DR. HENRY KING.

(Born, 1592. Died, 1669. )

Dr. Henry King was chaplain to James the First, and Bishop of Chichester

DR. ROBERT WILDE

A COMPLAINT OF A LEARNED DIVINE IN PURITAN TIMES.

ARE these the strings that poets feign

Taking a fall that may untie
Have clear'd the air and calm’d the main ? Eight of nine lives, and let them fly.
Charm'd wolves, and from the mountain crests Or may the midnight embers singe
Made forests dance, with all their beasts? Thy dainty coat, or Jane beswinge
Could these neglected shreds you see
Inspire a lute of ivory,
And make it speak ? oh then think what

What, was there ne'er a rat nor mouse,
Hath been committed by my cat !

Nor buttery ope ; nought in the house Who, in the silence of the night,

But harmless lute-strings, could suffice Hath gnawn these cords, and marr’d them quite, Thy paunch, and draw thy glaring eyes ? Leaving such relics as may be

Did not thy conscious stomach find
For frets, not for my lute, but me,

Nature profaned, that kind with kind
Puss, I will curse thee ! may'st thou dwell Should stanch his hunger ? think on that,
With some dry hermit in a cell,

Thou cannibal and cyclops cat!
Where rat ne'er peep'd, where mouse ne'er fed, For know, thou wretch, that every string
And Alies go supperless to bed ;

Is a cat's gut which art doth bring
Or with some close-pared brother, where

Into a thread ; and now suppose Thou’lt fast each sabbath in the year ;

Dunstan, that snuff'd the devil's nose, Or else, profane, be hang’d on Monday,

Should bid these strings revive, as once For butchering a mouse on Sunday.

He did the calf from naked bones; Or may'st thou tumble from some tower,

Or I, to plague thee for thy sin, And miss to light upon all-four,

Should draw a circle, and begin

For a strange sight; puss should be sung
In lousy ballads' midst the throng,
At markets, with as good a grace
As Agincourt, or Chevy Chace.
The Troy-sprung Briton would forego
His pedigree, he chanteth so,
And sing that Merlin (long deceased)
Return'd is in a nine-lived beast.

To conjure, for I am, look to't,
An Oxford scholar, and can do't.
Then with three sets of mops and mows,
Seven of odd words, and motley shows,
A thousand tricks that may be taken
From Faustus, Lambe, or Friar Bacon ;
I should begin to call my strings
My catlings, and my minikins ;
And they re-catted, straight should fall
To mew, to purr, to caterwaul;
From puss's belly, sure as death,
Puss should be an engastrumeth.
Puss should be sent for to the king,
For a strange bird or some rare thing.
Puss should be sought to far and near,
As she some cunning woman were.
Puss should be carried up and down,
From shire to shire, from town to town,
Like to the camel lean as hag,
The elephant, or apish nag,

Thus, puss, thou see'st what might betide thee;
But I forbear to hurt or chide thee.
For't may be puss was melancholy,
And so to make her blithe and jolly,
Finding these strings, she'd have a fit
Of mirth ; nay, puss, if that were it,
Thus I revenge me, that as thou
Hast play'd on them, I on thee now ;
And as thy touch was ning fine,
So I've but scratch'd these notes of mine.

JASPER MAYNE.

(Born, 1604 Died, 1672.)

Tuis writer has a cast of broad humour that

There, friend, there is is amusing, though prone to extravagance.

The A fare for you: I'm glad you 'scaped ; I had idea in The City Match of Captain Quartfield and

Not known the news so soon else. his boon companions exposing simple Timothy Dr. Mayne was a clergyman in Oxfordshire. dead drunk, and dressed up as a sea-monster for He lost his livings at the death of Charles I. and a show, is not indeed within the boundaries of became chaplain to the Earl of Devonshire, who either taste or credibility; but amends is made made him acquainted with Hobbes ; but the for it in the next scene, of old Warehouse and philosopher and poet are said to have been on Seathrift witnessing in disguise the joy of their no very agreeable terms. At the Restoration heirs at their supposed deaths. Among the many he was reinstated in his livings, made a canon of interviews of this nature by which comedy has Christ-church, archdeacon of Chichester, and sought to produce merriment and surprise, this chaplain in ordinary to the king. Besides the is not one of the worst managed. Plotwell's comedy of the City Match, he published a tragicool impudence is well supported, when he gives comedy called The Amorous War ; several sermoney to the waterman (who tells that he had mons ; dialogues from Lucian; and a pamphlet escaped by swimming at the time the old citizens on the Civil Wars. were drowned,)

FROM “ THE CITY MATCH,” ACT III. SCENE III.

