Lysimachus, who rul'd the Rhodian state,
Was then by choice their annual magistrate :
He lov'd Cassandra too with equal fire,
But fortune had not favour'd his desire;
Cross'd by her friends, by her not disapprov❜d,
Nor yet preferr'd, or like Ormisda lov'd:
So stood the affair: some little hope remain'd,
That should his rival chance to lose, he gain'd.
Meantime young Pasimond his marriage
press'd,

Ordain'd the nuptial day, prepar'd the feast ;
And frugally resolv'd (the charge to shun,
Which would be double should he wed alone)
To join his brother's bridal with his own.

Lysimachus, oppress'd with mortal grief, Receiv'd the news, and studied quick relief: The fatal day approach'd; if force were us'd The magistrate his public trust abus'd; To justice liable, as law requir'd

For when his office ceas'd, his power expir'd: While power remain'd, the means were in his hand

By force to seize, and then forsake the land:
Betwixt extremes he knew not how to move,
A slave to fame, but more a slave to love:
Restraining others, yet himself not free,
Made impotent by power, debas'd by dignity.
Both sides he weigh'd, but after much debate,
The man prevail'd above the magistrate.

Love never fails to master what he finds,
But works a different way in different minds,
The fool enlightens, and the wise he blinds.
This youth proposing to possess and scape,
Began in murder, to conclude in rape: [bless
Unprais'd by me, though heaven some times may
An impious act with undeserv'd success;
The great it seems are privileg'd alone
To punish all injustice but their own.
But here I stop, not daring to proceed,
Yet blush to flatter an unrighteous deed:
For crimes are but permitted, not decreed.

Resolv'd on force, his wit the prætor bent To find the means that might secure the event; Nor long he labour'd, for his lucky thought In captive Cymon found the friend he sought. The example pleas'd: the cause and crime the

same;

An injur'd lover, and a ravish'd dame.
How much he durst he knew by what he dar'd,
The less he had to lose, the less he car'd
To manage loathsome life when love was the
reward.

This ponder'd well, and fix'd on his intent,
In depth of night he for the prisoner sent :
In secret sent, the public view to shun,
Then with a sober smile he thus begun :
The powers above, who bounteously bestow
Their gifts and graces on mankind below,

Yet prove our merit first, nor blindly give
To such as are not worthy to receive;
For valour and for virtue they provide
Their due reward, but first they must be tried;
These fruitful seeds within your mind they
sow'd;

'T was yours to improve the talent they bestow'd:

They gave you to be born of noble kind,
They gave you love to lighten up your mind,
And
purge the grosser parts; they gave you care
To please, and courage to deserve the fair.
Thus far they tried you, and by proof they
found

The grain intrusted in a grateful ground:
But still the great experiment remain❜d,
They suffer'd you to lose the prize you gain'd:
That you might learn the gift was theirs alone:
And when restor'd, to them the blessing own.
Restor❜d it soon will be; the means prepar'd
The difficulty smooth'd, the danger shar'd;
Be but yourself, the care to me resign,
Then Iphigene is yours, Cassandra mine.
Your rival Pasimond pursues your life,
Impatient to revenge his ravish'd wife,
But yet not his; to-morrow is behind,
And love our fortunes in one band has join'd;
Two brothers are our foes, Ormisda mine,
As much declar'd as Pasimond is thine;
To-morrow must their common vows be tied;
With love to friend, and fortune for our guide,
Let both resolve to die, or each redeem a bride.
Right I have none, nor hast thou much to

plead;

"T is force, when done, must justify the deed:
Our task perform'd, we next prepare for flight:
And let the losers talk in vain of right:
We with the fair will sail before the wind,
If they are griev'd, I leave the laws behind.
Speak thy resolves: if now thy courage droop,
Despair in prison, and abandon hope;
But if thou dar'st in arms thy love regain,
(For liberty without thy love were vain ;)
Then second my design to seize the prey,
Or lead to second rape, for well thou know'st
the way.

Said Cymon overjoy'd, Do thou propose
The means to fight, and only show the foes
For from the first, when love had fir'd my mind,
Resolv'd I left the care of life behind.

