то LORD CHANCELLOR HYDE. &c. THE great statesman, to whom Dryden made this new-year's offering, was the well known Earl of Clarendon, of whose administration Hume gives the following striking account : "Clarendon not only behaved with wisdom and justice in the office of chancellor: all the counsels, which he gave the king, tended equally to promote the interest of prince and people. Charles, accustomed, in his exile, to pay entire deference to the judgment of this faithful servant, continued still to submit to his direction; and for some time no minister was ever possessed of more absolute authority. He moderated the forward zeal of the royalists, and tempered their appetite for revenge. With the opposite party, he endeavoured to preserve, inviolate, all the king's engagements. He kept an exact register of the promises which had been made, for any service; and he employed all his industry to fulfil them." Notwithstanding the merits of Clarendon, and our author's prophecy in the following verses, that He had already wearied fortune so, She could no longer be his friend or foe; this great statesman was doomed to be one of the numberless victims to the uncertainty of court favour. His fall took place in 1667, when he was attainted and banished. The popular discontent was chiefly excited against him, by a groundless charge of corruption; an accusation to which the vulgar lend a greedy and implicit faith, because ignorance is always suspicious, and low minds, not knowing how seldom avarice is the companion of ambition, conceive the opportunities of peculation to be not only numerous, but irresistibly tempting. Accordingly, the heroes of Athens, as well as the patriots of Rome, were usually stigmatized with this crime; bare suspicion of which, it would seem, is usually held adequate to the fullest proof. Nor have instances been wanting in our own days, of a party adopting the same mode, to blacken the character of those, whose firmness and talents impeded their access to power, and public confidence. In the address to the Chancellor, Dryden has indulged his ingenuity in all the varied and prolonged comparisons and conceits, which were the taste of his age. Johnson has exemplified Dryden's capacity of producing these elaborate trifles, by referring to the passage, which compares the connection between the king and his minister, to the visible horizon. "It is," says he, 66 So successfully laboured, that though at last it gives the mind more perplexity than pleasure, and seems hardly worth the study that it costs; yet it must be valued, as the proof of a mind at once subtle and comprehensive." The following couplet, referring to the friendship of Charles I, when in his distresses, for Clarendon, contains a comparison, which is eminently happy: Our setting sun, from his declining seat, Shot beams of kindness on you, not of heat. In general, this poem displays more uniform adherence to the metaphysical style of Cowley, and his contemporaries, than occurs in any of Dryden's other compositions. May we not suppose, that, in addressing Clarendon, he adopted the style of those muses, with whom the Chancellor had conversed in his earlier days, in preference to the plainer and more correct taste, which Waller, and Denham, had begun to introduce; but which, to the aged statesman, could have brought no recollection of what he used to consider as poetry? Certain, at least, it is, that, to use the strong language of Johnson, Dryden never after ventured "to bring on the anvil such stubborn and unmanageable thoughts;" and these lines afford striking evidence, how the lever of genius, like that of machinery applied to material substances, can drag together, and compel the approximation of the most unsociable ideas Our admiration of both, however, is much qualified, when they are applied rather to make exhibition of their own powers, than for any better purpose. то THE LORD-CHANCELLOR HYDE. PRESENTED ON NEW-YEAR'S-DAY, 1662. MY LORD, WHILE flattering crouds officiously appear Thus once, when Troy was wrapped in fire and smoke, The helpless gods their burning shrines forsook; In open prospect nothing bounds our eye, That, though your orbs of different greatness be, And his mild father (who too late did find All mercy vain but what with power was joined) Not to increase, but to absolve our crimes: (Too great for any subject to retain) Yet, passing through your hands, it gathers more, Hide what they give, and cure but by a cheat; Our setting sun, from his declining seat, Thus, those first favours you received, were sent, |