The admiring throng loud acclamations make,
And omens of his future empire take.
The syre then shook the honours of his head,
And from his brows damps of oblivion shed
Full on the filial dulness; long he stood,
Repelling from his breast the raging God;
At length burst out in this prophetic mood:

125

"Heavens bless my son ! from Ireland let him reign 130 To far Barbadoes on the western main;

Of his dominion may no end be known

And greater than his father's be his throne ;

Beyond 'Love's Kingdom' let him stretch his pen !"

He paus'd, and all the people cried “Amen.”
Then thus continued he: "My son, advance
Still in new impudence, new ignorance.
Success let others teach, learn thou from me
Pangs without birth and fruitless industry.
Let Virtuoso's' in five years be writ,
Yet not one thought accuse thy toil of wit.
Let gentle George in triumph tread the stage,
Make Dorimant betray, and Loveit rage:
Let Cully, Cockwood, Fopling, charm the pit,
And in their folly show the writers' wit.
Yet still thy fools shall stand in thy defence,
And justify their author's want of sense.
Let 'em be all by thy own model made
Of dulness, and desire no foreign aid,
That they to future ages may be known,
Not copies, drawn, but issue of thy own.

126. [What is meant by damp sof oblivion ?]
127. What is the force of full here ?]

135

140

145

150

128. The filial dulness: Comp. Horace's "mitis sapientia Læli,"

etc.

135. [What are the ludicrous points of this line ?}

136. Comp. Æn. vi. 95.

138. Ile is parodying En. xii. 435.

140. "While Dryden accuses Shadwell of slowness in composition, Rochester attributes his faults to haste."

142. George = Sir George Etheredge, a man of fashion, a diploria. fist, a poet, a comedy writer. He died at Ratisbon, where he was Minister Resident, in 1694.

143. Dorimant, Loveit, etc., are characters in Etheredge's plava, The Man of the Mode, and Love in a Tub.

Nay let thy men of wit too be the same,
All full of thee and differing but in name.
But let no alien Sedley interpose

To lard with wit thy hungry Epsom prose.

155

And when false flowers of rhetoric thou wouldst cull,

Trust nature, do not labour to be dull;

But write thy best and top; and in each line

Sir Formal's oratory will be thine.

Sir Formal, though unfought, attends thy quill

160

And does thy northern dedications fill.

Nor let false friends seduce thy name to fame
By arrogating Jonson's hostile name;

Let father Flecknoe fire thy mind with praise
And uncle Ogleby thy envy raise.

165

Thou art my blood, where Jonson has no part •
What share have we in nature or in art?
Where did his wit on learning fix a brand
And rail at arts he did not understand?
When made he love in Prince Nicander's vein

170

Or swept the dust in Psyche's humble strain?
Where did his muse from Fletcher scenes purloin,

As thou whole Etheridge dost transfuse to thine ?
But so transfused as oil on waters flow,

His always floats above, thine sinks below.

175

This is thy province, this thy wondrous way,
New humours to invent for each new play:
This is that boasted byas of thy mind,

By which one way to dulness 'tis inclined,

154. Sedley: Sir Charles Sedley was one of the wits, the poets and the dramatists that sparkled in the court of Charles II.

155. Hungry = lean, "scrannel." See Milton's Lycidas, 125. Epsom prose refers to Shadwell's Epsom Wells.

159. Sir Formal Trifle is a verbose, oratorical person in Shadwell's Virtuoso.

161. "By the northern dedications are meant Shadwell's frequent dedications to the Duke of Newcastle; he dedicated also to the Duchess, and to their son, the Earl of Ogle."

163. See Introduct.

170. Nicander is a character in Psyche.

174. Observe the rhyine between purloin and thine.

So join was

sounded jine, etc. Noise rhymes with cries in Dunciad, ii. 221-2.

178. Byas: See Shakspere, Richard II. III. v. 5; Hamlet, II. i.

Which makes thy writings lean on one side still,
And, in all changes that way bends thy will.
Nor let thy mountain belly make pretence
Of likeness; thine's a tympany of sense.
A tun of man in thy large bulk is writ,
But sure thou'rt but a kilderkin of wit.
Like mine, thy gentle numbers feebly creep;
Thy tragic Muse gives smiles, thy comic sleep.
With whate'er gall thou sett'st thyself to write,
Thy inoffensive satyrs never bite;

In thy felonious heart though venom lies,

It does not touch thy Irish pen, and dyes.

Thy genius calls thee not to purchase fame
In keen Iambicks, but mild Anagram.

