A QUALM of conscience brings me back again To make amends to you bespatter'd men! We women love like cats, that hide their joys By growling, squalling, and a hideous noise. I rail'd at wild young sparks, but, without lying, Never was man worse thought on for highflying: The prodigal of love gives each her part, And squand'ring shows, at least, a noble heart. I've heard of men, who, in some lewd lampoon, Have hir'd a friend to make their valor known. 10 What is the man that does such naughty The spaniel lover, like a sneaking fop, "T is true, such heroes in a play go far; 20 We fear to give, because they fear to take; To choose a husband for my confessor. For telling tales from out the nuptial Our play a merry comedy had prov'd, THE MEDAL A SATIRE AGAINST SEDITION BY THE AUTHOR OF ABSALOM AND ACHITOPHEL Per Graium populos, mediæque per Elidis urbem [On November 24, 1681, the government sought to treason, but the London grand jury rejected the bill. Walter Scott: indict the Earl of Shaftesbury of high What followed is well described by Sir "The triumph of the Whigs was unbounded; and, among other symptoms of exultation, it displayed itself in that which gave rise to this poem of Dryden. This was a medal of Lord Shaftesbury, struck by William [sic, really George] Bower, an artist who had executed some popular pieces allusive to the Roman Catholic Plot. The obverse presented the bust of the Earl, with the legend, Antonio Comiti de Shaftesbury; the reverse, a view of London, the Bridge, and the Tower; the sun is rising above the Tower, and just in the act of dispersing a cloud; the legend around the exergue is Latamur, and beneath is the date of his acquittal, 24th November, 1681. The partisans of the acquitted patriot wore these medals at their breasts, and care was taken that this emblem should be made as general as possible. The success of Absalom and Achitophel made the Tories look to our author as the only poet whose satire might check, or ridicule, the popular triumph of Shaftesbury. If the following anecdote, which Spence has given on the authority of a Catholic priest, a friend of Pope, be absolutely correct, Charles himself engaged Dryden to write on this theme: 'One day as the king was walking in the Mall, and talking with Dryden, he said: "If I was a poet, and I think I am poor enough to be one, I would write a poem on such a subject, in the following manner.' He then gave him the plan of The Medal. Dryden took the hint, carried the poem, as soon as it was written, to the king, and had a present of a hundred broad pieces for it.' [Scott's quotation from Spence is not quite literal. Present The Medal was first published, as is evident from a manuscript note by Luttrell (Malone, I, 1, 163), about March 16, 1682. Of this first edition two issues are known, one of which lacks the quotation from Ovid at the end of the poem. The second edition appeared with Miscellany Poems, 1684, but has a separate title-page, dated 1683. A third edition was printed in 16: 2. The present text follows that of the issue lacking the quotation from Ovid, which, however, is added from the other issue of the first edition.] EPISTLE TO THE WHIGS FOR to whom can I dedicate this poem, with so much justice as to you? T is the representation of your own hero: 't is the picture drawn at length, which you admire and prize so much in little. None of your ornaments are wanting; neither the landscap of the Tower, nor the rising sun; nor the Anno Domini of your new sovereign's coronation. This must needs be a grateful undertaking to your whole party; especially to those who have not been so happy as to purchase the original. I hear the graver has made a good market of it: all his kings are bought up already; or the value of the remainder so inhane'd, that many a poor Polander who would be glad to worship the image, is not able to go to the cost of him, but must be content to see him here. I must confess I am no great artist; but signpost painting will serve the turn to remember a friend by, especially when better is not to be had. Yet for your comfort the lineaments are true; and tho' he sate not five times to me, as he did to B., yet I have consulted history, as the Italian painters do, when they would draw a Nero or a Caligula; tho' they have not seen the man, they can help their imagination by a statue of him. and find out the coloring from Suetonius and Tacitus. Truth is, you might have spar'd one side of your Medal: the head would be seen to more advantage if it were plac'd on a spike of the Tower, a little nearer to the sun, which would then break out to better purpose. You tell us in your preface to the No-Protestant Plot, that you shall be forc'd hereafter to leave off your modesty: