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MR. DRYDEN.

No undisputed monarch govern'd yet,
With universal sway, the realms of wit:
Nature could never such expense afford:
Each sev'ral province own'd a sevʼral lord.
A poet then had his poetic wife,

One Muse embrac'd, and married for his life.
By the stale thing his appetite was cloy'd,
His fancy lessen'd, and his fire destroy'd.
But Nature, grown extravagantly kind,

With all her treasures did adorn

your

mind.

The diff'rent pow'rs were then united found,
And you wit's universal monarch crown'd.
Your mighty sway your great desert secures;
And ev'ry Muse and ev'ry Grace is yours.
To none confin'd, by turns you all enjoy:
Sated with this, you to another fly,

So, sultan-like, in your seraglio stand,
While wishing Muses wait for your command;

Thus no decay, no want of vigour, find:
Sublime your fancy, boundless is your mind.
Not all the blasts of Time can do you wrong-

Young, spite of age-in spite of weakness, strong.
Time, like Alcides, strikes you to the ground;
You, like Antæus, from each fall rebound.

H. ST. JOHN.

"TIS said that Phidias gave such living grace
To the carv'd image of a beauteous face,
That the cold marble might ev'n seem to be
The life-and the true life, the imag'ry.

You pass that artist, Sir, and all his pow'rs,
Making the best of Roman poets ours,
With such effect, we know not which to call
The imitation, which th' original.

What Virgil lent, you pay in equal weight;
The charming beauty of the coin no less;
And such the majesty of your impress,
You seem the very author you translate.

'Tis certain, were he now alive with us, And did revolving destiny constrain

To dress his thoughts in English o'er again, Himself could write no otherwise than thus.

His old encomium never did appear

So true as now: "Romans and Greeks, submit!

66

Something of late is in our language writ, "More nobly great than the fam'd Iliads were."

JA. WRIGHT.

TO

MR. DRYDEN,

ON HIS TRANSLATIONS.

As flow'rs, transplanted from a southern sky,
But hardly bear, or in the raising die,

Missing their native sun, at best retain

But a faint odour, and but live with pain;
So Roman poetry, by moderns taught,
Wanting the warmth with which its author wrote,
Is a dead image, and a worthless draught.
While we transfuse, the nimble spirit flies,
Escapes unseen, evaporates, and dies.

Who then attempts to shew the ancients' wit,
Must copy with the genius that they writ :
Whence we conclude from thy translated song,
So just, so warm, so smooth, and yet so strong,
Thou heav'nly charmer! soul of harmony!
That all their geniuses reviv'd in thee.

Thy trumpet sounds: the dead are rais'd to light; New-born they rise, and take to heav'n their flight; Deckt in thy verse, as clad with rays, they shine, All glorify'd, immortal and divine.

As Britain, in rich soil abounding wide,
Furnish'd for use, for luxury, and pride,
Yet spreads her wanton sails on ev'ry shore,
For foreign wealth, insatiate still of more;

To her own wool, the silks of Asia joins,
And to her plenteous harvests, Indian mines;
So Dryden, not contented with the fame
Of his own works, though an immortal name
To lands remote he sends his learned Muse,

The noblest seeds of foreign wit to chuse.

Feasting our sense so many various ways,

Say, is't thy bounty, or thy thirst of praise,
That, by comparing others, all might see,
Who most excell'd, are yet excell'd by thee?
GEORGE GRANVILLE.

*

*The two following notes, heretofore printed in the same pages with the verses to which they respectively relate, I have designedly removed from their original stations, as being of no very great importance at the present day, though it was, doubtless, a matter of some consequence to Dryden, in one of the two cases, to flatter his patron by borrowing a verse from him, and proclaiming the obligation to the whole world. Not choosing, however, to omit them altogether, I insert them here. J. C.

Georg. iv, 684.

The mighty hero's more majestic shade.

"This whole line is taken from the Marquis of Normanby's translation."

Æn. ii, 763.

A headless carcase, and a nameless thing. "This whole line is taken from Sir John Denham."

PASTORALS.

PASTORAL I.

OR,

TITYRUS AND MELIBUS.

ARGUMENT.

The occasion of the first pastoral was this. When Augustus had settled himself in the Roman empire, that he might reward his veteran troops for their past service, he distributed among them all the lands that lay about Cremona and Mantua; turning out the right owners for having sided with his enemies. Virgil was a sufferer among the rest; who afterwards recovered his estate by Mæcenas's intercession, and, as an instance of his gratitude, com. posed the following pastoral, where he sets out his own good fortune in the person of Tityrus, and the calamities of his Mantuan neighbours in the character of Melibaus.

MELIBUS.

BENEATH the shade which beechen boughs diffuse, You, Tityrus, entertain your silvan muse.

Round the wide world in banishment we roam, Forc'd from our pleasing fields and native home;