A son and nephew receiving the news of a father's and an

uncle's death.

Persons-WAREHOUSE and SEATURIFT, tuo wealthy old

merchants in disguise ; Cypher the former's factor, dis-
guised as a waterman : PLOTWELL, nephew to WARE-
HOL'SE; Timothy, son to SEATHRIFT; CAPTAIN QUARTFIELD,
BRIGHT, and NEWCUT, companions of PLOTWELL.

PLACE:- A Tavern.
Cyph. Then I must tell the news to you 'tis sad.
Plot. I'll heart as sadly.

Cyph. Your uncle, sir, and Mr. Seathrift are
Both drown'd, some eight miles below Greenwich. |

Plot. Drown'a !

Cyph. They went i'th'tilt-boat, sir, and I was one
O'th' oars that row'd 'em; a coal-ship did o'er-run

us,
I 'scaped by swimming ; the two old gentlemen
Took hold of one another, and sunk together.
Bright. How some men's prayers are heard !

We did invoke
The sea this morning, and see the Thames has took

'em.
Plot. It cannot be; such good news, gentlemen,
Cannot be true.

Ware. "Tis very certain, sir;
Twas talk'd upon th’ Exchange.

The four famous lines on the Thames were an after

244

To graze the ranker mead On whose sublime and sha latare's great masterpiece breat things are made, bu Here are I seen the ki Gave leare to slacken and Arealed to the chase by of fresh, whose hopes a n Pasare with praise and d And web a foe that would The stag now conscious of Acae indulgent to his fe 1ste dark covert his rc

bere pof man's eye, por Es set repose ; when th' das and men his wake Resed with the noise, he Sim; to think th' illusion had given this false alarm ains that more than a Bernard in all his strength

estruinents, all arts of

als to mind his streng Na wierd heels, and ther Tall these t'avoid, with t bet irar prevails, and bid sust be flies, that his re Ei list the chasers, and rfing, till he finds their

Is there no temp’rate region can be known Though deep yet clear, though gentle yet not dull;
Betwixt their frigid and our torrid zone ?

Strong without rage, without o'erflowing full *.
Could we not wake from that lethargic dream, Heav'n her Eridanus no more shall boast,
But to be restless in a worse extreme?

Whose fame in thine, like lesser current, 's lost :
And for that lethargy was there no cure

Thy nobler streams shall visit Jove's abodes, But to be cast into a calenture ?

To shine among the stars, and bathe the gods. Can knowledge have no bound, but must advance Here Nature, whether more intent to please So far, to make us wish for ignorance,

Us for herself with strange varieties, And rather in the dark to grope our way,

(For things of wonder give no less delight Than led by a false guide to err by day?

To the wise Maker's than beholder's sight;
Who sees these dismal heaps but would demand Though these delights from several causes move,
What barbarous invader sack'd the land ?

For so our children, thus our friends, we love)
But when he hears no Goth, no Turk, did bring Wisely she knew the harmony of things,
This desolation, but a Christian king ;

As well as that of sounds, from discord springs.
When nothing but the name of zeal appears Such was the discord which did first disperse
"Twixt our best actions and the worst of theirs ; Form, order, beauty, through the universe ;
What does he think our sacrilege would spare, While dryness moisture, coldness heat resists,
When such th' effects of our devotions are ? All that we have, and that we are, subsists ;
Parting from thence 'twixt anger, shame, and While the steep horrid roughness of the wood
fear,

