He would only have made a present to his master of what he foresaw would become his prey. Ho strove to avoid the jealousy of a tyrant; you dismissed yourself from the attendance and privacy of a gracious King. Our age has afforded us many examples of a contrary nature; but your Lordship is the only one of this. It is easy to discover in all governments those who wait so close on Fortune, that they are never to be shaken off at any turn; such who seem to have taken up a resolution of being great,to continue their stations on the theatre of business,-to change with the scene, and shift the vizard for another part. These men condemn, in their discourses, that virtue which they dare not practise; but the sober part of this present age, and impartial posterity, will do right both to your Lordship and to them; and when they read on what accounts, and with how much magnanimity you quitted those honours, to which the highest ambition of an English subject could aspire, will apply to you with much more reason, what the historian said of a Roman Emperor,-Multi diutius imperium tenuerunt; nemo fortius reliquit.

To this retirement of your Lordship, I wish I could bring a better entertainment than this play; which, though it succeeded on the stage, will scarcely bear a serious perusal, it being contrived and written in a month; the subject barren, the

* It was a temporary production, written in the time of the second Dutch war, to inflame the nation against their

persons low, and the writing not heightened with many laboured scenes. The consideration of these defects ought to have prescribed more modesty to the authour, than to have presented it to that person in the world for whom he has the greatest honour, and of whose patronage the best of his endeavours had been unworthy; but I had not satisfied myself in staying longer, and could never. have paid the debt with a much better play. As it is, the meanness of it will shew, at least, that I pretend not by it to make any manner of return for your favours and that I only give you a new occasion of exercising your goodness to me, in pardoning the failings and imperfections of,

;

MY LORD,

Your Lordship's most humble,

Most obliged, and

most obedient servant,

JOHN DRYDEN.

enemies, by calling to their memories the inhuman cru. elties practised by the Dutch on the English factory at Amboyna, in 1624,-This passage escaped Dr. Johnson, for he has said erroneously that "the author thought not fit either ostentatiously or mournfully to tell how littlę labour it cost him, or at how short a warning he produced it."-But such trifling mistakes are but specks in the finest body of Criticism extant in any language.

MADAM,

AMBITION

MBITION is so far from being a vice in poets, that it is almost impossible for them to succeed without it. Imagination must be raised by a desire of fame, to a desire of pleasing; and they whom in all ages poets have endeavoured most to please, have been the beautiful and the great. Beauty is their deity to which they sacri

Anne, the first Duchess of York, daughter of Lord Clarendon, died at St. James's, March 31, 1671. On the 21st of November, 1673, the Duke married Mary of Este, (daughter of the Duke of Modena,) to whom this epistle dedicatory is addressed. She was at the time of her marriage little more than fourteen, and, according to Macpherson, of exquisite beauty. "Her complexion was very fair, her hair black, her eyes full of sweetness and fire. She was tall in her person, and admirably

fice, and greatness is their guardian angel which protects them. Both these are so eminently joined in the person of your Royal Highness, that it were not easy for any but a poet to determine which of them outshines the other. Madam, I am already biassed in

But I confess, my choice. I praise of your

can easily resign to others the illustrious family, and that glory which you derive from a long-continued race of Princes, famous for their actions both in peace and war; I can give

shaped; dignified in her manner, and graceful in her deportment. During the twelve years she was Duchess of York, she seemed to have given herself up wholly to innocent cheerfulness and amusements. The prejudices of the people were greatly removed by her behaviour; the uneasiness conceived on account of her religion was soon forgotten; and she was universally esteemed, and by many beloved. Her beauty rendered her the favourite of the populace, when the bigotry of her husband was most feared," HISTORY OF GREAT BRITAIN, vol. i. p. 178.

Of all our author's dedications, the present, while it furnishes abundant proofs of the variety and luxuriance of his fancy, exhibits the most perfect specimen of the CELESTIAL style. See p. 983.

"This compostion," says Dr. Johnson, “is addressed to the Princess of Modena, then Duchess of York, in a strain of flattery which disgraces genius, and which it is wonderful that any man that knew the meaning of his own words could use without self-detestation. It is an attempt to mingle earth and heaven, by praising human excellence in the language of religion."Life of DRYDEN.

up to the historians of your country the names of so many generals and heroes which croud their annals; and to our own, the hopes of those which you are to produce for the British chronicle. I can yield, without envy, to the nation of poets, the family of Este, to which Ariosto and Tasso have owed their patronage, and to which the world has owed their poems; but I could not, without extreme reluctance, resign the theme of your beauty to another hand. Give me leave, Madam, to acquaint the world, that I am jealous of this subject and let it be no dishonour to you, that after having raised the admiration of mankind, you have inspired one man to give it voice. But with whatsoever vanity this new honour of being your poet has filled my mind, I confess myself too weak for the inspiration; the priest was always unequal to the oracle; the god within him. was too mighty for his breast. He laboured with the sacred revelation, and there was more of the mystery left behind, than divinity itself could enable him to express. I can but discover a part of your excellencies to the world; and that too according to the measure of my own weakness. Like those who have surveyed the moon by glasses, I can only tell of a new and shining world above us, but not relate the riches and glories of the place; it is therefore that I have already waved the subject of your greatness, to resign myself to the contemplation of what is more peculiarly your's. Greatness is indeed communicated to some few of both

.