I suppose you mean that little which is left you; for it was worn to rags when you put out this Medal. Never was there practic'd such a piece of notorious impudence in the face of an establish'd government. I believe when he is dead you will wear him in thumb-rings, as the Turks did Scanderbeg, as if there were virtue in his bones to preserve you against monarchy. Yet all this while you pretend not only zeal for the public good, but a due veneration for the person of the king. But all men who can see an inch before them may easily detect those gross fallacies. That it is necessary for men in your circumstances to pretend both, is granted you; for without them there could be no ground to raise a faction. But I would ask you one civil question, what right has any man among you, or any association of men, (to come nearer to you.) who, out of Parliament, cannot be consider'd in a public capacity, to meet as you daily do in factious clubs, to vilify the government in your discourses, and to libel it in all your writings? Who made you judges in Israel? Or how is it consistent with your zeal of the public welfare to promote sedition? Does your definition of loyal, which is to serve the king according to the laws, allow you the license of traducing the executive power with which you own he is invested? You complain that his Majesty has lost the love and confidence of his people; and by your very urging it you endeavor, what in you lies, to make him lose them. All good subjects abhor the thought of arbitrary power, whether it be in one or many: if you were the patriots you would seem, you would not at this rate incense the multitude to assume it; for no sober man can fear it, either from the king's disposition. or his practice, or even, where you would odiously lay it, from his ministers. Give us leave to enjoy the government and the benefit of laws under which we were born, and which we desire to transmit to our posterity. You are not the trustees of the public liberty; and if you have not right to petition in a crowd, much less have you to intermeddle in the management of affairs, or to arraign what you do not like, which in effect is everything that is done by the king and council. Can you imagine that any reasonable man will believe you respect the person of his Majesty, when 't is apparent that your seditious pamphlets are stuff'd with particular reflections on him? If you have the confidence to deny this, 't is easy to be evinc'd from a thousand passages, which I only forbear to quote, because I desire they should die, and be forgotten. I have perus'd many of your papers, and to show you that I have, the third part of your No-Protestant Plot is much of it stolen from your dead author's pamphlet, call'd The Growth of Popery; as manifestly as Milton's Defense of the English People is from Buchanan, De Jure Regni apud Scotos; or your first Covenant and new Association from the Holy League of the French Guisards. Anyone who reads Davila may trace your practices all along. There were the same pretenses for reformation and loyalty, the same aspersions of the king, and the same grounds of a rebellion. I know not whether you will take the historian's word, who says it was reported that Poltrot, a Huguenot, murther'd Francis, Duke of Guise, by the instigations of Theodore Beza, or that it was a Huguenot minister, otherwise call'd a Presbyterian, (for our Church abhors so devilish a tenet,) who first writ a treatise of the lawfulness of deposing and murthering kings of a different persuasion in religion; but I am able to prove, from the doctrine of Calvin, and principles of Buchanan, that they set the people above the magistrate; which, if I mistake not, is your own fundamental, and which carries your loyalty no farther than your liking. When a vote of the House of Commons goes on your side, you are as ready to observe it as if it were pass'd into a law; but when you are pinch'd with any former, and yet unrepeal'd act of parliament, you declare that in some cases you will not be oblig'd by it. The passage is in the same third part of the No-Protestant Plot, and is too plain to be denied. The late copy of your intended Association, you neither wholly justify nor condemn; but as the Papists, when they are unoppos'd, fly out into all the pageantries of worship; but in times of war, when they are hard press'd by arguments, lie close intrench'd behind the Council of Trent: so now, when your affairs are in a low condition, you dare not pretend that to be a legal combination, but whensoever you are afloat, I doubt not but it will be maintain'd and justified to purpose. For indeed there is nothing to defend it but the sword; 't is the proper time to say anything, when men