afterwards made the triumphant progress to the north, which is here commemorated. The splendour of her reception at Harwich is thus censured by the Satirist : One thrifty ferry-boat, of mother-pearl, Yet navies are but fopperies, when here Nor the Venetian Duke, with such a state, The poem itself is adapted to the capacity and taste of a lady; and, if we compare it with that which Dryden had two years before addressed to the Chancellor, it strengthens, I think, very strongly the supposition, that the old taste of extravagant and over-laboured conceits, with which the latter abounds, was a stile purposely adapted to gratify the great Statesman to whom it was addressed, whose taste must necessarily have been formed upon the ancient standard. The address, which follows, is throughout easy and complimentary, much in the stile of Waller, as appears from comparing it with that veteran bard's poem on the same subject. Although upon a sublime subject, Dryden treats it in the light most capable of giving pleasure to a fair lady; and the journey of the duchess to the north is proposed as a theme, nearly as important as the celebrated victory of her husband. Accordingly Dryden himself tells us, in the introductory letter to the "Annus Mirabilis," that, in these lines, he only affected smoothness of measure and softness of expression; and the verses themselves were originally introduced in that letter, to vindicate the character there given of them. ΤΟ HER ROYAL HIGHNESS THE DUCHESS, ON THE MEMORABLE VICTORY GAINED BY THE DUKE OVER THE HOLLANDERS, JUNE THE 3. 1665. AND ON HER JOURNEY AFTERWARDS INTO THE NORTH. MADAM, WHEN, for our sakes, your hero you resigned You lodged your country's cares within your breast, 5 That glorious day, which two such navies saw, As each unmatched might to the world give law, Neptune, yet doubtful whom he should obey, Held to them both the trident of the sea: The winds were hushed, the waves in ranks were cast, As awfully as when God's people past: How powerful are chaste vows! the wind and tide To bring them, as his slaves, to wait on you: Like commons the nobility resort, In crowding heaps, to fill your moving court: And round him the pleased audience clap their wings. NOTES ON THE PRECEDING POEM. Note I. So Moses was upheld while Israel fought. "And it came to pass, when Moses held up his hand, that Israel prevailed; and when he let down his hand, Amalek prevailed. "But Moses' hands were heavy, and they took a stone, and put it under him, and he sat thereon: and Aaron and Hur stayed up his hands, the one on the one side, and the other on the other side, and his hands were steady until the going down of the sun. "And Joshua discomfited Amalek and his people with the edge of the sword." Exodus, chap. xvii. 11, 12, 13th verses. Note II. While, from afar, we heard the cannon play, The noise of the battle was distinctly heard at London, as appears from the Introduction to our author's "Essay on Dramatic Poetry," where the dialogue is supposed to pass in a barge, in which the speakers had embarked to hear more distinctly, "those undulations of sound, which, though almost vanishing before they reached them, seemed yet to retain somewhat of their first horror which they had betwixt the fleets." And, by the sound seeming to retire from them, Eugenius draws an omen of the enemy's defeat. This whole scene is imagined with so much liveliness, that we can hardly doubt Dryden was actually an ear-witness of the combat. |