Thick as the galaxy with stars is sown.
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prat spins out nearly the same idea, in the following extraordinarymanner: Others' great actions areBut thinly scattered, here and there;At best, but all one single star;But thine the milky way;All one continued light of undistinguished day.They thronged so close, that nought else could be seen,Scarce any common sky did come between. By turning the reader's attention to this comparison betwixt the poemsof Sprat and Dryden, I mean to shew, that our author was alreadyweaning himself from that franticly witty stile of composition, whichthe most ingenious of his contemporaries continued to practise andadmire; although he did not at once abandon it, but retrenched hisquaint conceits before he finally discarded them. The poem of Waller on Cromwell's death, excepting one unhappy andcelebrated instance of the bathos,[8] is the best of his compositions;and, separately considered, must be allowed to be superior to that ofDryden, by whom he was soon after so far distanced in the poeticalcareer. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 1: "What can be more extraordinary, than that a person ofmean birth, no fortune, no eminent qualities of body, which havesometimes, or of mind, which have often, raised men to the highestdignities, should have the courage to attempt, and the happiness tosucceed in, so improbable a design, as the destruction of one of themost ancient, and most solid founded monarchies upon the earth? Thathe should have the power, or boldness, to put his prince and masterto an open and infamous death? To banish that numerous and stronglyallied family? To do all this under the name and wages of a parliament?To trample upon them, too, as he pleased, and spurn them out of doorswhen he grew weary of them? To raise up a new and unheard-of monsterout of their ashes? To stifle that in the very infancy, and set uphimself above all things that ever were called sovereign in England?To oppress all his enemies by arms, and all his friends afterwards byartifice? To serve all parties patiently for a while, and to commandthem victoriously at last? To over-run each corner of the threenations, and overcome with equal facility both the riches of the southand the poverty of the north? To be feared and courted by all foreignprinces, and adopted a brother to the gods of the earth? To calltogether parliaments with a word of his pen, and scatter them againwith the breath of his mouth? To be humbly and daily petitioned, thathe would please to be hired, at the rate of two millions a year, to bethe master of those who had hired him before to be their servant? Tohave the estates and lives of three kingdoms as much at his disposal,as was the little inheritance of his father, and to be as noble andliberal in the spending of them? And, lastly, (for there is no end ofall the particulars of his glory,) to bequeath all this with one wordto his posterity? To die with peace at home, and triumph abroad? To beburied among kings, and with more than regal solemnity? And to leave aname behind him, not to be extinguished but with the whole world, whichas it is now too little for his praises, so might have been too for hisconquests if the short line of his human life could have been stretchedout to the extent of his immortal designs?"--COWLEY'S _Works_, Vol. II.p. 583. Perhaps the facetious Tom Brown has hit upon the true reason ofDryden's choice of a subject, when he makes him say, "that he had noparticular kindness for the person of Oliver; but that it was muchthe same with the poets as with the Jews--a hero cannot start up inany quarter of the world, be his quarrel right or wrong, but both areapt to think him the Messias, and presently pitch upon him as thefittest person to deliver the twelve tribes and the nine muses out ofcaptivity."--_Reasons of Mr Bayes' changing his religion._] [Footnote 2: Nor only didst thou for thy age provide,But for the years to come beside;Our after times, and late posterity,Shall pay unto thy fame as much as we;They too are made by thee.When Fate did call thee to a higher throne,And when thy mortal work was done;When Heaven did say it, and thou must be gone,Thou him to bear thy burden chose,Who might, if any could, make us forget thy loss.Nor hadst thou him designed,Had he not been,Not only to thy blood, but virtue, kin;Not only heir unto thy throne, but mind:'Tis he shall perfect all thy cares,And with a finer thread weave out thy loom.So one did bring the chosen people fromTheir slavery and fears;Led them through their pathless road,Guided himself by God;H'ad brought us to the borders, but a second handDid settle and secure them in the promised land. _Verses to the happy Memory of the late Lord Protector._] [Footnote 3: This edition occurs in the Luttrell Collection, and thetitle runs thus: "An Elegy on the Usurper O. C. by the Author of'Absalom and Achitophel;' published to show the loyalty and integrityof the Poet."
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