1 [Constancy-a Song.] I cannot change as others do, Though you unjustly scorn; Since that poor swain that sighs for you, No, Phillis, no; your heart to move And, to revenge my slighted love, Will still love on, will still love on, and die. When kill'd with grief Amyntas lies, And you to mind shall call The sighs that now unpitied rise, The tears that vainly fall; That welcome hour that ends this smart Will then begin your pain, For such a faithful tender heart Can never break, can never break in vain. Song. Too late, alas! I must confess, You need not arts to move me; Such charms by nature you possess, "Twere madness not to love you. Then spare a heart you may surprise, And give my tongue the glory To boast, though my unfaithful eyes Betray a tender story. Song. My dear mistress has a heart Soft as those kind looks she gave me, She's so wild and apt to wander, Melting joys about her move, She's my delight, all mankind's wonder; But my jealous heart would break, A new specimens of Rochester's letters to his wife and son are subjoined : I am very glad to hear news from you, and I think it very good when I hear you are well; pray be pleased to send me word what you are apt to be pleased with, that I may show you how good a husband I can be; I would not have you so formal as to judge of the kindness of a letter by the length of it, but believe of | everything that it is as you would have it. Mis not an easy thing to be entirely happy; but to be kind is very easy, and that is the greatest measure of happiness. I say not this to put you in mind of being kind to me; you have practised that so long, that I have a joyful confidence you will never forget it; but to show that I myself have a sense of what the methods of my life seemed so utterly to contradict, I must not be too wise about my own follies, or else this letter had been a book dedicated to you, and published to the world. It will be more pertinent to tell you, that very shortly the king goes to Newmarket, and then I shall wait on you at Adderbury; in the mean time, think of anything you would have me do, and I shall thank you for the occasion of pleasing you. Mr Morgan I have sent in this errand, because he plays the rogue here in town so extremely, that he is hot to be endt red; pray, if he behaves himself so at Adderbury, send me word, and let him stay till I send for him. Pray, let Ned come up to town; I have a little business with him, and he shall be back in a week. Wonder not that I have not written to you all this while, for it was hard for me to know what to write upon several accounts; but in this I will only desire you not to be too much amazed at the thoughts my mother has of you, since, being mere imaginations, they will as easily vanish, as they were groundlessly erected; for my own part, I will make it my endeavour they may. What you desired of me in your other letter, shall punctually have performed. You must, I think, obey my mother in her commands to wait on her at Aylesbury, as I told you in my last letter. I am very dull at this time, and therefore think it pity in this humour to testify myself to you any farther; only, dear wife, I am your humble servant-ROCHESTER. Run away like a rascal, without taking leave, dear wife; it is an unpolite way of proceeding, which a modest man ought to be ashamed of. I have left you a prey to your own imaginations, amongst my relations -the worst of damnations; but there will come an hour of deliverance, till when, may my mother be merciful to you; so I commit you to what shall ensue, woman to woman, wife to mother, in hopes of a future appearance in glory. The small share I could spare you out of my pocket, I have sent as a debt to Mrs Rowse. Within a week or ten days I will return you more: pray write as often as you have leisure to ROCHESTER. your Remember me to Nan and my Lord Wilmot. You must present my service to my cousins. I intend to be at the wedding of my niece Ellen, if I hear of it. Excuse my ill paper, and very ill manners to my mother; they are both the best the place and age could afford. MY WIFE-The difficulties of pleasing your ladyship do increase so fast upon me, and are grown so numerous, that, to a man less resolved than myself never to give it over, it would appear a madness ever to attempt it more; but through your frailties mine ought not to multiply; you may, therefore, secure yourself that it will not be easy for you to put me out of my constant resolutions to satisfy you in all I can. I confess there is nothing will so much contribute to my assistance in this as your dealing freely with me; for since you have thought it a wise thing to trust me less and have reserves, it has been out of my power to make the best of my proceedings effectual to what I intended them. At a distance, I am likeliest to learn your mind, for you have not a very obliging way of delivering it by word of mouth; if, therefore, you will