Secur'd with ample privilege to feed, Each has his district, and his bounds decreed: Combin'd in common intereft with his own, But not to pass the Pigeons' Rubicon. Dove; All prophecies accomplish'd from above, 2550 The Paffive Church, that with pretended grace 2555 Did her diftinctive mark in duty place, 2560 'Tis faid, the Doves repented, though too late, Ver. 2550. of this pretended Dove ;] Orig. edit. 2566 TODD. Ver. 2559. The fmall beginnings had a large increase,] exiguis profecta initiis eò creverit. Livy. JOHN WARTON, The Buzzard, not content with equal place, Invites the feather'd Nimrods of his race; To hide the thinness of their flock from fight, And all together make a feeming goodly flight: But each have separate interefts of their own; Two Czars are one too many for a throne. 2572 Nor can the ufurper long abstain from food; Already he has tafted Pigeons' blood: And may be tempted to his former fare, 2575 When this indulgent lord fhall late to heaven repair. Bare benting times, and moulting months may come, When, lagging late, they cannot reach their home; 2580 Or rent in fchifm (for fo their fate decrees) Thus did the gentle Hind her fable end, Ver. 2583. Thus did the gentle Hind] It is obfervable that in this poem, full of fine verfification and weak argument, our author keeps to fome leading doctrines of popery, and makes no defence of feveral of its abfurd tenets, purgatory, monkery, celibacy, confeffion, reliques, nor of two which Swift has inimitably ridiculed, holy water and the Pope's bulls. "Another discovery, for which Peter was much renowned, was his famous univerfal pickle. For having remarked how your common pickle in ufe among housewives, was of no further benefit than to preserve dead flesh, and certain kinds of vegeta But, with affected yawnings at the clofe, 2585 Seem'd to require her natural repose: bles; Peter, with great coft as well as art, had contrived a pickle proper for houfes, gardens, towns, men, women, children, and cattle; wherein he could preferve them as found as infects in amber. Now this pickle to the tafte, the fmell, and the fight, appeared exactly the fame, with what is in common fervice for beef, and butter, and herrings, (and has been often that way applied with great fuccefs) but for its many fovereign. virtues was quite a different thing. For Peter would put in a certain quantity of his powder pimperlimpimp, after which it never failed of fuccefs. The operation was performed by Spargefaction, in a proper time of the moon. The patient who was to be pickled, if it were a houfe, would infallibly be preferved from all fpiders, rats, and weazels. If the party affected were a dog, he fhould be exempt from mange, madness, and hunger. It alfo infallibly took away all fcabs and lice, and fcald heads from children, never hindering the patient from any duty, either at bed or board. But of all Peter's rarities, he most valued a certain set of bulls, whofe race was by great fortune preferved in a lineal defcent from those that guarded the golden fleece, though fome who pretended to obferve them curioufly, doubted the breed had not been kept entirely chafte; because they had degenerated from their ancestors in fome qualities, and had acquired others, very extraordinary, but a foreign mixture. The bulls of Colchos are recorded to have brazen feet; but whether it happened by ill pafture, and running, by an allay from intervention of other parents, from ftolen intrigues: whether a weakness in their progenitors had impaired the feminal virtue; or by a decline neceffary through a long courfe of time, the originals of nature being depraved in thefe latter finful ages of the world: whatever was the caufe, 'tis certain that Lord Peter's bulls were extremely vitiated, by the ruft of time in the metal of their lead. However, the terrible roaring peculiar to their lineage was preferved; as likewife that faculty of breathing out fire from their noftrils, which, notwithstanding, many of their detractors took to be a feat of art, and to be nothing fo terrible as it appeared, proceeding only from their usual course of diet, which was that of quibs and crackers." Pope, it is faid, ufed to mention this poem as the most correct fpecimen of Dryden's verfification. I muft own I cannot affent to this opinion. He tells us himself that he intended to give the majestic turn of heroic poefy to the first part. In this defign he has woefully mifcarried. The perfpicuity and plaufibility of For now the streaky light began to peep; his reafonings, however falfe and futile, fhew a great command of language. This poem our author intended as a defence for his fudden converfion to popery, especially after his having written the Religio Laici, where fuch oppofite opinions were maintained and enforced. Whether this conversion was the effect of pure truth and conviction, must be left to the great fearcher of our hearts to determine; but fuch a change in so abject a flatterer, would naturally be imputed to mercenary motives. It is remarkable that Congreve, in his laboured and elegant defence of his friend's character, fpeaks not a fyllable on the fubject. The converfions of two greater men to popery, that of Henry V. and Marshall Turenne, were reckoned interefted and infincere. The following very fevere lines are preserved in the State Poems, on this occafion: At all religions to the laft from first, Thou still haft rail'd, and then efpous'd the worst ; T' abuse all woman kind-then wed a whore. Ver. 2588. And fetting fears admonish'd Dr. J. WARTON. both to fleep.] |