Why should we then suspect or fear
The influences of a year?

So smiles upon us the first morn,
And speaks us good as soon as born.
Pox on 't! the last was ill enough,
This cannot but make better proof;
Or at the worst, as we brushed through
The last, why so we may this too;
And then the next in reason shou'd
Be superexcellently good :
For the worst ills, we daily see,
Have no more perpetuity

Than the best fortunes that do fall;
Which also brings us wherewithall
Longer their being to support,
Than those do of the other sort :

And who has one good year in three,
And yet repines at destiny,
Appears ingrateful in the case,
And merits not the good he has.
Then let us welcome the new guest
With lusty brimmers of the best :
Mirth always should good-fortune meet,
And renders e'en disaster sweet;

And though the Princess turn her back,
Let us but line ourselves with sack,
We better shall by far hold out
Till the next year she face about.

The Princess is Fortune.

Invitation to Izaak Walton, then in his eighty-
third year, to come to him at Beresford.
Whilst in this cold and blustering clime,
Where bleak winds howl, and tempests roar,
We pass away the roughest time

Has been of many years before;

Whilst from the most tempestuous nooks The chillest blasts our peace invade, And by great rains our smallest brooks Are almost navigable made;

Whilst all the ills are so improved

Of this dead quarter of the year,

That even you, so much beloved,

We would not now wish with us here:

In this estate, I say, it is

Some comfort to us to suppose, That in a better clime than this,

You, our dear friend, have more repose;

And some delight to me the while,

Though Nature now does weep in rain, To think that I have seen her smile, And haply I may do again.

If the all-ruling Power please
We live to see another May,
We'll recompense an age of these
Foul days in one fine fishing-day.

We then shall have a day or two,
Perhaps a week, wherein to try
What the best master's hand can do
With the most deadly killing fly.

A day with not too bright a beam;
A warm but not a scorching sun;
A southern gale to curl the stream ;
And, Master, half our work is done.
Then whilst behind some bush we wait
The scaly people to betray,
We'll prove it just, with treacherous bait
To make the preying trout our prey;
And think ourselves in such an hour
Happier than those, though not so high,
Who like leviathans devour

Of meaner men the smaller fry.

This, my best friend, at my poor home, Shall be our pastime and our theme; But then, should you not deign to come, You make all this a flattering dream.

A Welsh Guide.

The sun in the morning disclosed his light,
With complexion as ruddy as mine overnight;
And o'er th' eastern mountains peeping up 's head,
The casement being open, espied me in bed;
With his rays he so tickled my lids, I awaked,
And was half ashamed, for I found myself naked;
But up I soon start, and was dressed in a trice,
And called for a draught of ale, sugar, and spice;
Which having turned off, I then call to pay,
And packing my nawls, whipt to horse, and away.
A guide I had got who demanded great vails,
For conducting me over the mountains of Wales:
Twenty good shillings, which sure very large is;
Yet that would not serve, but I must bear his charges;
And yet for all that, rode astride on a beast,
The worst that e'er went on three legs, I protest;
It certainly was the most ugly of jades;

His hips and his rump made a right ace of spades;
His sides were two ladders, well spur-galled withal;
His neck was a helve, and his head was a mall;
For his colour, my pains and your trouble I 'll spare,
For the creature was wholly denuded of hair;
And except for two things as bare as my nail,
A tuft of a mane, and a sprig of a tail. . .
Now such as the beast was, even such was the rider,
With a head like a nutmeg, and legs like a spider;
A voice like a cricket, a look like a rat,

The brains of a goose, and the heart of a cat ;
Ev'n such was my guide and his beast; let them pass,
The one for a horse, and the other an ass.

(From the Voyage to Ireland.)

A nawl is for an awl, by misapprehension (as in a newt for an ewt), and awis is a pun for alls; vails, gifts to servants; kelve, handle; mall, mallet, hammer-head.

The Retirement.