Leave writing plays, and choose for thy command
Some peacefull province in Acrostick land.

180

185

190

195

There thou may'st wings display and altars raise,
And torture one poor word ten thousand ways;
Or, if thou would'st thy diff'rent talents suit,
Set thy own songs, and sing them to thy lute."
He said, but his last words were scarcely heard,

200

183. Tympany: i. e., no healthy normal growth, but a dropsical expansion. The meaning is exactly illustrated by what Macaulay says of Dryden's own plays in his Essay on Dryden: "The swelling diction of Eschylus and Isaiah resembles that of Almanzor and Maximin no more than the tumidity of a muscle resembles the tumidity of a boil. The former is symptomatic of health and strength, the latter of debility and disease."

191. [What does dyes mean here ?]

193. Keen Iambicks: that is, satirical poetry such as Archilochus wrote "proprio iambo." "Hence also the lambic verse is now so called, because in this metre they used to Iambize [i. e. satirize] each other.'

ܙܪ

Mild Anagram: See Spect. Nos. 58 and 60, where these lines are quoted, and chronograms and "bouts rimez" are also discussed; but anagrams and acrostics were much older than Addison supposed. See also Disraeli's Curiosities of Literature, on "Literary Follies: ""I shall not dwell on the wits who composed verses in the form of hearts, wings, altars, and true-love knots: or, as Ben Jonson describes their grotesque shapes,

'A pair of scissors and a comb in verse.'

Tom Nash, who loved to push the ludicrous to its extreme, in his amus. ing invective against the classical Gabriel Harvey, tells us that he had writ verses in all kinds : in form of a pair of gloves, a pair of spectacles, and a pair of pot-hooks,'" etc.

For Bruce and Longville had a trap prepared,
And down they sent the yet declaiming bard.
Sinking he left his drugget robe behind,
Borne upwards by a subterranean wind.
The mantel fell to the young prophet's part,
With double portion of his father's art.

205

32. 201. Bruce and Longville, in the Virtuoso, make Sir Formal Trifle disappear through a trap-door in the midst of his speechifying.

A SONG FOR ST. CECILIA'S DAY.

Introductory Note. This song was written for the festival of St. Cecilia, 1687. The celebration of that festival by lovers of music was commenced (or revived, if, as is probable, it was kept in some sort before the Reformation) in 1683, in which year Purcell "set" the song that was written for the occasion. In 1684 Oldham wrote the anniversary song, in 1685, Nahum Tate; in the following year the festival was not ob served; in 1687 Dryden wrote the song given in the text. He wrote another, his Alexander's Feast, ten years afterward. Pope wrote in 1708. It is not clear how St. Cecilia came to be regarded as the patron saint of music. In her legend, as told in the Legenda Aurea (written toward the close of the thirteenth century), almost literally translated by Chaucer in his Secounde Nonnes Tale, she is not so spoken of. All that is said there of music is that "Cantanibus organis illa in corde suo soli Domino cantabat," etc.; or in Chaucer's words, 12,062-5, ed. Wright;

Of course, however, the Latin words might be translated, while her organs were sounding;" that is, "while she was playing." The legend goes on to say, that this "mayden bright Cecilie" was under the immediate and present protection of an angel. In this passage of her story may, perhaps, be seen the beginning of the tradition referred to in Alexander's Feast, and so exquisitely painted by Raphael and others, that "she drew an angel down;" but in the old story, not her sweet playing, but her spotless purity, brought the angel near her, not to listen, but to be a "heavenly guard." He is seen by her husband, too, when he becomes a Christian:

"Valirian goth home and fint Cecilie

Withinne his chambre with an aungel stoude
This aungel had of roses and of lilie
Corounes tuo, the which he bar in honde;
And first to Cecilie as I understonde,
He gaf that oon, and after can he take
That other to Valirian hir make."

She and he are said to have suffered martyrdom in the year 220. All, then, that the legend certainly shows to the purpose is, that St. Cecilia was one over whom music had great influence-that it inspired in her high religious emotion. It may show, further, that she was herself a skilful musician. The fame of her deep passion for sacred music, and possibly of her skill in it, might well, at a later time, give countenance, if it did not give rise, to the tradition that she invented the grand instrument of church music.

As for this said instrument, its early history is obscure. "Some derive its origin from the bagpipe; others, with more probability, from an instrument of the Greeks, though a very imperfect one-the water organ-as it is known that the first organs used in Italy came thither from the Greek empire. It is said that Pope Vitellanus (died 671; caused organs to be set up in some Roman churches in the seventh cent ury. Organs were at first portable. The organs now in use are consid