let me know the particulars in which I may be useful to you, I will show my readiness as to my own part; and if I fail of the success I wish, it shall not be the fault of Your humble servant, ROCHESTER. I intend to be at Adderbury sometime next week. I hope, Charles, when you receive this, and know that I have sent this gentleman to be your tutor, you will be very glad to see I take such care of you, and be very grateful, which is best shown in being obedient and diligent. You are now grown big enough to be a man, and you can be wise enough; for the way to be truly wise is to serve God, learn your book, and observe the instructions of your parents first, and next your tutor, to whom I have entirely resigned you for this seven years, and according as you employ that time, you are to be happy or unhappy for ever; but I have so good an opinion of you, that I am glad to think you will never deceive me; dear child, learn your book and be obedient, and you shall see what a father I will be to you. You shall want no pleasure while you are good, and that you may be so are my constant prayers. ROCHESTER. Charles, I take it very kindly that you write me (though seldom), and wish heartily you would behave yourself so as that I might show how much I love you without being ashamed. Obedience to your grandmother, and those who instruct you in good things, is the way to make you happy here and for ever. Avoid idleness, scorn lying, and God will bless you. ROCHESTER. SIR CHARLES SEDLEY. SIR CHARLES SEDLEY (1639-1701) was one of the brightest satellites of the court of Charles II.-as witty and gallant as Rochester, as fine a poet, and a better man. He was the son of a Kentish baronet. Sir John Sedley of Aylesford. The Restoration drew him to London, and he became such a favourite for his taste and accomplishments, that Charles is said to have asked him if he had not obtained from Nature a patent to be Apollo's viceroy. His estate, his time, and morals, were squandered away at court; but latterly the poet redeemed himself, became a constant attender of parliament, in which he had a seat, opposed the arbitrary measures of James II., and assisted to bring about the Revolution. James had seduced Sedley's daughter, and created her Countess of Dorchester a circumstance which probably quickened the poet's zeal against the court. His I hate ingratitude,' said the witty Sedley; 'and as the king has made my daughter a countess, I will endeavour to make his daughter a queen'-alluding to the Princess Mary, married to the Prince of Orange. Sir Charles wrote plays and poems, which were extravagantly praised by his contemporaries. Buckingham eulogised the witchcraft of Sedley, and Rochester spoke of his gentle prevailing art.' songs are light and graceful, with a more studied and felicitous diction than is seen in most of the court poets. One of the finest, Ah! Chloris, could I now but sit,' has been often printed as the composition of the Scottish patriot, Duncan Forbes of Culloden, Lord President of the court of session: the verses occur in Sedley's play, The Mulberry Garden. Sedley's conversation was highly prized, and he lived on, delighting all his friends, till past his sixtieth year. As he says of one of his own beroines, he Bloom'd in the winter of his days, Song. Ah, Chloris! could I now but sit Your charms in harmless childhood lay Age from no face takes more away, Song. Love still has something of the sea, One while they seem to touch the port, At first disdain and pride they fear, In a more cruel shape. By such decrees to joy they come, A hundred thousand oaths your fears Song. Phillis, men say that all my vows DUCHESS OF NEWCASTLE. MARGARET, DUCHESS OF NEWCASTLE, who died in 1673, was distinguished for her faithful attachment to her lord in his long exile during the time of the commonwealth, and for her indefatigable pursuit of literature. She was the daughter of Sir Charles Lucas, and one of the maids of honour to Henrietta Maria. Having accompanied the queen to France, she met with the Marquis of Newcastle, and was married to him at Paris in 1645. The marquis took up his residence at Antwerp, till the troubles were over, and there his lady wrote and published (1653) a volume, entitled Poems and Fancies. The marquis assisted her in her compositions, a circumstance which Horace Walpole has ridiculed in his 'Royal and Noble Authors; and so indefatigable were the noble pair, that they filled nearly twelve volumes, folio, with plays, poems, orations, philosophical discourses, &c. On the restoration of Charles II., the marquis and his lady returned to England. The picture of domestic happiness and devoted loyalty presented by the life of these personages, creates a strong prepossession in favour of the poetry of the duchess. She had invention, knowledge, and imagination, but wanted energy and taste. The Pastime and Recreation of the Queen of Fairies in Fairy