Farewell, thou busie world, and may
We never meet again;

Here I can eat, and sleep, and pray,
And do more good in one short day
Than he who his whole age outwears
Upon the most conspicuous theatres,

Where nought but vice and vanity do reign.

Good God, how sweet are all things here!
How beautifull the fields appear!
How cleanly do we feed and lie!

Lord, what good hours do we keep !
How quietly we sleep!

What peace, what unanimity!

How innocent from the lewd fashion,

Is all our business, all our conversation! . .

How calm and quiet a delight

Is it alone

To read, and meditate, and write,

By none offended, and offending none!

To walk, ride, sit, or sleep at one's own ease,
And, pleasing a man's self, none other to displease.

Oh, my beloved nymph, fair Dove,
Princess of rivers, how I love
Upon thy flowery banks to lie,

And view thy silver stream,

When gilded by a summer's beam!
And in it all thy wanton fry,
Playing at liberty;

And with my angle upon them,

The all of treachery

I ever learned, to practise and to try!

Such streams Rome's yellow Tiber cannot shew;
The Iberian Tagus, nor Ligurian Po,
The Meuse, the Danube, and the Rhine,
Are puddle-water all compared with thine;
And Loire's pure streams yet too polluted are
With thine, much purer, to compare ;
The rapid Garonne and the winding Seine
Are both too mean,

Beloved Dove, with thee

To vie priority;

Nay, Thame and Isis, when conjoined, submit,
And lay their trophies at thy silver feet.

Lord, would men let me alone,

What an over-happy one

Should I think myself to be;

Might I in this desert place,

Which most men by their voice disgrace,
Live but undisturbed and free!

Here in this despised recess
Would I, maugre winter's cold,

And the summer's worst excess,

Try to live out to sixty full years old;
And all the while,

Without an envious eye
On any thriving under Fortune's smile,
Contented live, and then contented die.

(From Stanzes Irreguliers, to Mr Izaak Walton.)

The Earl of Roscommon (WENTWORTH DILLON; c. 1633-85), nephew and godson of the famous Earl of Strafford, was born in Ireland while his uncle was Lord-Deputy there. During the Civil War he studied at Caen and travelled in France, Germany, and Italy; and returning soon after the Restoration, was reinstated in his large Irish possessions, and received appointments in the household of the Duke of York. Roscommon,

though addicted to gambling, cultivated literature, and produced a poetical Essay on Translated Verse, translations from Horace's Art of Poetry, from Virgil, Lucan, and Guarini, and a few occasional verses of his own, such as prologues and epilogues

to plays, verses 'On the Death of a Lady's Dog,' and an address by the ghost of the old House of Commons to the new one. He was buried in Westminster Abbey. At the moment in which he expired,' says Johnson, he uttered, with an energy of voice that expressed the most fervent devotion, two lines of his own version of Dies Ira: My God, my Father, and my Friend, Do not forsake me in my end!'

The Essay on Translated Verse, in which he inculcates in didactic poetry the rational principles of translation previously laid down by Cowley and Denham, was published in 1681; it is noteworthy that he commends the sixth book of Paradise Lost, published only four years before, for its sublimity. Dryden heaped on Roscommon the most lavish praise; and Pope, who with some truth said that In all Charles's days

Roscommon only boasts unspotted bays, declared that 'every author's merit was his own.' Posterity has not confirmed the last judgment; Roscommon explicitly condemned indecency in verse as bad taste and lack of sense, and is much less immoral than most of his contemporaries, but, like Denham, is elegant and sensible, cold and unimpassioned.

From the Essay on Translated Verse.'
Take then a subject proper to expound,
But moral, great, and worth a poet's voice;
For men of sense despise a trivial choice:
And such applause it must expect to meet,
As would some painter busy in a street
To copy bulls and bears, and every sign
That calls the staring sots to nasty wine.
Yet 'tis not all to have a subject good;
It must delight us when 'tis understood.
He that brings fulsome objects to my view
(As many old have done, and many new)
With nauseous images my fancy fills,
And all goes down like oxymel of squills.
Instruct the listening world how Maro sings
Of useful subjects and of lofty things.
These will such true, such bright ideas raise,
As merit gratitude, as well as praise.
But foul descriptions are offensive still,
Either for being like or being ill.