have all things in their power. In the mean time, you would fain be nibbling at a parallel betwixt this Association and that in the time of Queen Elizabeth. But there is this small difference betwixt them, that the ends of the one are directly opposite to the other one with the queen's approbation and conjunction, as head of it; the other without either the consent or knowledge of the king. against whose authority it is manifestly design'd. Therefore you do well to have recourse to your last evasion, that it was contriv'd by your enemies, and shuffled into the papers that were seiz'd; which yet you see the nation is not so easy to believe as your own jury; but the matter is not difficult, to find twelve men in Newgate who would acquit a malefactor. : I have one only favor to desire of you at parting, that when you think of answering this poem, you would employ the same pens against it, who have combated with so much success against Absalom and Achitophel; for then you may assure yourselves of a clear victory, without the least reply. Rail at me abundantly; and, not to break a custom, do it without wit by this method you will gain a considerable point, which is, wholly to waive the answer of my arguments. Never own the bottom of your principles, for fear they should be treason. Fall severely on the miscarriages of government; for if scandal be not allow'd, you are no freeborn subjects. If God has not blest you with the talent of rhyming, make use of my poor stock and welcome: let your verses run upon my feet; and, for the utmost refuge of notorious blockheads, reduc'd to the last extremity of sense, turn my own lines upon me, and, in utter despair of your own satire, make me satirize myself. Some of you have been driven to this bay already; but, above all the rest, commend me to the Nonconformist parson, who writ the Whip and Key. I am afraid it is not read so much as the piece deserves, because the bookseller is every week crying help at the end of his gazette, to get it off. You see I am charitable enough to do him a kindness, that it may be publish'd as well as printed; and that so much skill in Hebrew derivations may not lie for waste paper in the shop. Yet I half suspect he went no farther for his learning, than the index of Hebrew names and etymologies, which is printed at the end of some English Bibles. If Achitophel signify the brother of a fool, the anthor of that poem will pass with his readers for the next of kin. And perhaps 't is the relation that makes the kindness. Whatever the verses are, buy 'em up, I beseech you, out of pity; for I hear the conventicle is shut up, and the brother of Achitophel out of service. Now footmen, you know, have the generosity to make a purse for a member of their society, who has had his livery pull'd over his ears; and even Protestant socks are bought up among you, out of veneration to the name. A dissenter in poetry from sense and English will make as good a Protestant rhymer, as a dissenter from the Church of England a Protestant parson. Besides, if you encourage a young beginner, who knows but he may elevate his style a little above the vulgar epithets of profane, and saucy Jack, and atheistic scrib bler, with which he treats me, when the fit of enthusiasm is strong upon him; by which wellmanner'd and charitable expressions I was certain of his sect before I knew his name. What would you have more of a man? He has damn'd me in your cause from Genesis to the Revelations; and has half the texts of both the Testaments against me, if you will be so civil to yourselves as to take him for your interpreter, and not to take them for Irish witnesses. After all, perhaps you will tell me that you retain'd him only for the opening of your cause, and that your main lawyer is yet behind. Now if it so happen he meet with no more reply than his predecessors, you may either conclude that I trust to the goodness of my cause, or fear my adversary, or disdain him, or what yon please, for the short on 't is, 't is indifferent to your humble servant, whatever your party says or thinks of him. THE MEDAL Of all our antic sights and pageantry, Which English idiots run in crowds to see, The Polish Medal bears the prize alone: The word, pronounc'd aloud by shrieval voice, Lætamur, which, in Polish, is rejoice. And a new canting holiday design'd. To his first bias longingly he leans, means. Thus, fram'd for ill, he loos'd our triple hold; (Advice unsafe, precipitous, and bold.) From hence those tears! that Ilium of our woe! Who helps a pow'rful friend, forearms a foe. What wonder if the waves prevail so far, And true, but for the time; 't is hard to know How long we please it shall continue so. Who, to destroy the seeds of civil war, 119 |