Where crowds can wink, and no offence be known, Yet fame deserv'd no enemy can grudge; With more discerning eyes, or hands more clean; Oh! had he been content to serve the crown Or had the rankness of the soil been freed 1 "Character of Lord Shaftesbury."-Anthony Ashley Cooper, first Earl of Shaftesbury, a mercurial and ambitious man, not very well principled where power was to be obtained, but not indisposed to be just and patriotic when possessed of it. Even the famous reply which he is said to have made to a banter of Charles the Second, contained a sort of impudent aspiration, which must have at once disconcerted and delighted the merry monarch; for it implied that his majesty and he stood in a very remarkable state of relationship. The King. Shaftesbury, I believe thou art the wickedest dog in my dominions. Shaftesbury (with a bow). May it please your majesty, of a subject, I believe I am." "Great wits to madness surely are allied, The truth of this striking couplet may seem to be exemplified in the history of Swift and others; but it is not the greatness of the wit that is allied to the madness; it is the weakness or violence of the will. Rabelais was no madman, Molière was none, Sterne was none, Butler none, Horace, Aristophanes, Ariosto, Berni, Voltaire, Shakspeare, Cervantes. The greater the wit, for the most part, the healthier the understanding, because it is thoroughly wisest and well-balanced. Some physical irregularity • A Jewish word for judge. Shaftesbury had been Lord Chancellor. or accident is generally at the bottom of the madness of men of genius. Lee was a drinker, and used to lie at night in the streets. Swift had a diseased blood. Poor Collins probably got the seeds of his malady in the gay life he once led "about town," a very unfit one for his sensitive and sequestered turn of mind. Cowper was driven mad through an excessive delicacy of organization frightened by Methodism; instead of being soothed, as it ought to have been, by the liberal opinions natural to his heart and good sense. "To that unfeather'd two-legg'd thing, a son."-Father of the third Earl of Shaftesbury, the philosopher; who with all his philosophy never forgave Dryden this attack on the parental insignificance. 1 CHARACTER OF THE DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM. From the same poem. A numerous host of dreaming saints succeed, 'Gainst form and order they their power employ, Was everything by starts, and nothing long ; George Villiers, second Duke of Buckingham, son of the favorite of James and Charles the First. But, in the course of one revolving moon, Was chemist, fiddler, statesman, and buffoon; That every man with him was God or Devil. Beggar'd by fools whom still he found too late, He laugh'd himself from court; then sought relief Thus, wicked but in will, of means bereft, 1" Character of the Duke of Buckingham."-The duke intrigued against a giddy and unprincipled court out of pure similarity of disposition. Dryden's attack on him was partly in payment for offence received in the critical comedy of The Rehearsal. His Grace was very angry, and replied in a wretched pamphlet, which is forgotten.-See the interesting notes on Walter Scott's edition of Dryden, vol. ix., p. 272. 2" He left not faction, but of that was left."-See, in the present volume, the rival portrait of Buckingham from the hand of Pope. FOPPERIES OF THE TIME. (Being the Epilogue to Etherege's "MAN OF More, or SIR FOPLING FLUTTER." Most modern wits such monstrous fools have shown, Those nauseous harlequins in farce may pass, But there goes more to a substantial ass : Something of man must be expos'd to view, The ladies would mistake him for a wit, And when he sings, talks loud, and cocks,* would cry, "I vow, methinks, he's pretty company;" So brisk, so gay, so travell'd, so refin'd, As he took pains to graff upon his kind. True fops help Nature's work, and go to school, And, rolling o'er you, like a snow-ball grows. One taught the toss, and one the new French wallow. And this, the yard-long snake he twirls behind t Which wind ne'er blew, nor touch of hat profan'd. Another's diving bow he did adore, Which, with a shog, casts all the hair before; And rises with a water-spaniel shake. As for his songs, the ladies' dear delight, For no one fool is hunted from the herd. THE CATHOLIC AND PROTESTANT CLERGY. From the "HIND AND THE Panther." A plain good man whose name is understood Videlicet, his hat. I know not what he means by this. James II.-Dryden was at this time a Catholic His house with all convenience was purvey'd The rest he found, but rais'd the fabric where he pray'd. Nor did their alms extend to those alone, Whom common faith more strictly made their own Another farm he had behind his house, (A cruise of water and an ear of corn),1 This age knew better than to fast and pray. The Catholic chapel set up by James in Whitehall. The clergy of the Church of England. It is amusing to see them re. presented as living on the "alms" of the barely tolerated king The Catholic clergy maintained by the king. |