XII. Apologus de Rustico et Hero.*
RUSTICUS ex malo sapidissima poma quotannis
Legit, et urbano lecta dedit Domino:
Hinc incredibili fructus dulcedine captus,
Malum ipsam in proprias transtulit areolas.
Hactenus illa ferax, sed longo debilis ævo,

Mota solo assueto, protenus aret iners.
Quod tandem ut patuit Domino, spe lusus inani,
Damnavit celeres in sua damna manus ;
Atque ait, Heu quanto satius fuit illa Coloni,

Parva licet, grato dona tulisse animo!

Possem ego

avaritiam frænare, gulamque voracem: Nunc periere mihi et fœtus, et ipse parens.

XIII. Ad CHRISTINAM SUEcorum ReginaM, nomine CROMWELLI.*

BELLIPOTENS virgo, septem regina trionum,
Christina, Arctoï lucida stella poli!

Poems, has printed a very loose but witty English Epigram under the name of Milton, which had long before appeared among the poems of Lord Rochester, who has every pretension to be its right owner. To this Miscellany Fenton has prefixed a long Dedication to Lord Dorset. See p. 286.

*This piece first appeared in the edition 1673.

*These verses were sent to Christina, Queen of Sweden, with Cromwell's picture, and are by some ascribed to Andrew Marvell, as by others to Milton: but

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I should rather think they were
Milton's, being more within his
province as Latin Secretary.
Newton.

These lines are simple and
sinewy. They present Cromwell
in a new and pleasing light, and
throw an air of amiable dignity
on his rough and obstinate cha-
racter. They are too great a
compliment to Christina, who
was contemptible both as a queen
and a woman. The uncrowned
Cromwell had no reason to ap-
proach a princess with so much
reverence, who had renounced
her crown.
The frolics of other
whimsical modern queens have
been often only romantic. The

Cernis, quas merui dura sub casside rugas,
Utque senex armis impiger ora tero:

pranks of Christina had neither
elegance nor even decency to
deserve so candid an appellation.
An ample and lively picture of
her court, politics, religion, in-
trigues, rambles, and masque-
rades, is to be gathered from
Thurloe's State Papers. She had
all the failings of her own sex,
without any
of the virtues of the
sex she affected to imitate. She
abdicated her kingdom in 1654.
So that this Epigram could not
have been written after that time.
It was sent to the queen with
Cromwell's picture, on which it
was inscribed. It is supposed
to be spoken by the portrait.

Doctor Newton, whose opinion is weighty, ascribes these lines to Milton, as coinciding with his department of Latin Secretary to Cromwell. See also Birch's Life of Milton, p. lxii. Toland, by whom they were first printed, from common report, indecisively gives them either to Milton or to Andrew Marvell. Life, p. 38. Prose Works, vol. i. p. 38. Tol. I suspect, that Milton's habit of facility in elegiac Latinity had long ago ceased: and I am inclined to attribute them to Marvell, so good a scholar, as to be thought a fit assistant to Milton in the Latin Secretaryship, and who, as Wood says, was 66 very intimate and conversant "with that person." Ath. Oxon. ii. 818. Again, he calls Marvell, "sometimes one of John Milton's companions." Ibid. p. 817. And he adds, that Marvell was "cried up as the main wit"monger surviving to the fana"tical party." In other words,

66

Marvell satirised the dissipations and profligate amours of Charles the Second with much wit and freedom.

I must however observe, that this Epigram appears in Marvell's Miscellaneous Poems, fol. Lond. 1681. p. 134. Where it follows other Latin poems of the same class and subject: and is immediately preceded by a Latin distich, entitled, In Effigiem Oliveri Cromwelli, "Hæc est quæ "toties, &c." Then comes this Epigram there intitled " In ean- . "dem [effigiem] regina Sueciæ "transmissam." Where the second distich is thus printed,

Cernis quas merui dura sub casside rugas,

Sicque senex armis impiger ora fero.

And in To the Reader, these poems are said by his pretended wife, Mary, to be "printed ac"cording to the exact copies of

66

my late dear husband, under " his own hand-writing, &c." I think we may therefore fairly give them to Marvell. But see Marvell's Works, Lond. 4to. 1766. vol. iii. p. 489.

Of Marvell's respect and friendship for Milton some proofs appear, among other anecdotes of Milton and his friends not gene-> rally known, in the Second Part of Marvell's Rehearsall Transprosed. Lond. 1673. 8vo. This book is an attack on Dr. Samuel Parker, famous for his tergiversation with the times, now an antipuritan in the extreme, and who died Bishop of Oxford, and King James's popish president of Magdalen College, Oxford. See

Invia fatorum dum per vestigia nitor,
Exequor et populi fortia jussa manu.

p. 377. He reproaches Parker,
for having in his Reproof, and
his Transproser Rehearsed," run
“upon an author John Milton,
"which doth not a little offend
"me." He says, that by acci-
dent he never saw Milton for
two years before he wrote the
First Part of his Rehearsall, which
Parker had attributed to Milton.
"But after I undertook writing
" it, I did more carefully avoid
"either visiting or sending to
"him, lest I should any way
"involve him in my conse-
"quences. Had he took you in
"hand, you would have had
"cause to repent the occasion,
"and not escaped so easily as
"you did under my Transprosal.
"John Milton was and is, a
"man of as great learning and
"sharpness of wit as any man.
"It was his misfortune, living
“in a tumultuous time, to be
"tossed on the wrong side; and
"he writ flagrante bello, certain
dangerous treatises.-At his
"majesty's happy return, John
"Milton did partake, as you
"yourself did, for all your huf-
fing, of his royal clemency,
"and has ever since expiated
"himself in a retired silence. It
። was after that, I well remem-
"ber it, that being one day at
"his house, I there first met
you, and accidentally.-Then
"it was, when you, as I told
you, wandered up and down
"Moorfields, astrologizing upon
"the duration of his majesty's
government, that you fre-
quented John Milton inces-
santly, and haunted his house
"day by day. What discourses

5

"you there used, he is too gene"rous to remember. But he “never having in the least pro"voked you, for you to insult "thus over his old age, to tra"duce him by your scaramuc"cios, and in your own person, "as a schoolmaster, who was "born and hath lived more in"genuously and liberally than "yourself; to have done all "this, and lay at last my simple "book to his charge, without "ever taking care to inform "yourself better, which you had "so easy an opportunity to do: "it is inhumanly and inhos"pitably done; and will, I hope, "be a warning to all others, as "it is to me, to avoid (I will not

say) such a Judas, but a man " that creeps into all companies, "to jeer, trepan, and betray "them." The First Part of this Rehearsall was published 1672. This was in answer to a Preface written by Parker to Bishop Bramhall's Vindication of Himself, &c. Lond. 1672. 8vo. Reprinted by itself the next year. Parker replied in A Reproof, &c. Lond. 1673. Marvell answered in a Second Part of the Rehearsall Transprosed, cited above.

And here it must be remarked, that Marvell was mistaken in supposing the Transproser Rehearsed, in which most of this abuse of Milton appears, to be written by Parker: it was written by R. Leigh, formerly of Queen's College Oxford, but now a player, Oxon. 1673, 12mo. In which the writer styles Milton the blind author of Paradise Lost, and talks of his groping for a

Ast tibi submittit frontem reverentior umbra : Nec sunt hi vultus regibus usque truces.