C. Forbear, foul ravisher, this rude address, Canst thou at once both injure and caress? [charms, P. Thou hast bewitched me with thy powerful And I, by drawing blood, would cure my harms.

C. He, that does love, would set his heart a-tilt, Ere one drop of his lady's should be spilt.

P. Your wounds are but without, and mine within; You wound my heart, and I but prick your skin; And while your eyes pierce deeper than my claws, You blame th' effect, of which you are the cause.

C. How could my guiltless eyes your heart invade, Had it not first been by your own betrayed? Hence 'tis, my greatest crime has only been, Not in mine eyes, but yours, in being seen.

*

P. I hurt to love, but do not love to hurt.
C. That's worse than making cruelty a sport.
P. Pain is the foil of pleasure and delight,
That sets it off to a more noble height.

C. He buys his pleasure at a rate too vain,
That takes it up beforehand of his pain.

P. Pain is more dear than pleasure, when 'tis past. C. But grows intolerable, if it last.

P. Love is too full of honour to regard

What it enjoys, but suffers, as reward.
What knight durst ever own a lover's name,
That had not been half-murdered by his flame?
Or lady, that had never lain at stake,

To death, or force of rivals for his sake?

C. When love does meet with injury and pain, Disdain's the only medicine for disdain.

* Parts of this dialogue recall the 'keen encounter' between Lady Anne and Gloster :

Gloster. Is not the causer of the timeless deaths

Of these Plantagenets, Henry and Edward,
As blameful as the executioner ?

L. Anne. Thou wast the cause, and most accursed effect.
Gloster. Your beauty was the cause of that effect;

Your beauty, which did haunt me in my sleep, &c.
Richard III. i. 3.

P. At once I'm happy, and unhappy too,
In being pleased, and in displeasing you.

C. Preposterous way of pleasure, and of love,
That contrary to its own end would move!
'Tis rather hate, that covets to destroy;
Love's business is to love, and to enjoy.

P. Enjoying and destroying are all one,
As flames destroy that which they feed upon.
C. He never loved at any generous rate,
That in th' enjoyment found his flame abate.
As wine, the friend of love, is wont to make
The thirst more violent, it pretends to slake:
So should fruition do the lover's fire,
Instead of lessening, inflame desire.

P. What greater proof, that passion does transport, When, what I'd die for, I am forced to hurt?

C. Death among lovers is a thing despised,
And far below a sullen humour prized.

That is more scorned, and railed at than the gods,
When they are crossed in love, or fall at odds.
But since you understand not what you do,
I am the judge of what I feel, not you.
P. Passion begins indifferent to prove,
When love considers any thing but love.

C. The darts of love, like lightning, wound within,
And, though they pierce it, never hurt the skin;
They leave no marks behind them, where they fly,
Though through the tenderest part of all, the eye,
But your sharp claws have left enough to show,
How tender I have been, how cruel you.

P. Pleasure is pain, for when it is enjoyed, All it could wish for was but to b' allayed. C. Force is a rugged way of making love. P. What you like best, you always disapprove. C. He that will wrong his love will not be nice, T'excuse the wrong he does, to wrong her twice. P. Nothing is wrong, but that which is ill meant. C. Wounds are ill curèd with a good intent.

P. When you mistake that for an injury,
I never meant, you do the wrong, not I.

C. You do not feel yourself the pain you give;
But 'tis not that alone for which I grieve;
But 'tis your want of passion that I blame,
That can be cruel, where you own a flame.
P. 'Tis you are guilty of that cruelty,
Which you at once outdo, and blame in me;
For while you stifle, and inflame desire,
You burn, and starve me in the self-same fire.
C. It is not I, but you, that do the hurt,
Who wound yourself, and then accuse me for't;
As thieves, that rob themselves 'twixt sun and sun,
Make others pay for what themselves have done.

TO THE HON. EDWARD HOWARD, ESQ.

