Full oft I've watch'd him from my lair,
To prove him, ay or no, a man;

At length I made the problem square,
And thus my close deduction ran :-
When angry tempests rend the sky,
And light'nings cleave the troubled air,
Both man and beast to shelter fly,
Yet he remains impassive there.
Last summer, too, a rabid bull

Rush'd through the field with frantic rage;
No mortal would have met him full
In front, the unequal war to wage!
Nor rabid bull, nor hail, nor rain,
Nor thunder daunts his torpid soul.
Believe me, when I say again,
No man is that, but scarecrow foul!
But that I do not feed on grain,
Myself, good folks, would lead the way.
Then hasten to the bounteous plain,
Whilst I for your adventure pray!

Down swoop the horde, with famine fierce;
Their passions now no fear restrains;
A thousand bills earth's bosom pierce,
And rifle thence the farmer's grains;
Impunity fresh courage lends;

They strut around the harmless "Guy."
Nay, one his crownless hat ascends,
And flaps his pinions vauntingly.

Oh! short-lived triumph! Scarce his tongue
On air a boastful note had flung,

When, rattling from the neighbouring copse,
Two barrels flash! The rookling drops!
Nor he alone!-with ruthless force
Sweeps o'er the plain the leaden shower!
The black-robed tribe confess its power
In many a glossy, mangled corse!
The raven saw, uprais'd his eyes,

And, sighing, murmured-“ Who'd have thought it?
Alas! we cannot all be wise:

They lack'd experience and, they 've bought it!"

MORAL.

Of sagest counsellors beware,

Unless of risk they take their share.

For enterprise or speculation

There's nothing like co-operation!

330

A GOSSIP ABOUT LAURELS AND LAUREATES.

THE laurel is the fig-tree of the poet. He sits under its shadow with a double assurance of fame and protection. What a book might be written on laurels! How intimately they are mixed up with the history of poetry, the romance of love, and the annals of crime. The ancients crowned their poets with bays, which, says old Selden, "are supposed not subject to any hurt of Jupiter's thunderbolts, as other trees are." Petrarch regarded the laurel as the emblem of his mistress, and is said to have been so affected by the sight of one on landing from a voyage, that he threw himself on his knees before it. From this leaf, too, which has formed the coronal of the Muses through all time, the subtlest poison is distilled, and the assassinations committed by the agency of laurel-water would make a curious companionvolume to the lives of the laureates. Thus there is an adjusting element in the laurel to avenge as well as to reward, and the love which finds its glory in the bays may also extract its vengeance from them. We need not go beyond the poets themselves for illustrations of the two principles of good and evil-the life and death-typified in the laurel. Their noblest works exhibit the one; their abuse of their power, their littlenesses, their satires, envy and detraction betray the other. We have two familiar examples in Dryden and Pope. If the "Religio Laici," and the "Annus Mirabilis," the "Essay on Man," and the "Rape of the Lock" contain the living principle, may we not carry out the metaphor by saying, that "Mac-Flecknoe" and the "Dunciad" were written in laurel-water? Prussic-acid could not have done its work more effectually than the ink which traced these anathemas. The laurel that confers immortality also carries death in its leaves.

This is a strange matter to explore. There is a warning in it that dulls a little of the brightness of all poetical glories. Suppose we assemble under a great spreading laurel-tree all the poets who have worn the bays in England* and drank or compounded their tierces of wine from Ben Jonson to Tennyson-let us hear what confessions they have to make, what old differences to re-open or patch up, what violated friendships to re-knit, mingled with reproaches and recriminations

66

Digesting wars with heart-uniting loves."

It will be as good as a scene at the "Mermaid," with a commentary running through to point a moral that was never thought of when the Browns and Draytons met over their sack. First of

*For whose histories, traced chronologically, the reader is referred to a recent volume of pleasant literary biography, called 66 The Lives of the Lau

reates." By W. S. Austin, Jun., B.A., and John Ralph, M.A.

all, here is Ben Jonson telling us how he escaped having his ears cropped, and his nose slit (rather more ceremoniously than the like office was performed on Sir John, Coventry) for having assisted in casting odium on the Scotch; and how by a begging petition to Charles I., he got the pension of a hundred marks, worth about thirteen shillings and four pence each, raised to so many pounds, with a tierce of wine in perpetuity added to them, for the benefit and delectation of his successors. Upon this, Dryden, taking a large pinch of snuff, observes, that his successors had little to thank him for; that nothing could exceed the meanness of Charles II., who rewarded men of letters by empty praise, instead of keeping them out of jails by a little timely munificence; that he had said as much in a famous panegyric of his upon that monarch's memory, insinuating his contempt for the shabbiness of the deceased sovereign, in a line which the stupid people about the court took for an extravagant compliment; and that, as for the tierce of Canary, it was well known that James II., who had as much sympathy for poets and poetry as one of his own Flemish coach-horses, had robbed him of it when he wore the laurel, although he changed his religion with the change of kings, and celebrated high mass in the "Hind and Panther," with a thousand times more splendour than ever it was celebrated in the private chapel at Whitehall.

