Above all censure too, each little wit
Will be so glad to see the greater hit ;

Who judging better, though concerned the most,
Of such correction will have cause to boast.
In such a satire all would seek a share,
And every fool will fancy he is there.
Old story-tellers, too, must pine and die,
To see their antiquated wit laid by ;

Like her, who missed her name in a lampoon,
And grieved to find herself decayed so soon.
No common coxcomb must be mentioned here;
Not the dull train of dancing sparks appear;
Nor fluttering officers, who never fight;

Of such a wretched rabble, who would write?
Much less half-wits; that's more against our rules;
For they are fops, the other are but fools.
Who would not be as silly as Dunbar?*

As dull as Monmouth, † rather than Sir Carr ? ‡
The cunning courtier should be slighted too,
Who with dull knavery makes so much ado;
Till the shrewd fool, by thriving too too fast,
Like Esop's fox, becomes a prey at last.

* Robert Constable, tuird Viscount of Dunbar. He is elsewhere mentioned with the epithet of "brawny Dunbar.” He married, 1st, Mary, daughter of Lord Bellasis; 2dly, the countess-dowager of Westmoreland.

+ The unfortunate duke; the qualities of whose mind did not correspond to his exterior accomplishments. Rochester says of him,

But, now we talk of Maestricht, where is he
Famed for that brutal piece of bravery?
He, with his thick impenetrable scull,
The solid hardened armour of a fool,

Well might himself to all war's ills expose,

Who, come what will, yet had no brains to lose.

Sir Carr Scroop, a poet and courtier. See Note on the "Epistle to Julian."

Nor shall the royal mistresses* be named,
Too ugly, or too easy to be blamed ;

With whom each rhyming fool keeps such a pother,
They are as common that way as the other;
Yet, sauntering Charles, between his beastly brace,
Meets with dissembling still in either place,
Affected humour, or a painted face.
In loyal libels we have often told him,
How one has jilted him, the other sold him :
How that affects to laugh, how this to weep;
But who can rail so long as he can sleep?
Was ever prince by two at once misled,
False, foolish, old, ill-natured, and ill-bred ?

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* The royal mistresses were, the Duchesses of Cleveland and of Portsmouth. Neither was supposed over-scrupulous in fidelity to their royal lover. The Duchess of Cleveland, in particular, lavished her favours even upon Jacob Hall, the ropedancer; at least, so Count Hamilton assures us, in the "Memoirs of Grammont." The Duchess of Portsmouth was a pensioner of the French court; by whom she was thrown into the arms of Charles, with the express purpose of securing his attachment to the cause of France. Charles knew, as well as any of his subjects, the infidelity of one mistress, and the treachery of the other; and Sheffield has elsewhere vindicated the epithet of sauntering," which is here bestowed on that indolent monarch. "I am of opinion," says the duke, "that, in his latter times, there was as much of laziness as of love in all those hours he passed among his mistresses; who, after all, only served to fill up his seraglio, while a bewitching kind of pleasure, called sauntering, and talking without constraint, was the true sultana-queen he delighted in." While Sheffield thus solemnly confirms, in prose, the character given of Charles in the " Essay upon Satire," he ascertains his claim to the property of the poem, And I must add, I should be sorry to think Dryden was accessary to lampooning persons, to whom he had offered the incense of his verse. See the Epistle to Lady Castlemain," afterwards Duchess of Cleveland, and "The Fair Stranger," addressed to Louise Querouailles, afterwards Duchess of Portsmouth.

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† Sheffield, Duke of Buckingham's Works, Vol. II. p. 61. 4to, 1723.

Earnely and Aylesbury, † with all that race—
Of busy blockheads, shall have here no place;
At council set as foils on Dorset's score,

To make that great false jewel shine the more;
Who all that while was thought exceeding wise,
Only for taking pains, and telling lies.

But there's no meddling with such nauseous men ;
Their very names have tired my lazy pen:
'Tis time to quit their company, and choose
Some fitter subject for a sharper muse.

First, let's behold the merriest man alive‡
Against his careless genius vainly strive;
Quit his dear ease, some deep design to lay,
'Gainst a set time, and then forget the day:
Yet he will laugh at his best friends, and be
Just as good company as Nokes and Lee.
But when he aims at reason or at rule,
He turns himself the best to ridicule.
Let him at business ne'er so earnest sit,
Shew him but mirth, and bait that mirth with wit,
That shadow of a jest shall be enjoyed,
Though he left all mankind to be destroyed.

