hero; although it is obvious, that the pontiff was not a more effectual guardian to his city by bearing that warlike name, than if he had been called Benedict or Innocent. True it is, however, that the pope feared, and with great reason, some hostile attack from the powerful English squadron which swept the Mediterranean, under the command of Blake, Conscious that his papal character rendered him the object of the most inveterate enmity to the military saints of Cromwell's commonwealth, he had every reason to believe that they would find pride, pleasure, and profit, in attacking Antichrist, even in Babylon itself.

Note XVI.

By his command we boldly crossed the line, &c.

St. XXXI, p. 13.

A powerful army and squadron were sent by Cromwell, under the command of Penn and Venables, to attack Hispaniola. The commanders quarrelled, and the main design misgave: they took, however, the island of Jamaica, whose importance long remained unknown; for, notwithstanding the manner in which Dryden has glossed over these operations in the West Indies, they were at the time universally considered as having been unfortunate. See "The World's mistake in Oliver Cromwell,"

Note XVII.

Till he, pressed down by his own weighty name,
Did, like the vestal, under spoils decease.

St. XXXIV. p. 14.

Tarpeia, the virgin who betrayed a gate of Rome to the Sabines, demanded, in recompense, what they wore on their left arms, meaning their golden bracelets. But the Sabines, detesting her treachery, or not disposed to gratify her avarice, chose to understand, that her request related to their bucklers, and flung them upon her in such numbers as to kill her.

Note XVIII,

But first the ocean as a tribute sent

The giant prince of all her watery herd;

And the isle, when her protecting Genius went,
Upon his obsequies loud sighs conferred.

St. XXXV. p. 14.

The circumstance, of the dreadful storm which happened on the day of Cromwell's death, is noticed by all writers. Many vessels were dashed on the coast, and trees and houses were overthrown

upon the land. It seemed as if that active spirit, which had rode in the whirlwind while he lived, could not depart without an universal convulsion of nature. Waller has touched upon this remarkable incident with great felicity:

We must resign; heaven his great soul does claim,

In storms as loud as his immortal fame ;

His dying groans, his last breath, shakes our isle,
And trees uncut fall for his funeral pile;

About his palace their broad roots were tost
Into the air :-so Romulus was lost;

New Rome in such a tempest missed her king,
And from obeying fell to worshipping.

But, while the authors of these threnodies explained this prodigious storm as attendant on the deification of the Protector, or at least the effects of the Genius of Britain's unbounded lamentation, the cavaliers unanimously agreed, that the tempest accompanied the transportation of his spirit to the infernal regions.

Note XIX.

His ashes in a peaceful urn shall rest.

St. XXXVII. p. 14.

This prophecy, like that announcing the final close of civil broils, in the preceding stanza, was not doomed to be accomplished. The contending factions resumed their struggles in a month after the Protector's death; his body was dragged from the burial place of princes, to be exposed on the gibbet; and his head placed on the end of Westminster Hall. There is, however, an unauthenticated story, that Cromwell, foreseeing the Restoration, had commanded his remains to be interred secretly, and by night, in the field of Naseby, as near as possible to the spot where his prowess had gained that bloody day; and that, by a piece of refined and ingenious malice, his friends caused the body of Charles to be deposited in the empty coffin, which had received the funeral honours rendered to the Protector; thus turning the disgrace, which the royalists intended for the body of Cromwell, upon that of the royal martyr. The story may be found in the Harleian Miscellany, Vol. II. p. 269. But it is unworthy of credit, and seems to have been grounded upon the circumstance, that Cromwell's body, being in a very corrupted state, was buried privately before the grand procession. The restoration of the

house of Stuart seemed then to be an event much out of the reach of calculation, even to persons less sanguine than Cromwell.

ASTREA REDUX.

A POEM.

ASTREA REDUX.

A POEM.

AFTER SO many years of civil war and domestic tyranny, the Restoration, an almost hopeless event, established the crown upon the head of the lawful successor, and the government upon its original footing. Dryden, among the numerous, I had almost said innumerable, bards, who celebrated, or attempted to celebrate, this surprising event, distinguished himself by the following poem, to which he has given the apt name of Astraa Redux, from the hopes of justice and liberty returning with the lawful king.

*

The tone of praise, which Dryden has adopted, exhibits his usual felicity. There do not here occur any of these rants about the antiquity of the royal line, † and the indefeasible right of the lawful successor, which are the common topics of the herd, who

There are all shapes and forms of poetical addresses upon this occasion, by clergymen, and scholars, and persons of honour. Among them, the verses by Waller are most celebrated; though inferior to those which he composed on the Protector's death. When Charles made this remark, the bard, with great felicity, reminded his Majesty, that poets always excel in fiction. Among other topics, he enlarges on the "tried virtue, and the sacred word," of the witty monarch. It is singular, that, of the three distinguished poets, who solemnized by elegy the death of the Protector, Dryden and Waller should have hailed the restoration of the Stuart line, and Sprat have favoured their most arbitrary aggressions upon liberty.

In "A Poem to His Most Excellent Majesty, Charles the Second, Eg beneficio tuo (Cæsar) quos ante audiebam hodie vidi Deos: Nec feliciorem ullum vitæ meæ aut optavi aut sensi Diem, by H. Buston, Winton; together with another, by Hen. Bold, olim Winton," the royal genealogy is thus de duced from the primitive father of mankind :

On which side shall we trace your stock? beyond

The loins of Egbert, or of Pharamond;

Now sunk in Adam's entrails it is found,

And thence shoots through the world to you all crowned.

⚫Vain boldness of the age (age of deceits),

Knew this, and therefore coined Præ-Adamites.