UPON HIS INCOMPARABLE POEM OF THE BRITISH PRINCES.'*

SIR, you've obliged the British nation more

Than all their bards could ever do before, And, at your own charge, monuments more hard Than brass, or marble, to their fame have reared:

* This poem, claimed for Butler by Mr. Thyer, was originally published in Dryden's Miscellanies, where it was ascribed to Waller, under the following title: To a Person of Honour, upon his incomparable, incomprehensible poem, entitled The British Princes.' Mr. Fenton, relying upon the authority of the Miscellanies, which had not then been called into question, included the piece in his edition of Waller's poems, and subsequent editors have not felt themselves justified in rejecting it; there being some evidence of authorship on both sides, although not of equal weight. Mr. Thyer says:- That this piece is not Waller's, must be evident to every distinguishing reader; and that it is Butler's is no less clear, not only from the manner, but also by its being found among his other manuscripts, accompanied by the Palinode which follows it; but to make the matter still more demonstrable, I must add, that I find several of the lines and thoughts in his common-place collection.' The manner is not so decisive as Mr. Thyer supposes. There are some passages perfectly in the manner of Waller, and although, especially towards the close, there is an incidental resemblance to Butler, the piece, as a whole, is more in the

For as all warlike nations take delight
To hear how brave their ancestors could fight,
You have advanced to wonder their renown,
And no less virtuously improved your own;
For 'twill be doubted, whether you do write,
Or they have acted at a nobler height.
You of their ancient princes have retrieved
More than the ages knew in which they lived;
Described their customs and their rites anew,
Better than all their Druids ever knew;
Unriddled their dark oracles as well

As those themselves, that made them, could foretell;
For as the Britons long have hoped in vain,
Arthur would come to govern them again;

poised and enamelled style of Waller. But the evidence supplied by Butler's MS. is undoubtedly strong, and the discovery of several of the lines amongst his detached notes may be considered conclusive. It will probably, however, always continue, like the Essay on Satire, claimed, in like manner, for Mulgrave and Dryden, to be inserted in the works of each of the authors to whom it has been ascribed.

The Hon. Edward Howard was one of the sons of the Earl of Berkshire, and brother-in-law of Dryden. He wrote seven plays, and the epic of The British Princes; and was a common mark for the ridicule of the wits and critics. He was severely satirized by Rochester and Dorset, Sprat, Denham, Martin Clifford, and Lord Vaughan, and contemptuously alluded to in the Session of the Poets, published in The State Poems. His rank alone could not have attracted so much notice to his productions, which are remarkable only for what Dorset calls 'solid nonsense,' and a strange alacrity in sinking.' That it was his social position which procured him his unenviable notoriety is intimated plainly by Dorset :

For were it not that we respect afford

Unto the son of an heroic lord,

Thine in the ducking-stool should take his seat,

Dressed like herself in a great chair of state;

Where like a Muse of quality she'd die,

And thou thyself shalt make her elegy,

In the same strain thou writ'st thy comedy.

In Butler's Common-place Collection there is an allusion to the following couplet in The British Princes:

A vest as admired Vortigern had on,

Which from this island's foes his grandsire won.

Upon which Butler writes:

Such height as no wit ever could have nicked,
But only he that stripped a naked Pict.

III. BUTLER.

10

You have fulfilled that prophecy alone,
And in this poem placed him on his throne.
Such magic power has your prodigious pen,
To raise the dead, and give new life to men;
Make rival princes meet in arms, and love,
Whom distant ages did so far remove:
For as eternity has neither past,

Nor future, authors say, nor first, nor last,
But is all instant; your eternal muse
All ages can to any one reduce.*

Then why should you, whose miracle of art
Can life at pleasure to the dead impart,
Trouble in vain your better-busied head
T'observe what time they lived in, or were dead?
For since you have such arbitrary power,
It were defect in judgment to go lower,
Or stoop to things so pitifully lewd,
As use to take the vulgar latitude.

There's no man fit to read what you have writ,
That holds not some proportion with your wit;
As light can no way but by light appear,
He must bring sense, that understands it here.t

*The historical anachronisms committed in The British Princes constitute one of its most prominent offences. For example, Boadicea and King Arthur are made contemporaries; thus noticed in Sprat's verses to Howard :

Nor let small critics blame this mighty queen,
That in King Arthur's time she here is seen;
You that can make immortal by your song,
May well one life four hundred years prolong.

†The line is thus given by Thyer, and adopted from him in subsequent editions. I have not, therefore, considered myself at liberty to alter it; but a better reading would, probably, be supplied by making the following change:

He must bring sense, that understands it here.