* Sir John Earnely was bred to the law; but became distinguished as a second-rate statesman. He was chancellor of the exchequer in 1686; and was made one of the commissioners of the treasury, in the room of the Earl of Rochester.

+ Robert Bruce, second Earl of Elgin, in Scotland, created after the Restoration an English peer, by the titles of Baron and Viscount Bruce, Earl of Aylesbury. In 1678, he was of the privy-council to his majesty, and a gentleman of the bed-chamber. In the reign of James II., the Earl of Aylesbury succeeded to the office of lord-chamberlain, upon the death of the Earl of Arlington, in July 1685; an office which he held only two months, as he died in October following.

The Earl of Shaftesbury; of whose decrepit body, and active mind, much has been said in the notes on "Absalom and Achitophel," and on the "Medal."

So cat transformed sat gravely and demure,
Till mouse appeared, and thought himself secure;
But soon the lady had him in her eye,
And from her friend did just as oddly fly.
Reaching above our nature does no good;
We must fall back to our old flesh and blood;
As by our little Machiavel we find,

That nimblest creature of the busy kind.
His limbs are crippled, and his body shakes;
Yet his hard mind, which all this bustle makes,
No pity of its poor companion takes.
What gravity can hold from laughing out,
To see him drag his feeble legs about,

}

Like hounds ill-coupled? Jowler lugs him still
Through hedges, ditches, and through all that's ill.
Twere crime in any man but him alone,

To use a body so, though 'tis one's own :
Yet this false comfort never gives him o'er,
That, whilst he creeps, his vigorous thoughts can soar:
Alas! that soaring to those few that know,
Is but a busy grovelling here below.

So men in rapture think they mount the sky,
Whilst on the ground the entranced wretches lie:
So modern fops have fancied they could fly.
As the new earl, * with parts deserving praise,
And wit enough to laugh at his own ways,

* This was Arthur, first Earl of Essex of his name. He was son of that Lord Capel, who so gallantly defended Colchester during the civil wars, and was executed upon the place being taken. Lord Essex had been lieutenant of Ireland from 1672 to 1677, and was supposed to have fixed his ambition upon returning to that situation. Being disappointed, he joined in the measures of Shaftesbury and Monmouth, and was a violent opponent of the court. He was committed to the Tower on account of his accession to the Rye-house plot; and, upon the morning on which Lord Russel was conveyed to his trial, he was found with his throat cut, the King and Duke of York being in the Tower at the

Yet loses all soft days and sensual nights,
Kind nature checks, and kinder fortune slights;
Striving against his quiet all he can,

For the fine notion of a busy man.

And what is that at best, but one, whose mind
Is made to tire himself and all mankind ?
For Ireland he would go; faith, let him reign;
For, if some odd fantastic lord would fain
Carry in trunks, and all my drudgery do,
I'll not only pay him, but admire him too.
But is there any other beast that lives,
Who his own harm so wittingly contrives?
Will any dog that has his teeth and stones,
Refinedly leave his bitches and his bones,
To turn a wheel? and bark to be employed,
While Venus is by rival dogs enjoyed?
Yet this fond man, to get a statesman's name,
Forfeits his friends, his freedom, and his fame.

Though satire nicely writ with humour stings
But those who merit praise in other things;
Yet we must needs this one exception make,
And break our rules for silly Tropos' sake; *

very time, to witness some experiment on the ordnance. It was afterwards asserted, that he had been murdered by order of the court. Even Burnet, however, seems to acquit them of the crime, both because Essex was a free-thinker, and accustomed to vindicate suicide, and because his surgeon declared to him, that, from the mode in which the wound was inflicted, it could only have been done with his own hand. But the violent proceedings against Braddon and Speke, who attempted to investigate this mysterious affair, threw some suspicion upon the court party. If Charles was accessary to the murder, the time was strangely chosen, and the king's dissimulation equally remarkable; for, on hearing the event, he exclaimed, "Alas! Lord Essex might have trusted my clemency, I owed his family a life."

*This was the infamous Lord Chief-Justice Scroggs. He had ready eloquence, and much impudence. At first he stickled hard for the Popish Plot; but, finding that ceased to be the road to pre