his head the troublesome sense of four lines together. For thofe, who write correctly in this kind, muft needs acknowledge, that the laft line of the ftanza is to be confidered in the compofition of the first. Neither can we give ourselves the liberty of making any part of a verfe for the fake of rhyme, or concluding with a word which is not current English, or using the variety of female rhymes; ail which our fathers practifed: and for the female rhymes, they are still in use amongst other nations; with the Italian in every line, with the Spaniard promifcuously, with the French alternately; as those who have read the Alarique, the Pucelli, or any of their later poems, will agree with me. And befides this, they write in Alexandrins, or verses of fix feet; such as amongst us is the old tranflation of Homer by Chapman : all which, by lengthning of their chain, makes the fphere of their activity the larger. I have dwelt too long upon the choice of my ftanza, which you may remember is much better defended in the preface to Gondibert; and therefore I will haften to acquaint you with my endeavours in the writing. In general I will only fay, I have never yet feen the defcription of any naval fight in the proper terms which are used at fea : and if there be any fuch in another language, as that of Lucan in the third of his Pharfalia, yet I could not avail myself of it in the English; the terms of art in every tongue bearing more of the idiom of it than any other words. We hear indeed among our poets, of the thundering of guns, the fmoke, the diforder, and the flaughter; but all these are common notions. And certainly, as those who in a logical dispute keep in general terms, would hide a fallacy; fo thofe who do it in any poetical defcription, would veil their ignorance. "Defcriptas fervare vices operumque colores, "Cur ego, fi nequeo ignoroque, Poeta falutor?" For my own part, if I had little knowledge of the fea, yet I have thought it no fhare to learn: and if I have made fome few mistakes, it is only, as you can bear me witnefs, becaufe I have wanted | opportunity to correct them; the whole poem being firft written, and now fent you from a place where I have not fo much as the converse of any feaman. Yet though the trouble I had in writing it was great, it was no more than recompenfed by the pleasure. I found myself so warm in celebrating the praises of military men, two fuch especially as the prince and general, that it is no wonder if they infpired me with thoughts above my ordinary level. And I am well fatisfied, that, as they are incomparably the best fubje& I ever had, excepting only the royal family, fo alfo, that this I have written of them is much better than what I have performed on any other. I have been forced to help out other arguments; but this has been bountiful to me: they have been low and barren of praise, and I have exalted them, and made them fruitful; but here-" Omnia "fponte fua reddit juftiffima tellus." I have had a large, a fair, and a pleasant field; fo fertile, that without my cultivating, it has given two harvests in a fummer, and in both oppreffed the reaper. All other greatness in subjects is only counterfeit : it will not endure the teft of danger; the greatnefs of arms is only real: other greatnefs burdens a nation with its weight; this fupports it with its ftrength. And as it is the happiness of the age, fo it is the peculiar goodness of the best of kings, that we may praife his fubjects without offending him. Doubtless it proceeds from a juft confidence of his own virtue, which the luftre of no other can be fo great as to darken in him; for the good or the valiant are never safely praised under a bad or a degenerate prince. But to return from this digreffion to a farther account of my poem; I must crave leave to tell you, that as I have endeavoured to adorn it with noble thoughts, fo much more to exprefs thofe thoughts with elocution. The compofition of all poems is, or ought to be, of wit; and wit in the poet, or wit-writing (if you will give me leave to use a school-diftinction) is no other than the faculty of imagination in the writer, which, like a nimble spaniel, beats over and ranges through the field of memory, till it fprings the quarry it hunted after: or, without metaphor, which fearches over all the memory for the fpecies or ideas of those things which it defigns to reprefent. Wit written is that which is well defined, the happy refult of thought, or product of imagination. But to proceed from wit, in the general notion of it, to the proper wit of an heroic or hiftorical poem; I judge it chiefly to confift in the delightful imaging of perfons, actions, paffions, or things. It is not the jerk or sting of an epigram, nor the feeming contradiction of a poor antithefis (the delight of an ill-judging audience in a play of rhyme), nor the gingle of a more poor Faranomafia; neither is it fo much the mo rality of a grave fentence, affected by Lucan, but more fparingly ufed by Virgil; but it is fon e lively and apt defcription, dreffed in fuch colou of fpeech, that it fets before your eyes the abfent object, as perfectly, and more delightfully than nature. So then the fi:ft happinefs of the poet's imagination is properly invention or finding of the thought; the fecond is fancy, or the variation, deriving or moulding of that thought as the judgment reprefents it proper to the fubject; the third is elocution, or the art of clothing and adorning that thought, so found