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PROLOGUE TO AURENG-ZEBE, OR THE GREAT
MOGUL; 16751.

Our author by experience finds it true,

'Tis much more hard to please himself than you;
And, out of no feigned modesty, this day

Damns his laborious trifle of a play;

Not that it's worse than what before he writ,
But he has now another taste of wit;

And, to confess a truth, though out of time,
Grows weary of his long-loved mistress, Rhyme.
Passion's too fierce to be in fetters bound,
And Nature flies him like enchanted ground:
What verse can do he has performed in this,
Which he presumes the most correct of his ;
But spite of all his pride, a secret shame
Invades his breast at Shakespeare's sacred name:
Awed when he hears his godlike Romans rage,
He in a just despair would quit the stage;
And to an age less polished, more unskilled,
Does with disdain the foremost honours yield.
As with the greater dead he dares not strive,
He would not match his verse with those who live:
Let him retire, betwixt two ages cast,

The first of this and hindmost of the last.
A losing gamester, let him sneak away;
He bears no ready money from the play.
The fate which governs poets thought it fit
He should not raise his fortunes by his wit.
The clergy thrive, and the litigious bar;
Dull heroes fatten with the spoils of war:

All southern vices, Heaven be praised, are here;

But wit's a luxury you think too dear.

Aureng-Zebe, the last of Dryden's tragedies in rhyme, was produced at the Theatre Royal. Our neighbours' in line 37 refers to the rival house m Dorset Garden,

When you to cultivate the plant are loth,
'Tis a shrewd sign 'twas never of your growth:
And wit in northern climates will not blow,
Except, like orange trees, 'tis housed from snow.
There needs no care to put a playhouse down,
'Tis the most desert place of all the town:
We and our neighbours, to speak proudly, are,
Like monarchs, ruined with expensive war;
While, like wise English, unconcerned you sit,
And see us play the tragedy of Wit.

TO THE PIOUS MEMORY OF THE ACCOMPLISHED YOUNG LADY MRS. ANNE KILLIGREW1, EXCELLENT IN THE TWO SISTER ARTS OF POESY AND PAINTING. AN ODE. 1686.

Thou youngest virgin-daughter of the skies,
Made in the last promotion of the blest;
Whose palms, new plucked from Paradise,
In spreading branches more sublimely rise,

Rich with immortal green above the rest:
Whether, adopted to some neighbouring star,
Thou roll'st above us in thy wandering race,
Or in procession fixed and regular
Moved with the heaven's majestic pace,
Or called to more superior bliss,

Thou tread'st with seraphims the vast abyss:
Whatever happy region be thy place,
Cease thy celestial song a little space;

Thou wilt have time enough for hymns divine,

Since Heaven's eternal year is thine.

Hear then a mortal Muse thy praise rehearse,

In no ignoble verse,

She was of a
Dryden's Ode

1 Anne Killigrew, maid of honour to the Duchess of York, died of the small-pox in 1685, in the twenty-fifth year of her age. literary family, and herself a poetess as well as a painter. was prefixed to a posthumous edition of her poems.

But such as thy own voice did practise here,
When thy first fruits of poesy were given,
To make thyself a welcome inmate there;
While yet a young probationer,

And candidate of Heaven.

If by traduction' came thy mind,
Our wonder is the less to find
A soul so charming from a stock so good;
Thy father was transfused into thy blood :
So wert thou born into the tuneful strain,
(An early, rich, and inexhausted vein.)
But if thy pre-existing soul

Was formed at first with myriads more,

It did through all the mighty poets roll
Who Greek or Latin laurels wore,

And was that Sappho last, which once it was before.
If so, then cease thy flight, O heaven-born mind!
Thou hast no dross to purge from thy rich ore:
Nor can thy soul a fairer mansion find

Than was the beautious frame she left behind:
Return, to fill or mend the quire of thy celestial kind.

May we presume to say that, at thy birth,

New joy was sprung in heaven as well as here on earth?
For sure the milder planets did combine

On thy auspicious horoscope to shine,

And even the most malicious were in trine.

Thy brother-angels at thy birth

Strung each his lyre, and tuned it high,
That all the people of the sky

Might know a poetess was born on earth;
And then, if ever, mortal ears

1 traduction

Had heard the music of the spheres.

=

derivation from one of the same kind (Johnson). 'trine, the conjunction of three planets in the three angles of a triangle.

And if no clustering swarm of bees

On thy sweet mouth distilled their golden dew, 'Twas that such vulgar miraclēs

Heaven had not leisure to renew:

For all the blest fraternity of love
Solemnized there thy birth, and kept thy holiday above

O gracious God! how far have we
Profaned thy heavenly gift of Poesy!
Made prostitute and profligate the Muse,
Debased to each obscene and impious use,
Whose harmony was first ordained above,
For tongues of angels and for hymns of love!
Oh wretched we! why were we hurried down
This lubric and adulterate age,

(Nay, added fat pollutions of our own,)

To increase the steaming ordures of the stage ? What can we say to excuse our second fall? Let this thy Vestal, Heaven, atone for all: Her Arethusian stream remains unsoiled, Unmixed with foreign filth and undefiled;

Her wit was more than man, her innocence a child.

Art she had none, yet wanted none,
For Nature did that want supply:

So rich in treasures of her own,

She might our boasted stores defy:

Such noble vigour did her verse adorn

That it seemed borrowed, where 'twas only born.

Her morals too were in her bosom bred,

By great examples daily fed,

What in the best of books, her father's life, she read.

And to be read herself she need not fear;

Each test and every light her Muse will bear,

Though Epictetus with his lamp were there.

Even love (for love sometimes her Muse exprest), Was but a lambent flame which played about her breast; Light as the vapours of a morning dream,

So cold herself, whilst she such warmth exprest, 'Twas Cupid bathing in Diana's stream.

Born to the spacious empire of the Nine,

One would have thought she should have been content
To manage well that mighty government;

But what can young ambitious souls confine?
To the next realm she stretched her sway,
For Painture near adjoining lay,

A plenteous province and alluring prey.
A Chamber of Dependences was framed,
(As conquerors will never want pretence,
When armed, to justify the offence),

And the whole fief in right of Poetry she claimed.
The country open lay without defence;

For poets frequent inroads there had made,
And perfectly could represent

The shape, the face, with every lineament,

And all the large domains which the dumb Sister swayed;
All bowed beneath her government,

Received in triumph whereso'er she went.
Her pencil drew whate'er her soul designed,

And oft the happy draught surpassed the image in her mind.
The sylvan scenes of herds and flocks
And fruitful plains and barren rocks;
Of shallow brooks that flowed so clear,
The bottom did the top appear;
Of deeper too and ampler floods
Which, as in mirrors, showed the woods;
Of lofty trees, with sacred shades
And perspectives of pleasant glades,
Where nymphs of brightest form appear,
And shaggy satyrs standing near,
Which them at once admire and fear.

The ruins too of some majestic piece,
Boasting the power of ancient Rome or Greece,
Whose statues, friezes, columns, broken lie,

And, though defaced, the wonder of the eye;

1 Painture (peinture) and picture are both used in the sense of ‘ 'painting' by Dryden.