TO THE LADY CASTLEMAINE,

UPON HER ENCOURAGING HIS FIRST PLAY.*

As seamen, shipwracked on some happy shore,
Discover wealth in lands unknown before,

And what their art had laboured long in vain
By their misfortunes happily obtain,

So my much-envied Muse, by storms long tost,
Is thrown upon your hospitable coast,
And finds more favour by her ill success
Than she could hope for by her happiness.
Once Cato's virtue did the gods oppose,

While they the victor,† he the vanquished chose:
But you have done what Cato could not do,
To choose the vanquished and restore him too.
Let others still triumph and gain their cause
By their deserts or by the world's applause;
Let merit crowns, and justice laurels give,
But let me happy by your pity live.
True poets empty fame and praise despise ;
Fame is the trumpet, but your smile the prize.
You sit above, and see vain men below
Contend for what you only can bestow;
But those great actions others do by chance,
Are, like your beauty, your inheritance :
So great a soul, such sweetness joined in one,
Could only spring from noble Grandison.
You, like the stars, not by reflection bright,

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Are born to your own heaven, and your own light;
Like them are good, but from a nobler cause,
From your own knowledge, not from Nature's laws.
Your power you never use but for defence,

To guard your own or others' innocence :

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*Lady Castlemaine was daughter of Viscount Grandison. She married Roger Palmer, Esq. who was created by Charles II. Earl of Castlemaine. She became Charles II.'s mistress immediately after the Restoration, and maintained for a long time favour and power. She was ultimately made Duchess of Cleveland. Dryden's first play, The Wild Gallant," produced in the beginning of 1663, was not successful on the stage: but it pleased the King, as Dryden informs us in his Preface on the publication of the play, and his Majesty may have been influenced by his mistress, Lady Castlemaine, who, it appears from this poem, consoled Dryden in his failure by her encouragement. In a "Session of the Poets," in imitation of Suckling's poem, printed in the State Poems (vol. i. p. 206), Dryden is named with this poem:

"Dryden, who one would have thought had more wit,

The censure of every man did disdain.

Pleading some pitiful rhymes he had writ
In praise of the Countess of Castlemaine."

This poem was reprinted by Dryden in his third volume of "Miscellany Poems," 1693.

"Victrix causa Deis placuit, sed victa Catoni,"

OVID, Fast. i. 525.

Who, when they might prevent, would wait the blow;

With such assurance as they meant to say,

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We will o'ercome, but scorn the safest way.
What farther fear of danger can there be?
Beauty, which captives all things, sets me free.
Posterity will judge by my success

I had the Grecian poet's happiness,
Who, waving plots, found out a better way;
Some god descended and preserved the play.
When first the triumphs of your sex were sung
By those old poets, Beauty was but
young,
And few admired the native red and white,
Till poets dressed them up to charm the sight;
So Beauty took on trust, and did engage
For sums of praises till she came to age.
But this long growing debt to poetry
You justly, Madam, have discharged to me,
When your applause and favour did infuse
New life to my condemned and dying Muse.

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TO MR. LEE,

ON HIS ALEXANDER.*

THE blast of common censure could I fear,
Before your play my name should not appear;
For 'twill be thought, and with some colour too,
I pay the bribe I first received from you;
That mutual vouchers for our fame we stand,
To play the game into each other's hand;
And as cheap pen'orths to ourselves afford,
As Bessus and the brothers of the sword. +

Such libels private men may well endure,

When States and Kings themselves are not secure ;
For ill men, conscious of their inward guilt,
Think the best actions on by-ends are built.

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This complimentary poem was prefixed to Nathaniel Lee's tragedy "The Rival Queens, or the Death of Alexander the Great," published in 1677. It has been printed by Broughton, Derrick, and other editors with several small inaccuracies, which are here corrected from the first publication. Lee had a few years before addressed a complimentary poem to Dryden, which was prefixed to "The State of Innocence:" this is referred to in the opening lines of this poem. In 1679, Dryden and Lee jointly produced "Edipus." and in 1683 "The Duke of Guise."

+ In Beaumont and Fletcher's "King and No King," Bessus and the two swordsmen certify to each other's courage, after having been all thrashed and kicked by Bacurius (act 4, scene 3).

And yet my silence had not scaped their spite;
Then envy had not suffered me to write,
For, since I could not ignorance pretend,
Such worth I must or envy or commend.
So many candidates there stand for wit,
A place in court is scarce so hard to get :
In vain they crowd each other at the door;
For even reversions are all begged before:
Desert, how known soe'er, is long delayed;
And then, too, fools and knaves are better paid.
Yet, as some actions bear so great a name
That courts themselves are just for fear of shame,
So has the mighty merit of your play
Extorted praise and forced itself a way.
'Tis here as 'tis at sea; who farthest goes

Or dares the most makes all the rest his foes.