Land is her most popular piece. It often echoes the imagery of Shakspeare, but has some fine lines, descriptive of ▲he elvish queen She on a dewy leaf doth bathe, Mirth and Melancholy is another of these fanciful personifications. The former woos the poetess to dwell with her, promising sport and pleasure, and drawing a gloomy but forcible and poetical sketch of her rival, Melancholy : Her voice is low, and gives a hollow sound; Melancholy thus describes her own dwelling :- My music is the buzzing of a fly; I walk in meadows, where grows fresh green grass; In fields, where corn is high, I often pass; Walk up the hills, where round I prospects see, To hear how sheep do bleat, and cows do low; Yet better lov'd, the more that I am known; KATHERINE PHILIPS. MRS KATHERINE PHILIPS (1631-1664) was honoured with the praise of Cowley and Dryden, and Jeremy Taylor addressed to her a 'Discourse on Friendship. Her poetical name of Orinda was highly popular with her contemporaries; but her effusions are said to have been published without her consent. This amiable lady was the wife of James Philips of the Priory, Cardigan. She died of small-pox, a distemper then prevalent and fatal. [Against Pleasure-an Ode.] There's no such thing as pleasure here, 'Tis true, it looks at distance fair; But if we do approach, The fruit of Sodom will impair, And perish at a touch; It being than in fancy less, Or else, like rivers, they make wide But ne'er true bliss possess; But one may make it less; Th' experienc'd prince then reason had, Who said of Pleasure-' It is mad.' [A Country Life.] How sacred and how innocent This was the first and happiest life, 'Twas here the poets were inspir'd, The brave they here with honour fir'd, That golden age did entertain Did ne'er their fancies move. Them that do covet only rest, When all the stormy world doth roar, I cannot fear to tumble lower, JOHN DRYDEN. JOHN DRYDEN, one of the great masters of English verse, and whose masculine satire has never beer. excelled, was born at Oldwinckle, in Northamptonshire, in August 1631. His father, Erasmus Driden [the poet first spelled the name with a y], was a strict Puritan, of an ancient family, long established in Northamptonshire. John was one of fourteen children, but he was the eldest son, and received a good education, first at Westminster, and afterwards at Trinity college, Cambridge. Dryden's first poetical John Dryden production was a set of 'heroic stanzas' on the death of Cromwell, which possess a certain ripeness of style and versification that promised future excellence. In all Waller's poem on the same subject, there is nothing equal to such verses as the following: His grandeur he deriv'd from heaven alone, For he was great ere Fortune made him so; When monarchy was restored, Dryden went over with the tuneful throng who welcomed in Charles II. He had done with the Puritans, and he wrote poetical addresses to the king and the lord chancellor. The amusements of the drama revived after the Restoration, and Dryden became a candidate for theatrical laurels. In 1662, and two following years, he produced The Wild Gallant, The Rival Ladies, and The Indian Emperor; the last was very successful. Dryden's name was now conspicuous; and in 1665 he married the Lady Elizabeth Howard, daughter of the Earl of Berkshire. The match added neither to his wealth nor his happiness, and the poet afterwards revenged himself by constantly inveighing against matrimony. When his wife wished to be a book, that she might enjoy more of his company, Dryden is said to have replied, 'Be an almanac then, my dear, that I may change you once a-year.' In his play of the Spanish Friar, he most unpolitely states, that 'woman was made from the dross and refuse of a man; upon which his antagonist, Jeremy Collier, remarks, with some humour and smartness, 'I did not know before that lished a long poem, Annus Mirabilis, being an account of the events of the year 1666. The style and versification seem to have been copied from Davenant: but Dryden's piece fully sustained his reputation. About the same time he wrote an Essay on Dramatic Poesy, in which he vindicates the use of rhyme in tragedy. The style of his prose was easy, natural, and graceful. The poet now undertook to write for the king's players no less than three plays a year, for which he was to receive one share and a quarter in the profits of the theatre, said to be about £300 per annum. He was afterwards made poet-laureate and royal historiographer, with a salary of £200. These were golden days; but they did not last. Dryden, however, went on manufacturing his rhyming plays, in accordance with the vitiated French taste which then prevailed. He got involved in controversies and quarrels, chiefly at the instigation of Rochester, who set up a wretched rhymster, Elkanah Settle, in opposition to Dryden. The great poet was also successfully ridiculed by Buckingham