For who without a qualm hath ever looked
On holy garbage, though by Homer cooked?
Whose railing heroes, and whose wounded gods,
Make some suspect he snores as well as nods.
But I offend; Virgil begins to frown,
And Horace looks with indignation down:
My blushing Muse with conscious fear retires,
And whom they like implicitly admires.

On sure foundations let your fabric rise,
And with attractive majesty surprise;
Not by affected meretricious arts,
But strict harmonious symmetry of parts;
Which through the whole insensibly must pass
With vital heat, to animate the mass:

A pure, an active, an auspicious flame,

Virgil

And bright as heaven, from whence the blessing came.

But few, few spirits pre-ordained by fate,
The race of gods, have reached that envied height.
No rebel Titans' sacrilegious crime,

By heaping hills on hills, can hither climb:

The grisly ferryman of hell denied
Æneas entrance, till he knew his guide.
How justly then will impious mortals fall,

Whose pride would soar to heaven without a call!
Pride, of all others the most dangerous fault,
Proceeds from want of sense, or want of thought..
I pity from my soul unhappy men,
Compelled by want to prostitute the pen ;
Who must, like lawyers, either starve or plead,
And follow, right or wrong, where guineas lead!
But you, Pompilian, wealthy pampered heirs,
Who to your country owe your swords and cares;
Let no vain hope your easy mind seduce,
For rich ill poets are without excuse;
'Tis very dangerous tampering with the Muse;
The profit's small, and you have much to lose ;
For though true wit adorns your birth or place,
Degenerate lines degrade the attainted race.
No poet any passion can excite,

But what they feel transport them when they write.

Part of his Version of the 'Dies Iræ.'
That day of wrath, that dreadful day,
Shall the whole world in ashes lay,
As David and the Sibyls say.

What horror will invade the mind,

When the strict Judge, who would be kind,
Shall have few venial faults to find!

The last loud trumpet's wondrous sound
Shall through the rending tombs rebound,
And wake the nations under ground.
Nature and Death shall, with surprise,
Behold the pale offender rise,

And view the Judge with conscious eyes.

Then shall, with universal dread,
The sacred mystic book be read,

To try the living and the dead.

The Judge ascends his awful throne;
He makes each secret sin be known,
And all with shame confess their own.

O then, what interest shall I make
To save my last important stake,
When the most just have cause to quake?

Sir Charles Sedley (c. 1639–1701) was one of the brightest satellites of the court of Charles II. -as witty and gallant as Rochester, hardly less notorious for dissipation of all kinds, and with something of the same gift as a writer. He was the son of a Kentish baronet, Sir John Sedley (or Sidley) of Aylesford. The Restoration drew him to London, and he became such a favourite for his taste and accomplishments that Charles is said to have asked him if he had not obtained from Nature a patent to be Apollo's viceroy. His estate, his time, and whatever character he had were squandered at court; but latterly the poet largely redeemed himself, attended Parliament, and pro

moted or at least acquiesced in the Revolution. James had made Sedley's daughter his mistress, and created her Countess of Dorchester. 'I hate ingratitude,' said the witty Sedley; as the king has made my daughter a countess, I will endeavour to make his daughter a queen '—this is one form of the anecdote. Sir Charles wrote plays, occasional poems, and songs, which were all extravagantly praised by his contemporaries. Buckingham eulogised the 'witchcraft' of Sedley, and Rochester spoke of his 'gentle prevailing art.' Dryden called him the Tibullus of his age: Lisideius' in 'The Essay of Dramatic Poesy' is a sort of anagram of his name Latinised (Sidleius, for he sometimes spelt himself Sidley). The plays (two tragedies and three comedies) are sometimes in prose, in couplets, or a combination of the two, sometimes in blank verse; the best, Bellamira, is founded on Terence, as Molière is the original of The Mulberry Garden. His political pamphlets, speeches, and essays are in excellent prose. His songs are light and graceful, felicitous in diction, and at times sound a truer note of passion than is usual with the court-poets.

