Charged with thyself and James, a doubly royal fraught.

395

* Dryden has been here careful to qualify his praise of Charles for encouragement of arts and literature by the skilful lines,

Though little was their hire and light their gain,

Yet somewhat to their share he threw."

A juster idea of the merits in this respect of Charles, who gave nothing, is furnished by a passage of a letter of Dryden to Laurence Hyde, earl of Rochester, written in 1683, in which his object was not eulogy but complaint, and where, pleading for himself, he says, "Tis enough for one age to have neglected Mr. Cowley and starved Mr. Butler." See also "The Hind and the Panther," part 3, line 247.

Miracles here rhymes with these, line 410. See notes on "Astræa Redux," 106, and “The Medal," 164.

The quails and manna should no longer rain:

Those miracles 'twas needless to renew ;

The chosen flock has now the promised land in view.

15

A warlike Prince ascends the regal state,
A Prince long exercised by Fate:*

430

Long may he keep, though he obtains it late.
Heroes in Heaven's peculiar mould are cast,

They and their poets are not formed in haste;

Man was the first in God's design, and man was made the last.
False heroes, made by flattery so,

435

Heaven can strike out like sparkles at a blow;

But ere a Prince is to perfection brought

He costs Omnipotence a second thought.

With toil and sweat,

With hardening cold and forming heat
The Cyclops + did their strokes repeat,
Before the impenetrable shield was wrought.
It looks as if the Maker would not own
The noble work for his,

Before 'twas tried and found a masterpiece.

440

445

* "Iliacis exercite fatis."-VIRG. En. iii. 182.

+ Cyclops serves for singular and plural with Dryden and in his time.

It is the same with the word corps, now spelt corpse: an instance of the plural is in "The Hind and the Panther," part 1, 231:

"Their corps to perish, but their kind to last;"

and an instance of the singular in the Elegy on Lord Hastings:

"Whose corps might seem a constellation."

Alcides, Hercules, son of Jupiter and Alcmena; the jealous Juno sent two snakes to devour the infant in his cradle, and the infant seized the snakes and squeezed them to death.

Thus by degrees he rose to Jove's imperial seat ;
Thus difficulties prove a soul legitimately great.*
Like his, our hero's infancy was tried ;
Betimes the Furies did their snakes provide ;
And to his infant arms oppose

His father's rebels and his brother's foes;

The more oppressed, the higher still he rose.
Those were the preludes of his fate,
That formed his manhood, to subdue
The Hydra of the many-headed hissing crew.

17

As after Numa's peaceful reign

455

460

465

The martial Ancus did the sceptre wield,+
Furbished the rusty sword again,

And led the Latins to the dusty field;

Resumed the long-forgotten shield,

So James the drowsy genius wakes

Of Britain, long entranced in charms,
Restiff and slumbering on its arms;

470

'Tis roused, and with a new-strung nerve the spear already shakes,

No neighing of the warrior steeds,

No drum or louder trumpet needs

475

Too well the vigour of that arm they know;

They lick the dust, and crouch beneath their fatal foe.

With broken oaths his fame he will not stain,

With conquest basely bought and with inglorious gain. 490

18

For once, O Heaven, unfold thy adamantine book;

And let his wondering senate see,

If not thy firm, immutable decree,

Compare with this passage the lines in "Britannia Rediviva" where the simile of the infant Alcides and the snakes is again introduced with a line much resembling this:

"For opposition makes a hero great."

+ Dryden is much at fault in this allusion to early Roman history, and, the mistakes being once made, it is strange that they were not corrected in his second edition, or in Jacob Tonson's third. "After Numa's peaceful reign" came the warlike Tullus Hostilius, who reigned thirty-two years; and then came Ancus Martius, who, so far from "leading the Latins to the dusty field," fought with the Latins, as Tullus Hostilius had done before, as the enemies of Rome.

*

At least the second page of strong contingency,
Such as consists with wills originally free.
Let them with glad amazement look

On what their happiness may be ;

Let them not still be obstinately blind,
Still to divert the good thou hast designed,

Or with malignant penury

495

500

To starve the royal virtues of his mind. +

Faith is a Christian's and a subject's test;

Oh give them to believe, and they are surely blest.

They do; and with a distant view I see

The amended vows of English loyalty;

505

And all beyond that object, there appears
The long retinue‡ of a prosperous reign,
A series of successful years,

In orderly array a martial, manly train.
Behold even to remoter shores,

A conquering navy proudly spread;

510

The British cannon formidably roars,

While, starting from his oozy bed,

The asserted Ocean rears his reverend head;

To view and recognize his ancient lord again;

515

And with a willing hand restores

The fasces of the main.

* Great in first edition instead of strong; and great reappeared in Tonson's folio volume of 1701. The old spelling sterve occurs here in the two early editions. But starve is Dryden's usual spelling. The word is printed again sterve in the concluding couplet of a Prologue to the University of Oxford, as it appears in the first "Miscellany Poems," 1684:

It is also so printed, rhyming with deserve, in "The Hind and the Panther," part 3. line 749.
But the pronunciation of sterve was doubtless starve, as of deserve and serve, desarve and saive.
See desert rhyming with art in line 560 of "Absalom and Achitophel," and with part in line 169
of "The Medal.'

The accent on the second syllable of retinue, as of revenue. So again,
"Knights with a long retinue of their squires."
Palamon and Arcite, book 3, line 453-