It cannot be supposed that Shadwell will sit by quietly, and hear such remarks as these in silence; accordingly, no sooner has Dryden concluded (no one will venture to speak while Dryden is speaking, out of that old habit of deference with which he used to be treated at Will's Coffeehouse) than Shadwell, rolling his great globular body right round to the table, and looking with rather an impatient and impudent stare at Dryden, reminds him of the obligations he owed to James II., who, if he deprived him of his tierce of Canary, increased his pension; and as there is no longer any reason for being delicate about such subjects, he adds, that the whole world believes that he changed his religion for the sake of that petty one hundred pounds a year. At all events, that the coincidence of the conversion and the gratuity looked very much like one of those astrological conjunctions from which men like Dryden himself, drew ominous inferences; and that even Dr. Johnson, who, considering his own strong opinions on religion, was singularly generous to Dryden's memory, could not resist observing, that "that conversion will always be suspected, which, apparently, concurs with interest; and he that never finds his error till it hinders his progress towards wealth and honour, will not be thought to love Truth for herself." The theme is too tempting for Shadwell to stop here; it revives the ancient grudge in all its original bitterness, and he cannot help, for the ghost of him, closing up with a touch of his ancient dare-devil humour to the effect that, for his part, he can not say he was much surprised, when he heard of Dryden's perversion; that he had seen it plainly enough all along, even so far back as the trial of Shaftesbury; that, in fact, he believed all religions

were the same to a man who, within the compass of a few months, had prostituted his pen to Puritanism, Protestantism, and Popery; that the true solution, of the case was to be found in the charge long before brought against him, and that he was now more than ever convinced, that, from the beginning to the end, Dryden was neither more nor less than an atheist.

This does not disturb Dryden much, although it shocks the ghostly company of laureates sitting round about, some of whom belong to a more polite age, and, intimate as they are with these Billingsgate conflicts in books, are not prepared to be personally mixed up in one of them. But Dryden's calmness, and that slow confident smile of contempt with which he surveys the rotundity of Shadwell's person, as if he were again taking its measure—

"Round as a globe, and liquored every chink!"

re assures them. If Dryden is not hurt at being called an atheist, why should they? Every man looks to himself in this world, and human frailty still haunts the inspirations of these laurelled shades. Dryden is going to say something-he takes another huge pinch, and, tapping his box with the air of a conqueror, repeats the terrible name of "Og!" two or three times, with increasing emphasis at each repetition. Concerning the term Atheist, he says, he disposed of that long ago, and flung it back with interest upon the "buffoon ape" who

"Mimicked all sects, and had his own to choose."

He was quite content to rest upon the controversy, as he left it in the great convocation of beasts he had brought together under the auspices of the British lion, and whenever such reeling asses as Shadwell should show themselves able to comprehend the mass of theological learning he had heaped up in weighty couplets for the use of disputants in all time to come, he would be ready to answer any indictment they might concoct against him. In the meanwhile, he would recommend Shadwell to control his tongue, and try to look sober, and mend his manners. Rochester had done him greater mischief by praising his wit in conversation than he had ever done him by exposing his stupidity in print; and one thing was quite certain, that whatever Shadwell might have suffered in reputation from Dryden's pen, to that same pen, charged as it was with contempt, he was solely indebted for his elevation to the laurel. Shadwell should remember that, and not be ungrateful. If he, Dryden, had not singled him out as the TrueBlue Protestant poet, and given him that appellation at a time when it was likely to stick, King William would never have degraded the office which he, and Ben, and Will Davenant had held, to confer it upon a fellow who, whatever his drunken companions of the tavern might think of him, was never a poet, as he had long ago told him, of God's own making.

Now, as Shadwell had always been remarkable in the flesh for intemperance of all sorts, and was as "hasty" in his temper as in his plays, of which he usually composed an act in four or

five days, we may easily imagine how he would retort upon Dryden after such a speech as this. The most vulnerable part of Dryden's character was his jealousy of other poets, and Shadwell, naturally enough, indemnifies himself for all such abuse, by ascribing it to envy. He refreshes Dryden's memory, by recalling the praises he used to lavish upon him before they quarrelled. Did he not once say in a prologue, that Shadwell was the greatest of all the comedy writers, and second only to Ben himself (who, by the way, was the only man Shadwell would consent to be second to); and he would now tell him to his face, that the real spring of the maliguity with which he afterwards pursued him, was his success in the theatre. He never could forgive him his success. He hated every man that succeeded. How used he to treat poor Crowne? Was it not notorious that when a play of Crowne's failed (which, he confessed, was no uncommon occurrence), Dryden would shake hands cordially with him, and tell him that his play deserved an ovation, and that the town was not worthy of such a writer; but when Crowne happened to succeed, he would hardly condescend to acknowledge him. He could not help admitting that Crowne had some genius; but then he would account for it by saying, that his father and Crowne's mother were very well acquainted. Who was Dryden's father? He never knew he had a father. He doubted the fact. He might have had a dozen, for all he knew, but he never heard of any one in particular.

This sort of scurrilous personality is not agreeable to Nahum Tate. He has not forgotten his share in the Psalms, and thinks that it becomes him to put a stop to a discussion which borders on licentiousness. He does not pretend to say who Dryden's father was; but he knows both Dryden and Shadwell well, and bears an allegiance to the former (who rendered him the greatest honour his miserable life could boast) that will not suffer him to hear Dryden lampooned in this fashion with impunity. If Dryden was envious of rivals, it was a failing incidental to all men; but he could tell Shadwell that his contempt was larger than his envy, as Shadwell might discover, if he would sit down quietly and dispassionately, and read the second part of "Absalom and Achitophel" once more. He might recommend the perusal of that book with perfect propriety, because it was well known to all writers and critics that the particular passages which related to Shadwell, and his friend Elkanah Settle, were not written by him. Perhaps the internal evidences would be sufficient to show that. He did not set up for a poet, although he did write all the rest of the poem, and made an alteration of Shakspeare's "Lear," which still keeps the stage in preference to the original itself. It must be admitted that it was quite consistent with a modest appreciation of his own merits, to plume himself a little on those incidents in a career to which posterity attached a value his grudging contemporaries denied. It was something, he thought, to be honestly proud of, that his Psalms are, to this hour, used in the Church of England, and that the name of Nahum Tate is