To this the bold Lysimachus replied,
Let heaven be neuter, and the sword decide;
The spousals are prepar'd, already play
The minstrels, and provoke the tardy day :
By this the brides are wak'd, their grooms are
dress'd;

All Rhodes is summon'd to the nuptial feast,
All but myself, the sole unbidden guest.

TRANSLATIONS FROM OVID'S

METAMORPHOSES.

TO THE

RIGHT HONOURABLE LORD RADCLIFFE.*

MY LORD,

titles

THESE Miscellany Poems are by many yours. The first they claim from your acceptance of my promise to present them to you, before some of them were yet in being. The rest are derived from your own merit, the exactness of your judgment in poetry, and the candour of your nature; easy to forgive some trivial faults, when they come accompanied with countervailing beauties. But, after all, though these are your equitable claims to a dedication from other poets, yet I must acknowledge a bribe in the case, which is your particular liking of my verses. It is a vanity common to all writers, to overvalue their own productions; and it is better for me to own this failing in myself, than the world to do it for me. For what other reason have I spent my life in so unprofitable a study? why am I grown old, in seeking so barren a reward as fame? The same parts and application, which have made me a poet, might have raised me to any honours of the gown, which are often given to men of as little learning and less honesty than myself. No government has ever been, or ever can be, wherein time-servers and blockheads will not be uppermost. The persons are only changed, but the same jugglings in state, the same hypocrisy in religion, the same self-interest, and mismanagement, will remain for ever. Blood and money will be lavished in all ages, only for the preferment of new faces, with old consciences. There is too often a jaundice in the eyes of great men; they see not those whom they aise in the same colours with other men. All whom they affect, look gol den to them; when the gilding is only in their own distempered sight. These considerations have given me a kind of contempt for those who have risen by unworthy ways. I am not ashamed to be little, when I see them so infamously great; neither do I know why the name of poet should be dishonourable to me, if I am truly one, as I hope I am; for I will never do any thing that shall dishonour it. The notions of morality are known to all men; none can pretend ignorance of those ideas which are in-born in mankind:

• Prefixed to the Third Volume of Dryden's Miscellany Poems, printed in 1693.

and if I see one thing, and practise the contrary, I must be disingenuous, not to acknowledge a clear truth, and base, to act against the light of my own conscience. For the reputation of my honesty, no man can question it, who has any of his own: for that of my poetry, it shall either stand by its own merit, or fall for want of it. Ill writers are usually the sharpest censors; for they, (as the best poet and the best patron said,)

When in the full perfection of decay,

Turn vinegar, and come again in play. Thus the corruption of a poet is the generation of a critic: I mean of a critic in the general acceptation of this age; for formerly they were quite another species of men. They were defenders of poets, and commentators on their works; to illustrate obscure beauties; to place some passages in a better light; to redeem others from malicious interpretations; to help out an author's modesty, who is not ostentatious of his wit; and, in short, to shield him from the ill-nature of those fellows, who were then called Zoili and Momi, and now take upon themselves the venerable name of censors. But neither Zoilus, nor he who endeavoured to defame Virgil, were ever adopted into the name of critics by the ancients: what their reputation was then, we know; and their successors in this age deserve no better. Are our auxiliary forces turned our enemies? are they, who at best are but wits of the second order, and whose only credit among readers is what they obtained by being subservient to the fame of writers; are these become rebels of slaves, and usurpers of subjects ? or, to speak in the most honourable terms of them, are they from our seconds become principals against us? Does the ivy undermine the oak, which supports its weakness? What labour would it cost them to put in a better line, than the worst of those which they expunge in a true poet? Petronius, the greatest wit perhaps of all the Romans, yet when his envy prevailed upon his judgment to fall on Lucan, he fell himself in his attempt: he performed worse in his Essay of the Civil War, than the author of the Pharsalia; and avoiding his errors, has made greater of his own. Julius Scaliger would needs turn down Homer, and abdicate him after the possession of three thousand years: has he succeeded in his attempt? he has indeed shown us some of those imperfections in him, which are incident to human kind; but who had not rather be that Homer than this Scaliger? You see the same hypercritic, when he endeavours to mend the beginning of Claudian (a faulty poet, and living in a