in his 'Rehearsal.' In 1681, Dryden published the satire of Absalom and Achitophel, written in the style of a scriptural narrative, the names and situations of personages in the holy text being applied to those contemporaries, to whom the author assigned places in his poem. The Duke of Monmouth was Absalom, and the Earl of Shaftesbury Achitophel; while the Duke of Buckingham was drawn under the character of Zimri. The success of this bold political satirethe most vigorous and elastic, the most finely versified, varied, and beautiful, which the English language can boast was almost unprecedented. Dryden was now placed above all his poetical contemporaries. Shortly afterwards, he continued the feeling against Shaftesbury in a poem called The Medal, a Satire against Sedition. The attacks of a rival poet, Shadwell, drew another vigorous satire from Dryden, Mac-Flecknoe. A second part of 'Absalom and Achitophel' was published in 1684, but the body of the poem was written by Nahum Tate. Dryden contributed about two hundred lines, containing highly. wrought characters of Settle and Shadwell, under the names of Doeg and Og. His antagonists,' says Scott, 'came on with infinite zeal and fury, discharged their ill-aimed blows on every side, and exhausted their strength in violent and ineffectual rage; but the keen and trenchant blade of Dryden never makes a thrust in vain, and never strikes but at a vulnerable point.' In the same year was published Dryden's Religio Laici, a poem written to de fend the church of England against the dissenters, yet evincing a sceptical spirit with regard to revealed religion. The opening of this poem is singularly solemn and majestic Dim as the borrow'd beams of moon and stars a man's dross lay in his ribs; I believe it sometimes lies higher.' All Dryden's plays are marked with Good life be now my task-my doubts are done. licentiousness, that vice of the age, which he fostered, His change of religion happening at a time when it rather than attempted to check. In 1667 he pub-suited his interests to become a Catholic, was looked 1 upon with suspicion. The candour evinced by Dr More haughty than the rest, the wolfish race The obloquy and censure which Dryden's change of If joys hereafter must be purchas'd here "Tis nothing yet, yet all thou hast to give; And thy blest Saviour's blood discharge the mighty sum. But, gracious God! how well dost thou provide Be thine the glory, and be mine the shame! gone, where part of the translation of Virgil was executed. took care to make the engraver 'aggravate the nose of Æneas in the plates, into a sufficient resemblance of the hooked promontory of the Deliverer's countenance.' The immortal Ode to St Cecilia, commonly called Alexander's Feast, was Dryden's next work; and it is the loftiest and most imaginative of all his compositions. 'No one has ever qualified his admiration of this noble poem.' In 1699 Dryden published his Fables, 7500 verses, more or less, as the contract with Tonson bears, being a partial delivery to account of 10,000 verses, which he agreed to furnish for the sum of 250 guineas, to be made up to £300 upon publication of a second edition. The poet was now in his sixty-eighth year, but his fancy was brighter and more prolific than ever; it was like a brilliant sunset, or a river that expands in breadth, and fertilises a wider tract of country, ere it is finally engulfed in the ocean. The 'Fables' are imitations of Boccaccio and Chaucer, and afford the finest specimens of Dryden's happy versification. No narrative-poems in the language have been more generally admired or read. They shed a glory on the last days of the poet, who died on the 1st of May 1700. A subscription was made for a public funeral; and his remains, after being embalmed, and lying in state twelve days, were interred with great pomp in West minster Abbey. Dryden has been very fortunate in his critics an notators, and biographers. His life by Johnson is the most carefully written, the most eloquent and discriminating of all the Lives of the Poets.' Malone collected and edited his essays and other prose writings; and Sir Walter Scott wrote a copious life of the poet, and edited a complete edition of his works, the whole extending to eighteen volumes. The Revolution in 1688 deprived Dryden of his office of laureate. But the want of independent income seems only to have stimulated his faculties, and his latter unendowed years produced the noblest of his works. Besides several plays, he now gave to the world versions of Juvenal and Persius, and-a still weightier task-a translation of Virgil. The latter is considered the least happy of all his great works. Dryden was deficient in sensibility, while | Cowper and Burns have been presented in this shape It has become the fashion to print the works of some of our poets in the order in which they were written, not as arranged and published by themselves. |