Them any harm: alas! nor cou'd
Thy death yet do them any good.
I'm sure I never wish'd them ill;
Nor do I for all this; nor will:
But, if my simple pray'rs may yet
Prevail with Heaven to forget
Thy murder, I will join my tears,
Rather than fail. But, O my fears!
It cannot dye so.
Heaven's King

Keeps register of every thing:

And nothing may we use in vain,
Ev'n beasts must be with justice slain;

Else men are made their deodands.

Though they should wash their guilty hands
In this warm life-blood, which doth part
From thine, and wound me to the heart,
Yet could they not be clean: their stain
Is dy'd in such a purple grain.

There is not such another in
The world to offer for their sin.
Inconstant Sylvio, when yet
I had not found him counterfeit,
One morning (I remember well)
Ty'd in this silver chain and bell,
Gave it to me: nay, and I know
What he said then: I'm sure I do.
Said he, "Look how your huntsman here
Hath taught a Fawn to hunt his Deer."
But Sylvio soon had me beguil'd:
This waxed tame, while he grew wild,
And quite regardless of my smart,
Left me his fawn, but took his Heart.
Thenceforth I set myself to play
My solitary time away,

:

With this and, very well content,
Could so mine idle life have spent.
For it was full of sport, and light
Of foot and heart, and did invite
Me to its game: it seem'd to bless
Itself in me. How could I less
Than love it? OI cannot be
Unkind t'a beast that loveth me.

Had it liv'd long, I do not know
Whether it too might have done so

As Sylvio did: his gifts might be
Perhaps as false, or more, than he.
For I am sure, for aught that I
Could in so short a time espy,
Thy love was far more better than
The love of false and cruel man.
With sweetest milk, and sugar first,
I it at mine own fingers nurs'd;
And as it grew, so every day

It wax'd more white and sweet than they.
It had so sweet a breath!

And oft

I blush'd to see its foot more soft,

And white, shall I say than my hand?
Nay, any lady's of the land.

It is a wondrous thing how fleet
'Twas on those little silver feet.
With what a pretty skipping grace
It oft would challenge me the race;
And when 't had left me far away,
'Twould stay, and run again, and stay.
For it was nimbler much than hinds;
And trod, as if on the four winds.
I have a garden of my own,
But so with roses overgrown,
And lilies, that you would it guess
To be a little wilderness:

And all the spring time of the year
It only loved to be there.

Among the beds of lilies I

Have sought it oft, where it should lye;
Yet could not, till itself would rise,
Find it, although before mine eyes;
For, in the flaxen lilies' shade,
It like a bank of lilies laid.
Upon the roses it would feed,
Until its lips ev'n seemed to bleed;
And then to me 't would boldly trip,
And print those roses on my lip.
But all its chief delight was still
On roses thus itself to fill;
And its pure virgin limbs to fold
In whitest sheets of lilies cold.
Had it lived long, it would have been
Lilies without, roses within.

O help! O help! I see it faint,
And dye as calmly as a saint.
See how it weeps! the tears do come,
Sad, slowly, dropping like a gum.
So weeps the wounded balsam; so
The holy frankincense doth flow.
The brotherless Heliades

Melt in such amber tears as these.
I in a golden vial will

Keep these two crystal tears; and fill
It, till it do o'erflow with mine;
Then place it in Diana's shrine.

Now my sweet Fawn is vanish'd to
Whither the swans and turtles go;
In fair Elisium to endure,

With milk-white lambs, and ermines pure.
O do not run too fast: for I

Will but bespeak thy grave, and dye.

First my unhappy statue shall

Be cut in marble; and withal,
Let it be weeping too; but there
Th' engraver sure his art may spare,
For I so truly thee bemoan,

That I shall weep though I be stone;
Until my tears, still dropping, wear
My breast, themselves engraving there.
There at my feet shalt thou be laid,
Of purest alabaster made;

For I would have thine image be
White as I can, though not as thee.

TO HIS COY MISTRESS.

HAD we but world enough, and time,
This coyness, Lady, were no crime.
We would sit down, and think which way
To walk, and pass our long love's day.
Thou by the Indian Ganges' side
Should'st rubies find: I by the tide
Of Humber would complain. I wou'd
Love
you ten
before the flood:

years

And you should, if you please, refuse
Till the conversion of the Jews.

My vegetable love should

grow
Vaster than empires, and more slow.
An hundred years should go to praise
Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze
Two hundred to adore each breast:
But thirty thousand to the rest.
An age at least to every part,
And the last age
should show your
For, Lady, you deserve this state;
Nor would I love at lower rate.

heart.

But at my back I always hear
Time's winged chariot hurrying near:
And yonder all before us lye
Desarts of vast eternity.