barbarous age,) yet how short he comes of him, and substitutes such verses of his own as deserve the ferula. What a censure has he made of Lucan, that he rather seems to bark than sing! Would any but a dog have made so snarling a comparison? One would have thought he had learned Latin as late as they tell us he did Greek. Yet he came off with a pace tua, by your good leave, Lucan; he called him not by those outrageous names, of fool, booby, and blockhead: he had somewhat more of good manners than his successors, as he had much more knowledge. We have two sorts of those gentlemen in our nation: some of them proceeding with a seeming moderation and pretence of respect to the dramatic writers of the last age, only scorn and vilify the present poets, to set up their predecessors. But this is only in appearance; for their real design is nothing less than to do honour to any man, besides themselves. Horace took notice of such men in his age:

-Non ingeniis favet ille sepultis; Nostra sed impugnat; nos nostraque lividus odit. It is not with an ultimate intention to pay reverence to the manes of Shakespeare, Fletcher, and Ben Jonson, that they commend their writings, but to throw dirt on the writers of this age their declaration is one thing, and their practice is another. By a seeming veneration to our fathers, they would thrust out us their lawful issue, and govern us themselves, under a specious pretence of reformation. If they could compass their intent, what would wit and learning get by such a change? if we are bad poets, they are worse; and when any of their woful pieces come abroad, the difference is so great betwixt them and good writers, that there need no criticisms on our part to decide it. When they describe the writers of this age, they draw such monstrous figures of them, as resemble none of us our pretended pictures are so unlike, that it is evident we never sat to them: they are all grotesque; the products of their wild imaginations, things out of nature, so far from being copied from us, that they resemble nothing that ever was, or ever can be. But there is another sort of insects, more venomous than the former. Those who manifestly aim at the destruction of our poetical church and state, who allow nothing to their countrymen, either of this or of the former age; these attack the living by raking up the ashes of the dead; well knowing that if they can subvert their original title to the stage, we who claim under them must fall of course. Peace be to the venerable shades of Shakespeare and Ben Jonson: none

of the living will presume to have any competition with them: as they were our predecessors, so they were our masters. We trail our plays under them, but (as at the funerals of a Turkish emperor) our ensigns are furled or dragged upon the ground, in honour to the dead; so we may lawfully advance our own, afterwards, to show that we succeed: if less in dignity yet on the same foot and title, which we think too we can maintain against the insolence of our own janizaries. If I am the man, as I have reason to believe, who am seemingly courted, and secretly undermined, I think I shall be able to defend myself, when I am openly attacked. And to show besides that the Greek writers only gave us the rudiments of a stage which they never finished: that many of the tragedies in the former age among us were without comparison beyond those of Sophocles and Euripides. But at present, I have neither the leisure nor the means for such an undertaking. It is ill going to law for an estate, with him who is in possession of it, and enjoys the present profits, to feed his cause. But the quantum mutatus may be remembered in due time. In the mean while, I leave the world to judge, who gave the provocation.

This, my Lord, is, I confess, a long digres sion, from Miscellany Poems to Modern Tragedies: but I have the ordinary excuse of an injured man, who will be telling his tale unseasonably to his betters; though at the same time, I am certain you are so good a friend, as to take a concern in all things which belong to one who so truly honours you. And besides, being yourself a critic of the genuine sort, who have read the best authors in their own languages, who perfectly distinguish of their several merits, and in general prefer them to the moderns, yet, I know, you judge for the English tragedies, against the Greek and Latin, as well as against the French, Italian, and Spanish, of these latter ages. Indeed there is a vast difference betwixt arguing like Perault in behalf of the French poets, against Homer and Virgil, and betwixt giving the English poets their undoubted due of excelling schylus, Euripides, and Sophocles. For if we or our greater fathers have not yet brought the drama to an absolute perfection, yet at least we have carried it much farther than those ancient Greeks; who, beginning from a chorus, could never totally exclude it, as we have done; who find it an unprofitable encumbrance, without any necessity of entertaining it among us; and without the possibility of establishing it here unless it were supported by a public charge. Neither can we accept of those lay-bishops, as some call them,