7. Call. See, see our active king,
Hath taken twice the ring,3
Upon his pointed lance:
Whilst all the ravish'd rout
Do mingle in a shout,

Hey for the flower of France!

8. Ura. This day the court doth measure
Her joy in state and pleasure;

And with a reverend fear,
The revels and the play,

Sum up this crowned day,
Her two and twentieth year.

9. Poly. Sweet, happy Mary, all

The people her do call,

And this the womb divine!

So fruitful, and so fair,

Hath brought the land an heir,

And Charles a Caroline!

3 See, see our active king,

Hath taken twice the ring.] This amusement generally made a part of the court entertainments in those active days. A ring of small diameter was suspended by a riband from a kind of traverse beam of which the horizontal beam moved on a swivel. At this the competitors rode, with their spear couched, at full speed. The object was to carry off the ring on the point of the spear, which was a matter of some nicety: the usual reward of the victor was an ornamented wreath from the lady of the day.

LXXXV.

AN EPIGRAM

TO THE HOUSEHOLD, MDCXXX.*

ZHAT can the cause be, when the king hath given

His poet sack, the Household will not pay?
Are they so scanted in their store? or driven
For want of knowing the poet, to say him nay?
Well, they should know him, would the king but grant
His poet leave to sing his Household true;
He'd frame such ditties of their store and want,
Would make the very Green-cloth to look blue :

And rather wish in their expense of sack,
So the allowance from the king to use,
As the old bard should no canary lack;

'Twere better spare a butt, than spill his muse. For in the genius of a poet's verse,

The king's fame lives. Go now, deny his tierce !5

It is said by the anonymous author of a little collection of "Poems, by Nobody must know whom," (and who nevertheless every body may know to be John Eliot) that this Epigram was thought too severe by the board of green-cloth, and that Ben therefore wrote a second, in a smoother style, and with better success. "You swore, dear Ben, you'd turn 'the green-cloth blue' If your dry muse might not be bath'd in sack; This with those fearless lords nothing prevailing, The scene you alter'd," &c. p. 26.

This poor man, who seems to be a kind of counterpart of Fenner (vol. vii. p. 414), affects to be familiar with Jonson, and styles himself his friend, a title to which he proves his claim somewhat after the manner of Jonson's other "friend," Drummond of Hawthornden, by yelping at him.

5 Go now, deny his tierce.] Of wine; part of his salary as poet laureat. WHAL.

This was the second to which the poet was entitled. The Household quickly fell into arrears in those days.

LXXXVI.

AN EPIGRAM

TO A FRIEND, AND SON.

ON, and my friend, I had not call'd you so
To me; or been the same to you, if show,
Profit, or chance had made us: but I know,
What, by that name, we each to other owe,
Freedom and truth; with love from those begot:
Wise-crafts, on which the flatterer ventures not.
His is more safe commodity or none :
Nor dares he come in the comparison.
But as the wretched painter, who so ill
Painted a dog, that now his subtler skill
Was, t' have a boy stand with a club, and fright
All live dogs from the lane, and his shop's sight,
Till he had sold his piece, drawn so unlike:
So doth the flatterer with fair cunning strike
At a friend's freedom, proves all circling means
To keep him off; and howsoe'er he gleans
Some of his forms, he lets him not come near
Where he would fix, for the distinction's fear;
For as at distance few have faculty

To judge; so all men coming near, can spy ;
Though now of flattery, as of picture, are
More subtle works, and finer pieces far,
Than knew the former ages; yet to life
All is but web and painting; be the strife
Never so great to get them: and the ends,
Rather to boast rich hangings, than rare friends.

ADDITIONAL NOTES.