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Who took the Dutchman and who cut the boom. +
Such praise is yours, while you the passions move,
That 'tis no longer feigned, 'tis real love,
Where nature triumphs over wretched art;
We only warm the head, but you the heart.
Always you warm; and if the rising year,
As in hot regions, bring the sun too near,
'Tis but to make your fragrant spices blow,
Which in our colder climates will not grow.
They only think you animate your theme

With too much fire, who are themselves all phlegm :
Prizes would be for lags of slowest pace,
Were cripples made the judges of the race.

Despise those drones, who praise while they accuse

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Opprest, the reading of the first edition: in the second edition of 1694, exprest appears, but it is probably a misprint, for it is not consistent with the context. Scott has printed supprest.

Scott explains this as referring to an exploit of Sir Edward Spragge in 1671 on the Mediterranean. against the Algerines: but that cannot be, as Dryden says, "took the Dutchman." Mr. Holt White, in his MS. notes, suggests that the reference may be to the attack on the Dutch in the harbour of Berghen in 1665; there one of the captains who, under Teddiman's orders, passed the boom, might have earned this glory; but there is no record of it. As this was written in 1677, it is perhaps more likely that the reference is to some exploit in Charles II.'s second Dutch war.

TO THE EARL OF ROSCOMON,

ON HIS EXCELLENT ESSAY ON TRANSLATED VERSE.*

WHETHER the fruitful Nile or Tyrian shore
The seeds of arts and infant science bore,
'Tis sure the noble plant, translated, first
Advanced its head in Grecian gardens nurst.
The Grecians added verse; their tuneful tongue
Made Nature first and Nature's God their song.
Nor stopped translation here: for conquering Rome
With Grecian spoils brought Grecian numbers home;
Enriched by those Athenian Muses more
Than all the vanquished world could yield before.
Till barbarous nations and more barbarous times
Debased the majesty of verse to rhymes;
Those rude at first; a kind of hobbling prose,
That limped along and tinkled in the close. †
But Italy, reviving from the trance
Of Vandal, Goth, and monkish ignorance,
With pauses, cadence, and well-vowelled words,
And all the graces a good ear affords,
Made rhyme an art, and Dante's polished page
Restored a silver, not a golden age.
Then Petrarch followed, and in him we see
What rhyme improved in all its height can be ;
At best a pleasing sound and fair barbarity.
The French pursued their steps; and Britain last
In manly sweetness all the rest surpassed.
The wit of Greece, the gravity of Rome,
Appear exalted in the British loom :
The Muses' empire is restored again,

In Charles his reign, and by Roscomon's pen.
Yet modestly he does his work survey,
And calls a finished Poem an ESSAY;

For all the needful rules are scattered here;
Truth smoothly told, and pleasantly severe;
So well is art disguised for nature to appear.

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* The Earl of Roscomon's "Essay on Translated Verse" was published in 1684, with this complimentary Address by Dryden prefixed. A second edition, corrected and enlarged, appeared in 1685. Roscomon returned Dryden's favour with a complimentary poem on his "Religio Laici," which Dryden prefixed to that publication Roscomon, born in 1633, died in January 1685. He and Dryden had at one time joined in projecting a scheme of refining and fixing the English language. Pope, who elsewhere is not sparing of praise for Dryden, has in a well-known couplet justly blamed the coarseness of his verse by comparison with Roscomon:

↑ Andrew Marvel uses the expression "tinkling rhyme " in his lines to Milton on his "Paradise Lost:"

"Well mightst thou scorn thy readers to allure
With tinkling rhyme, of thy own sense secure."

Nor need those rules to give translation light ;*
His own example is a flame so bright
That he who but arrives to copy well
Unguided will advance, unknowing will excel.
Scarce his own Horace could such rules ordain

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Or his own Virgil sing a nobler strain.
How much in him may rising Ireland boast,
How much in gaining him has Britain lost!

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Their island in revenge has ours reclaimed ;

The more instructed we, the more we still are shamed.

Roscomon, whom both court and camps commend,
True to his Prince and faithful to his friend;
Roscomon first in field of honour known,
First in the peaceful triumphs of the gown;
He both Minervas justly makes his own.
Now let the few beloved by Jove, and they
Whom infused Titan formed of better clay,§

The meaning is, "nor are those rules needed."

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In the first edition this line was printed "That here his conquering ancestors was nurst." The same letter Dryden, in a letter to Jacob Tonson, complains of the was as a printer's error. gives information as to the success of Lord Roscomon's poem: "I am of your opinion," says Dryden; "you should reprint it, and that you may safely venture on a thousand more."

"The Earl of Mulgrave." He had joined Dryden in a translation of Ovid's Epistle of Helen to Paris, which had been published in 1680.

Infused Titan," Prometheus, son of Iapetus, one of the Titans. It was an ancient fable that Prometheus made the first man and woman with clay, animating them with fire stolen from heaven. Dryden here copies an application of that fable from Juvenal:

"Forsitan hæc spernant juvenes, quibus arte benigna

Et meliore luto finxit præcordia Titan."

Sat. xiv. 34.