and varied, in apt, fignificant, and founding words: the quicknefs of the imagination is feen in the invention, the fertility in the fancy, and the accuracy in the expreffion. For the two first of these, Ovid is famous amongst the poets; for the latter, Virgil. Ovid images more often the movements and affections of the mind, either combating between two contrary paffions or extremely difcomposed by one. His words therefore are the least part of his care; for he pictures nature in diforder, with which the study and choice of words is inconfiftent. This is the proper wit of dialogue or difcourse, and confequently of the drama, where all that is faid' is to be fuppofed the effect of sudden thought; which, though it excludes not the quickness of wit in repartees, yet admits not a too curious election of words, too frequent allufions, or use of tropes, or in fine any thing that fhews remoteness of thought or labour in the writer. On the other fide, Virgil fpeaks not so often to us in the perfon of another, like Ovid, but in his own: he relates almost all things as from himself, and thereby gains more liberty than the other, to expreis his thoughts wer the graces of elocution, to write more fively, and to confefs as well the labour as the of his imagination. Though he defcribes Dido well and naturally, in the violence of her thons, yet he muft yield in that to the Myrrha, e Biblis, the Althea, of Ovid; for, as great an admirer of him as I am, I must acknowledge, that if I fee not more of their fouls than I fee of Dido's, at leaft I have a greater concernment for them: and that convinces me, that Ovid has touched theender ftrokes more delicately than Virgil could. But when action or perfons are to be defcribed, when any fuch image is to be fet before us, how bold, how mafterly are the ftrokes of Virgil! We fee the objects he prefents us with in their native figures, in their proper motions; but fo we fee them, as our own eyes could never have beheld them fo beautiful in themfelves. We fee the foul of the poet, like that univerfal one of which he fpeaks, informing and moving through all his pictures: the Plague, the Country, the Battle of the Bulls, the Labour of the Bees, and those many other excellent images of nature, most of which are neither great in themselves, nor have any natural ornament to bear them up: but the words wherewith he defcribes them are fo excellent, that it might be well applied to him, which was faid by Ovid, "Materiem fuperabat opus:" the very found of his words has often fomewhat that is connatural to the fubject; and while we read him, we fit, as in a play, beholding the fcenes of what he reprefents. To perform this, he made frequent use of tropes, which you know change the nature of a known word, by applying it to fome other fignification; and this is it which Horace means in his epiftle to the Pifo's: "Dixeris egregiè, notum fi callida verbum "Reddiderit junctura novum But I am fenfible I have prefumed too far to entertain you with a rude discourse of that art which you both knew fo well, and put into prac tice with so much happiness. Yet, before I leave Virgil, I must own the vanity to tell you, and by you the world, that he has been my mafter in this poem: I have followed him every where, I know, not with what fuccefs, but I am fure with diligence enough my images are many of them copied from him, and the reft are imitations of him. My expreffions alfo are as near as the idioms of the two languages would admit of in tranflarion. And this, fir, I have done with that boldnefs, for which L will fand accountable to any of our little critics, who, perhaps, are no better acquainted with him than I am. Upon your first perufal of this poem, you have taken notice of fome words, which I have innovated (if it be too bold for me to fay refined) upon his Latin; which, as I offer not to introduce into English profe, fo I hope they are neither improper, nor altogether inelegant in verfe; and, in this, Horace will again defend me. "Et nova fictaque nuper habebunt verba fidem, fi "Græco fonte cadant, parcè detorta The inference is exceeding plain: for if a Roman poet might have liberty to coin a word, fuppofing only that it was derived from the Greek, was put into a Latin termination, and that he used -Totamque infufa per artus this liberty but feldem, and with modefty; how "Mens agitat molem, & magno fe corpore much more juftly may I challenge that privilege "mifcet." to do it with the fame prerequifites, from the best and most judicious of Latin writers! In fome We behold him embellishing his images, as he places, where either the fancy or the words were makes Venus breathing beauty upon her fon Æneas.his, or any other's, I have noted it in the margin, -lumenque juventæ "Purpureum, & lætos oculis afflårat honores: "Quale manus addunt ebori decus, aut ubi flavo "Argentum Pariufve lapis circumdatur auro." See his Tempeft, his Funeral Sports, his Combat of Turnus and Æneas: and in his Georgics, which I efteem the divineft part of all his writings, VOL. VI. that I might not feem a plagiary; in others I have have neglected it, to avoid as well tedioufnels, as the affectation of deing it too often. Such defcriptions or images well wrought, which I promife not for mine, are, as I have faid, the adequate delight of heroic poefy; for they beget admirati n, which is its proper object; as the images of burlefque, which is contrary to this, by the same reafon beget laughter; for the one shews nature B |