Thy beauty shall no more be found;
Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound
My echoing song: then worms shall try
That long preserv'd virginity:

And your quaint honour turn to dust;
And into ashes all my lust.

The grave's a fine and private place,
But none, I think, do there embrace.

Now therefore, while the youthful hue
Sits on thy skin like morning dew,
And while thy willing soul transpires
At every pore with instant fires,
Now let us sport us while we may;
And now, like am'rous birds of prey,
Rather at once our time devour,
Than languish in his slow chap'd pow'r.
Let us roll all our strength, and all
Our sweetness, up into one ball:
And tear our pleasures with rough strife,
Thorough the iron gates of life.

Thus, though we cannot make our sun

Stand still, yet we will make him run.

JOHN DRYDEN, the son of Erasmus Dryden, of Tichmersh, who was himself the third son of Sir Erasmus Dryden, of Canons Ashby, was born in 1632, at Aldwinkle, near Oundle. In the early part of his life his circumstances were sufficiently easy. From Westminster School he was elected to one of the scholarships of Cambridge, where he subsequently took his master's degree, but failed in obtaining a fellowship. Some years afterwards, he married the Lady Elizabeth Howard, daughter of the Earl of Berkshire. In 1649 his first poem appeared, full of empty conceits and "mouthing;" in 1658 he made a more successful effort; but it was not till 1663, the thirty-second year of his life, that he embraced writing as a profession. His pecuniary necessities, the source as we must suppose of this resolution, pointed at the same time to the stage as the likeliest means of reward. For seventeen years he continued to write for it, with the interruption only of the Annus Mirabilis (which won him the Poet Laureatship), and of his Essay on Dramatic poetry. Had the life of Dryden closed here he would have been recognized only by the regrets of posterity, as a masterly critic of poetry, but a most slovenly and careless poet; as one, who with every indication of a severe power of satire, and of abundant fertility of fancy, wit, and nobleness of verse, had preferred a luxurious flattery of the great, and been fertile only in a growth of weeds. But from the close of this period till the actual close of his life, from 1680 to 1700, he produced the works which have immortalized him as the leader of the second school of poets; as the boldest and most varied of versifiers; and the greatest satirist of his country. This, the latter period of his life, witnessed too what is generally the produce of an earlier time, the energy and rapture of his imagination. Absalom and Achitophel, which reaches to the magnificent and heroical in satire, the Medal, and the Hind and Panther (so exquisite in its natural touches, and so wonderfully adapted in its versification to the various demands of its subject) -were now written. The Restoration lost him his laureatship-but gave the world one of the most vigorous of satires, Mac Flecnoe. The remainder of his life was a continual struggle with poverty. Yet now he wrote the finest of his plays, Don Sebastian and others, his glorious Religio Laici, his translations of Juvenal, Persius and Virgil, his Ode to St. Cecilia's Day, and his Fables-which last great work was published in consequence of a contract with Tonson, by which his poverty had obliged him, in consideration of three hundred pounds, to agree to finish for the press ten thousand verses. Shortly after, on the 1st of May, 1701, Dryden died in an obscure lodging in Gerard-street, in much poverty and after great suffering.

The world has a peculiar, and very characteristic, mode of compensating for the sufferings of men of genius. Dryden had a public funeral. Doctor Garth pronounced a Latin oration over his body, and "a numerous train of coaches" followed it to the grave. He was laid among the poets in Westminster Abbey, where, some years afterwards, the Duke of Buckinghamshire placed a simple but emphatic tablet, inscribed "DRYDEN." Of the personal habits of the poet few records have been preserved. Spence says, in his pleasant book of anecdotes, that "Addison passed each day alike, and much in the same manner as Dryden did. Dryden employed his mornings in writing, dined en famille, and then went to Wills's; only he came home earlier at nights." This celebrated coffee-house was made, by the patronage of Dryden, the great resort of the wits of his time. Of his personal character, Congreve, who knew him familiarly, has said,-" He was of a nature exceedingly humane and compassionate, ready to forgive injuries."

We have already touched upon the various characteristics of his genius. He is unquestionably entitled to the rank of a first-rate poet-because, though his school is not first-rate, he was its founder and its greatest master, and accomplished all that lay within the scope of its power. He is incomparably the finest reasoner in verse that ever existed, as he is the most masterly satirist. There is nothing of the meanness of satire about him: he is "magnanimous" in his abuse; vigorous and fearless. He refines nothing, but grapples with the reality of character, and exalts it or overthrows it. Satirist, however, as he was, Dryden was, by all accounts, an indulgent and kind-hearted man, and, if we cannot say much generally for the public independence of his character, let us not forget that it was he who, at a time when it was dangerous even to remember independence, did justice to the character of Milton.