Strives with the gentle calmness of the flood,
Those for what's past, and this for what's too near, Such huge extremes when Nature doth unite,
My eye, descending from the Hill, surveys Wonder from thence results, from thence delight.
Where Thames among the wanton valleys strays. The stream is so transparent, pure, and clear,
Thames ! the most loved of all the Ocean's sons, That had the self-enamour'd youth gazed here,
By his old sire, to his embraces runs,

So fatally deceived he had not been,
Hasting to pay his tribute to the sea,

While he the bottom, not his face had seen. Like mortal life to meet eternity;

But his proud head the airy mountain hides Though with those streams he no resemblance

Among the clouds ; his shoulders and his sides
hold,

A shady mantle clothes ; his curled brows
Whose foam is amber, and their gravel gold * : Frown on the gentle stream, which calmly flows,
His genuine and less guilty wealth t explore, While winds and storms his lofty forehead beat ;
Search not his bottom, but survey his shore, The common fate of all that's high or great.
O'er which he kindly spreads his spacious wing, Low at his foot a spacious plain is placed,
And hatches plenty for th' ensuing spring ; Between the mountain and the stream embraced,
Nor then destroys it with too fond a stay,

Which shade and shelter from the Hill derives,
Like mothers which their infants overlay ; While the kind river wealth and beauty gives,
Nor with a sudden and impetuous wave,

And in the mixture of all these appears
Like profuse kings, resumes the wealth he gave. Variety, which all the rest endears.
No unexpected inundations spoil

This scene had some bold Greek or British bard
The mower's hopes, nor mock the ploughman's Beheld of old, what stories had we heard
toil ;

Of fairies, satyrs, and the nymphs their dames,
But godlike his unwearied bounty flows ;

Their feasts, their revels, and their am'rous flames!
First loves to do, then loves the good he does. 'Tis still the same, although their airy shape
Nor are his blessings to his banks confined, All but a quick poetic sight escape.
But free and common as the sea or wind;

There Faunus and Sylvanus keep their courts,
When he, to boast or to disperse his stores, And thither all the horned host resorts
Full of the tributes of his grateful shores,

(* Swift has ridiculed the herd of imitators of these Visits the world, and in his flying tow'rs

noble lines: Brings home to us, and makes both Indies ours ;

" If Anna's happy reign yon praise, Finds wealth where'tis, bestows it where it wants, Pray not a word of halcyon days! Cities in deserts, woods in cities, plants.

Nor let my votaries show their skill So that to us no thing, no place, is strange,

In'aping lines from Cooper's llill; While his fair bosom is the world's Exchange.

For, know I cannot bear to hear

The mimicry of deep yet clear.'”--Apollo's Edict. 0, could I flow like thee, and make thy stream

In this, one of the earliest of our descriptive poems, My great example, as it is my theme !

Denham from time to time made great alterations and

additions, and every insertion and every change was made (* Originally:

with admirable judgment. Pope collated his copy with And though his clearer sand no golden veins

an early edition, and marked the variations; thinking it, Like Tagus or Pactolus stream contains,

as he said in a note at the end of the volume, "a very

useful lesson for a poet to compare the editions, and conwhich we quote to make good the couplet in Waller: sider at each alteration how and why it was altered."

Poets lose half the praise they should have got,
Could it be known what they discreetly blot.)

insertion, and in Mr. Moore's opinion one of the happiest
of recorded instances.- Life of Byron, vol. ij. p. 193]

that disproportion'd spec la curses his conspiring Bem vi that safety which

za tries his friends; an. ere be wo lately

was o Ha skty seeks: the her

ses him from thenc Lát a deelining statesmar o Es Tiends' pity, and I na shame remembers, if the same herd, himself Thare to the coverts and Tu seines of his past trit i surveying where he Trace of the soil, and all And like a hold knight-er elet to all, and bore & stacght the woods to Ez dadul challenge, a

now declines

lahatly

si sach his love was de merry leaf, and ev'r Presta a ire, and ev'ry marad, forsaken, and Lisafety in despair of Lange be thence resun their assaults, since And now, too late, he w Ta srength he waste

waren he sees the Himself by dogs, the do

Originall