could not find, you made. Some few Catoes there were with you, whose invincible resolution could not be conquered by that usurping Cæsar; your virtue opposed itself to his fortune, and overcame it, by not subinitting to it. The last and most difficult enterprize he had to effect, when he had conquered three nations, was to subdue your spirits; and he died weary of that war, and unable to finish it.

In the mean time, you lived more happily in your exile, than the other on his throne. Your loyalty made you friends and servants amongst foreigners; and you lived plentifully without a fortune, for you lived on your own desert and reputation. The glorious name of the valiant and faithful NEWCASTLE, was a patrimony which could never be exhausted.

Thus, my Lord, the morning of your life was clear and calm; and though it was afterwards Overcast, yet, in that general storm, you were never without a shelter. And now you are hap pily arrived to the evening of a day as serene as the dawn of it was glorious; but such an evening, as, I hope, and almost prophecy, is far from night; it is the evening of a summer's sun, which keeps the daylight long within the skies. The health of your body is maintained by the vigour of your mind; neither does the one shrink from the

The Duchess of Newcastle, in the Life of the Duke, p. 100, says, that the losses which he sustained in the Civil Wars, amounted to £.733.579.

fatigue of exercise, nor the other bend under the pains of study. Methinks I behold in you another Caius Marius, who, in the extremity of his age, exercised himself almost every morning in the Campus Martius, amongst the youthful nobility of Rome; and afterwards, in your retirements, when you do honour to Poetry, by employing part of your leisure in it, I regard you as another Silius Italicus, who, having passed over his Consulship with applause, dismissed himself from business, and from the gown, and employed his age amongst the shades, in the reading and imitation of Virgil.

In which, lest any thing should be wanting to your happiness, you have, by a rare effect of fortune, found in the person of your excellent lady, not only a lover, but a partner of your studies; a lady whom our age may justly equal with the Sappho of the Greeks, or the Sulpitia of the Romans; who, by being taken into your bosom, seems to be inspired with your genius, and by writing the history of your life in so masculine a style, has already placed you in the number of the heroes. She has anticipated that great portion of fame which envy often hinders a living virtue from possessing; which would, indeed, have been

• The Life of William, Duke of Newcastle, by his Duchess, was published in folio, in 1667, and again in the following year. A third edition appeared in 410. in 1675.

given to your ashes, but with a latter payment; and of which you could have no present use, except it were by a secret presage of that which was to come, when you were no longer in a possibility of knowing it.

So that if that were a

praise or satisfaction to, the greatest of Emperors, which the most judicious of poets gives him

Præsenti tibi maturos largimur honores, &c.

that the adoration which was not allowed to Hercules and Romulus till after death, was given to Augustus living, then certainly it cannot be denied but that your Grace has received a double satisfaction; the one, to see yourself consecrated to immortality while you are yet alive, the other, to have your praises celebrated by so dear, so just, and so pious an historian.

It is the consideration of this that stops my pen; though I am loth to leave so fair a subject, which gives me as much field as poetry could wish, and yet no more than truth can justify. But to attempt any thing of a panegyrick, were to enterprize on your lady's right; and to seem to affect those praises which none but the Duchess of Newcastle can deserve, when she writes the actions of her Lord. I shall therefore leave that wider space, and contract myself to those narrow bounds which best become my fortune and employment.

I am obliged, my Lord, to return you not only my own acknowledgments, but to thank you in

to say,

the name of former poets. The manes of Jonson' and D'Avenant seem to require it from me, that those favours which you placed on them, and which they wanted opportunity to own in publick, yet might not be lost to the knowledge of posterity, with a forgetfulness unbecoming of the Muses, who are the daughters of memory. And give me leave, my Lord, to avow so much of vanity, as I am proud to be their remembrancer; for by relating how gracious you have been to them, and are to me, I in some measure join my name with theirs; and the continued descent of your favours to me is the best title which I can plead for my succession. I only wish that I had as great reason to be satisfied with myself, in the return of our common acknowledgments, as your Grace may justly take in the conferring them; for I cannot but be very sensible that the present of an ill comedy, which I here make you, is is a very unsuitable way of giving thanks for them, who themselves have written so many better. This pretends to nothing more than to be a foil to those scenes, which are composed by the most noble poet of our age and nation; and to be set as a water-mark of the lowest cbb, to which the wit of my predecessor has sunk' and run down in me.

' In No. 4955 of the Harleian MSS, are some letters of Ben Jonson's, addressed to this Nobleman.

"Here we have another proof of the bad taste of the period at which Dryden wrote. Had not this extravagant

But though all of them have surpassed me in the scene, there is one part of glory in which I will not yield to any of them; I mean, my Lord, that honour and veneration which they had for you in their lives, and which I preserve after them more holily than the vestal fires were maintained from age to age; but with a greater degree of heat, and of devotion, than theirs, as being with more respect and passion than they ever were,

Your GRACE'S

Most obliged,

most humble,

and most obedient servant,

JOHN DRYDEN,*

and unjust preference of Jonson to Shakspeare been agreeable to the general opinion of that age, our author could scarcely have hazarded this eulogium, which I have too good an opinion of his judgment and taste, to believe the expression of his genuine sentiments.

* I take this opportunity of correcting an errour into which I have fallen, respecting the date of the play to which this Dedication was prefixed, which I supposed to have been first printed in 1674, (see pp. 183 and 384); but the first edition was, I find, in 1668. This Dedication, however, is here properly placed, (conformably to the author's own arrangement,) before that prefixed to Ty. RANNICK LOVE, which was first printed in 1670.