His best-known song, 'Phillis is my only joy,' owes something of its continued popularity to the melody to which it is set; another is-

Get you gone, you will undo me;
If you love me, don't pursue me.

To Celia.

Not, Celia, that I juster am,

Or better than the rest;

For I would change each hour like them

Were not my heart at rest.

But I am tied to very thee,

By every thought I have;
Thy face I only care to see,
Thy heart I only crave.

All that in woman is adored
In thy dear self I find ;
For the whole sex can but afford
The handsome and the kind.

Why then should I seek further store
And still make love anew;
When change itself can give no more,
'Tis easy to be true.

To Chloris.

Ah! Chloris, that now could sit
As unconcerned as when
Your infant beauty could beget
No pleasure, nor no pain.
When I the dawn used to admire,

And praised the coming day,

I little thought the growing fire
Must take my rest away.

Your charms in harmless childhood lay
Like metals in the mine;
Age from no face took more away,

Than youth concealed in thine.

But as your charms insensibly

To their perfection prest,
Fond love as unperceived did fly,
And in my bosom rest.

My passion with your beauty grew,
And Cupid at my heart,
Still as his mother favoured you,
Threw a new flaming dart.

Each gloried in their wanton part:
To make a lover, he
Employed the utmost of his art;
To make a beauty, she.

Though now I slowly bend to love,
Uncertain of my fate,

If your fair self my chains approve, I shall my freedom hate.

Lovers, like dying men, may well

At first disordered be,

Since none alive can truly tell
What fortune they must see.

Love like the Sea.

Love still has something of the sea,
From whence his mother rose ;

No time his slaves from doubt can free,
Nor give their thoughts repose.

They are becalmed in clearest days,
And in rough weather tost;

They wither under cold delays,
Or are in tempests lost.

One while they seem to touch the port,

Then straight into the main

Some angry wind, in cruel sport,
The vessel drives again.

At first disdain and pride they fear,
Which if they chance to 'scape,
Rivals and falsehood soon appear
In a more dreadful shape.

By such degrees to joy they come,
And are so long withstood;
So slowly they receive the sum,
It hardly does them good.

'Tis cruel to prolong a pain ;
And to defer a joy,
Believe me, gentle Celimene,
Offends the winged boy.

A hundred thousand oaths your fears
Perhaps would not remove;
And if I gazed a thousand years,
I could no deeper love.

To Phillis.

Phillis, men say that all my vows

Are to thy fortune paid; Alas! my heart he little knows, Who thinks my love a trade. Were I of all these woods the lord, One berry from thy hand More solid pleasure would afford Than all my large command.

My humble love has learned to live
On what the nicest maid
Without a conscious blush can give
Beneath the myrtle shade.

Of costly food it hath no need,
And nothing will devour;
But like the harmless bee can feed,
And not impair the flower.

A spotless innocence like thine
May such a flame allow;

Yet thy fair name for ever shine
As doth thy beauty now.

I heard thee wish my lambs might stray
Safe from the fox's power,

Though every one become his prey,

I'm richer than before!

cated at Burford school and Wadham College, Oxford, he travelled in France and Italy, and on his return repaired to court, where his elegant person and lively wit soon made him a prominent figure. In 1665 he was at sea with the Earl of Sandwich and Sir Edward Spragge, and distinguished himself for bravery, in the heat of an engagement carrying a message in an open boat amidst a storm of shot. This manliness of character must have forsaken him in England, if he really betrayed cowardice? in street-quarrels, and refused to fight with the Duke of Buckingham.

