In worth and excellence he shall out-go them,
Yet, being above them, he shall be below them;
From others he shall stand in need of nothing,
Yet on his brothers shall depend for clothing.
To find a foe it shall not be his hap,

And Peace shall lull him in her flowery lap;
Yet shall he live in strife, and at his door
Devouring War shall never cease to roar:
Yea, it shall be his natural property
To harbour those that are at enmity.

What power, what force, what mighty spell, if not Your learned hands can loose this Gordian knot?"

The next QUANTITY and QUALITY spake in prose; then RELATION was called by his name.

RIVERS, arise; whether thou be the son
of utmost Tweed, or Oose, or gulfy Dun,
Or Trent, who, like some earth-born giant, spreads
Hist thirty arms along the' indented meads;
Or sullen Mole, that runneth underneath;
Or Severn swift, guilty of maiden's death;
Or rocky Avon, or of sedgy Lee,

Or coaly Tine, or ancient hallow'd Dee;

Or Humber loud, that keeps the Scythian's name; Or Medway smooth, or royal-tower'd Thame.*

[The rest was prose.]

* It his hard to say, in what sense, or in what manner, this introduction of the rivers was to be applied to the subject. Warton.

AN EPITAPH

ON THE ADMIRABLE DRAMATIC POET,

W. SHAKSPEARE.*

WHAT needs my Shakspeare, for his honour'd bones,
The labour of an age in piled stones?

Or that his hallow'd reliques should be hid
Under a star-ypointing pyramid?

Dear son of memory, great heir of fame,
What need'st thou such weak witness of thy name?
Thou, in our wonder and astonishment,

Hast built thyself a live-long monument.

For whilst, to' the shame of slow-endeavouring art,
Thy easy numbers flow; and that each heart
Hath, from the leaves of thy unvalued book,
Those Delphic lines with deep impression took;
Then thou, our fancy of itself bereaving,
Dost make us marble with too much conceiving:
And, so sepulchred, in such pomp dost lie,
That kings, for such a tomb, would wish to die.

ON THE

UNIVERSITY CARRIER,

Who sickened in the time of his vacancy; being forbid to go to London, by reason of the plague.

HEHE lies old Hobson; Death hath broke his girt, And here, alas! hath laid him in the dirt;

*This Epitaph is dated 1630, in Milton's own edition of his poems in 1673.

+Hobson, the Cambridge carrier, died Jan. 1, 1630, while the plague was in London.

Or else the ways being foul, twenty to one,
He's here stuck in a slough, and overthrown.
'Twas such a shifter, that, if truth were known,
Death was half glad when he had got him down;
For he had, any time this ten years full,
Dodg'd with him betwixt Cambridge and The Bull.*
And surely Death could never have prevail'd,
Had not his weekly course of carriage fail'd;
But lately finding him so long at home,
And thinking now his journey's end was come,
And that he had ta'en up his latest inn;

In the kind office of a chamberlain

Show'd him his room where he must lodge that night,
Pull'd off his boots, and took away the light:
If any ask for him, it shall be said,

Hobson has supt, and's newly gone to bed.'

ANOTHER ON THE SAME.

HERE lieth one, who did most truly prove
That he could never die while he could move;

So hung his destiny, never to rot

While he might still jog on and keep his trot,
Made of sphere-metal, never to decay
Until his revolution was at stay.

Time numbers motion, yet (without a crime
'Gainst old truth) motion number'd out his time :
And like an engine mov'd with wheel and weight,
His principles being ceas'd, he ended straight.
Rest, that gives all men life, gave him his death,
And too much breathing put him out of breath;

In Bishopsgate-street, London.

Nor were it contradiction to affirm,
Too long vacation hasten'd on his term.
Merely to drive the time away he sicken'd,

Fainted, and died, nor would with ale be quicken'd; "Nay,' quoth he, on his swooning bed outstretch'd, If I mayn't carry, sure I'll ne'er be fetch'd,

But vow, though the cross doctors all stood hearers,
For one carrier put down to make six bearers.'
Ease was his chief disease; and, to judge right,
He died for heaviness that his cart went light;
His leisure told him that his time was come,
And lack of load made his life burdensome,
That ev'n to his last breath, (there be that say't)
As he were press'd to death, he cried, 'More
But, had his doings lasted as they were, [weight;"
He had been an immortal carrier.

Obedient to the moon he spent his date

In course reciprocal, and had his fate
Link'd to the mutual flowing of the seas,

Yet (strange to think) his wain was his increase:
His letters are deliver'd all and gone,
Only remains this superscription.

ON THE NEW FORCERS OF CONSCIENCE UNDER THE

LONG PARLIAMENT.

BECAUSE you have thrown off your Prelate-Lord,
And with stiff vows renounc'd his Liturgy,
To seize the widow'd whore Plurality

From them whose sin ye envied, not abhorr'd; Dare ye for this abjure the civil sword

To force our consciences that Christ set free,
And ride us with a classic hierarchy

Taught ye by mere A. S.* and Rotherford ?† Men, whose life, learning, faith, and pure intent, Would have been held in high esteem with Paul, Must now be nam'd and printed Heretics By shallow Edwards‡ and Scotch what d'ye call:§ But we do hope to find out all your tricks, Your plots and packing worse than those of Trent; That so the Parliament

May, with their wholesome and preventive shears, Clip your phylacteries, though balk your ears,

And succour our just fears, When they shall read this clearly in your charge, 'New Presbyter is but old Priest writ large.'

* Adam Steuart, a divine of the church of Scotland, and the author of several polemical tracts: some portions of which com. mence with A. S. only prefixed.

Todd.

+ Samuel Rotherford, or Rutherford, one of the chief commissioners of the church of Scotland, and professor of divinity in the university of St. Andrew. He published a great variety of Calvinistic tracts.

Thomas Edwards, minister, a pamphleteering opponent of Milton; whose plan of independency he assailed with shallow invectives.

Perhaps Henderson, or Galaspie, Scotch divines: the former of whom appears as a loving friend,' in Rutherford's Joshua Redivivus; and the latter was one of the ecclesiastical commissioners at Westminster.

Warton.