Handsome, accomplished, witty, and with a remarkable charm of manner, he became a prime favourite of the king, though he often quarrelled with him. In Charles's profligate court, Rochester was the most profligate; his intrigues, his low amours and disguises, his erecting a stage and playing the mountebank on Tower-hill, were notorious; he himself affirmed to Bishop Burnet that ‘for five years together he was continually drunk.’ Yet his domestic letters show him in a different light-tender, playful, and alive to all the affections of a husband, a father, and a son.' When his health was ruined and death approached, the brilliant, reckless profligate repented; Bishop Burnet, who was his spiritual guide on his deathbed, believed his repentance was sincere and unreserved. He was probably one of those whose vices are less the effect of an inborn tendency than of external corrupting circumstances; 'nothing in his life became him like the leaving it.'

Some of his wittiest verses are the most objectionable. Of the rest, among the best Johnson ranked an imitation of Horace, the verses to Lord Mulgrave, a satire against mankind, and the poem Upon Nothing, which is an ingenious series of paradoxes, conceits, and puns on nothing and something (see page 786).

Nothing! thou elder brother ev'n to shade,
Thou hadst a being ere the world was made,
And, well fixt, art alone of ending not afraid.

towards thee they bend,

Flow swiftly into thee, and in thee ever end.

The Satyr against Mankind sounds sufficiently misanthropic, beginning:

Were I, who to my cost already am

One of those strange, prodigious creatures, man,
Spirit-free to chuse for my own share

What sort of flesh and blood I pleas'd to wear,
I'd be a monkey, dog, or bear,

Or any thing but that vain animal
Who is so proud of being rational.

And after showing the worthlessness of reason

And 'tis this very reason I despise,
This supernatural gift that makes a mite
Think he's the image of the Infinite-

holds it proved that

For all his pride and his philosophy
"Tis evident beasts are in their degree

As wise at least and better far than he. Horace Walpole said: 'Lord Rochester's poems have more obscenity than wit, more wit than poetry, more poetry than politeness.' But many of them are eminently witty; a few of the lyrics are full of true poetry, or touch a high poetical level. Some of the smoothest and most rhythmical are obviously artificial; here and there is a note of convincing passion. The satires are vivid but gross. The courtier did not spare his master's vices or his master's mistresses: 'A merry monarch, scandalous and poor,' is a royal character summed up in a line. Here lies our sovereign lord the King, Whose word no man relies on, Who never said a foolish thing,

Nor ever did a wise one

is a well-authenticated epitaph-epigram, and is by no means Rochester's frankest testimony to his patron's eccentricities.

Before his death Rochester expressed the wish that his indecent verses should be suppressed; but that very year these and many that he never wrote were published-ostensibly at Antwerp, really at London. Some of the worst poems attributed to him are really not his his loose life encouraged the attribution to him of all manner of licentious rhymes. The grossest editions were the most frequently reprinted; the edition of 1691, issued by his friends, contained nothing very startling, but was less popular. His tragedy of Valentinian was but a poor adaptation of Beaumont and Fletcher's.

Love and Murder.

While on those lovely looks I gaze,

To see a wretch pursuing,

In raptures of a bles'd amaze,

His pleasing happy ruin;

'Tis not for pity that I move;

His fate is too aspiring

Whose heart, broke with a load of love,
Dies wishing and admiring.

But if this murder you'd forego,
Your slave from death removing,
Let me your art of charming know,
Or learn you mine of loving.
But whether life or death betide,
In love 'tis equal measure;
The victor lives with empty pride,
The vanquish'd die with pleasure.

Constancy.

I cannot change as others do,
Though you unjustly scorn;

Since that poor swain that sighs for you

For you alone was born.

No, Phillis, no; your heart to move

A surer way I'll try;

And, to revenge my slighted love,

Will still love on, will still love on, and die.