To teach the nations in thy greater name.
My warbling late, the lute I whilom strung
When to King John of Portugal I sung,
Was but the prelude to that glorious day,

When thou on silver Thames did'st cut thy way,
With well-tim'd oars before the royal barge,
Swell'd with the pride of thy celestial charge,
And, big with hymn, commander of an host;
The like was ne'er in Epsom blankets tost.
Methinks I see the new Arion sail,

35

40

The lute still trembling underneath thy nail.

At thy well-sharpened thumb from shore to shore

45

The treble squeaks for fear, the basses roar;
About thy boat the little fishes throng,
As at the morning toast that floats along.
Sometimes, as prince of thy harmonious band,
Thou weildst thy papers in thy threshing hand

ted,"

50

," "Lindsey Wolsey," and "Kerseymere" are said to be so called from East Anglian villages noted for their woollen productions: see Taylor's Words and Places. For the term drugget, "it is said that drugget or droget was first made at Drogheda in Ireland."

35. Warbling: Sec Hymn Nal. 96.

Lute: See Ode for St. Cecilia's Day, 36.

Whilom: Scotch "quhylum." This is an old dat. case; so "seldom." With the help of the prep. was formed from the same stem the adverb "unwhile," Scotch " "unquhile; see Piers Ploughman, Ed. Skeat, v. 345.

36. See Introduction.

39. [What other meaning has well-tim'd ?],

Barge-pleasure boat. In a "barge" Cleopatra sailed down the Cydnus; see Antony and Cleopatra, II. ii. 196.

42. That is," such a scene was never depicted even in one of your own nonsensical plays." Shadwell had written a play called Epsom Wells. The virtue of the springs at Epsom was discovered in 1618. 45. Well-sharpened thumb: As if thumb was a sword inflicting cruel cuts on the trebles and the basses. Shadwell is the leader of the band.

[Why do nail and thumb make the description ludicrous ?] 49. As they might be supposed to have thronged around Arion; but in fact fishes, except seals, are said to be insensible to the charms of music. No doubt one great amusement of leisurely voyagers up and down the Thames in the days of pleasure barges would be throwing over pieces of bread and toast and watching the eager contentious pursuit of the little fishes. Or, more probably, this passage refers to fragments of the morning toast which, thrown out for the benefit of the swans (a great number of these were kept on the river in the old days), became objects of desire and pursuit to the fishes.

50. Thy threshing hand: i. e. the hand which you move as if you were threshing = with which you beat time. "papers' served him as a báton.

His roll of "

St. André's feet ne'er kept more equal time,
Not ev'n the feet of thy own 'Psyche's' rhyme,
Though they in number as in sense excell;
So just, so like tautology, they fell
That, pale with envy, Singleton forswore
The lute and sword which he in triumph bore,
And vowed he ne'er would act Vilerius more."
Here stopped the good old syre, and wept for joy,
In silent raptures of the hopefull boy.
All arguments, but most his plays perswade
That for anointed dulness he was made.

Close to the walls which fair Augusta bind,
(The fair Augusta much to fears inclin❜d,)
An ancient fabrick rais'd to inform the sight
There stood of yore, and Barbican it hight;

51. St. Andre was a well-known French dancing-master of the day. 52. Psyche: See Introduction.

54. [What is meant by they? and what by saying they fell like tautology P

55. Singleton is said to have been leader of the King's private band. Pepys mentions how once, in 1660, the king "did put a great affront upon his music, bidding them stop and make the French music play." He was also an actor, as the present passage shows. Villerius is a persona in Sir W. D'Avenant's Siege of Rhodes. With regard to the lute and sword, see the Fifth Act of The Rehearsal, where that play is parodied. The stage direction runs: "Enter at several doors the General and Lieutenant-General arm'd Cap-a-pea, with each of them a lute in his hand and his sword drawn, and hung with a scarlet ribbon at his wrist." Villerius' part required both military valor and musical skill; hence his double equipment.

62. Augusta: As it was the fashion to speak of Charles the Second as Cæsar (see Dryden's lines To his Sacred Majesty) and as Augustus (see, e.g., his Threnodia Augustalis), the capital city of his kingdom came to be called by the affected name of Augusta. It was, in fact, an old name revived. Augusta was a common title in the Roman Empire for cities founded or specially patronized by the first of the Emperors; thus there were Augusta Rauracorum (the modern Aust), Augusta Trevirorum (now Trèves), Augusta Eminta (now Merida), Augusta Prætoria (Aosta), Augusta Taurinorum (Turin), etc. Ammianus Marcellinus informs us that London enjoyed this title. He speaks of "Lundinium, an old town to which posterity gave the title of Augusta."

The walls which, etc.: The old line of the walls may be traced by the gates whose position is still recorded in certain street names, as Lud-gate, New-gate, Cripple-gate, etc. Just south of the church of St. Giles', Cripplegate, near the street called London Wall, a considerable piece of them yet stands.

63. The strange vicissitudes of the Civil War time, the Plague, the Fire, the suspected instability of the Government, had made London nervous-hysterical, so to speak. Hence its wild readiness to believe in Popish plots, etc. See history of Charles II.'s reign.

65. Barbican: "It was generally a small round tower for the sta tion of an advance guard placed just before the outward gate of the cas syard or ballium." "Chaucer useth the word for a watch-tower

A watch-tower once,

but now,

so fate ordains,

Of all the pile an empty name remains.

Near it a Nursery erects its head,

Where queens are formed and future heros bred,
Where unfledged actors learn to laugh and cry,
And little Maximins the gods defy.

Great Fletcher never treads in buskins here,
Nor greater Jonson dares in socks appear;
But gentle Simkin just reception finds
Amidst this monument of vanisht minds;
Pure clinches the suburbian muse affords
And Panton waging harmless war with words.
Here Flecknoe, as a place to fame well known,
Ambitiously designed his Shadwell's throne.
For ancient Decker prophesi'd long since
That in this pile should reign a mighty prince,
Born for a scourge of wit and flaye of sense,

which, in our Saxon tongue was called a burgh-kenning." (Cotgrave.) For the derivation and first meaning of the word see Wedgwood's Dict. Eng. Etym., according to which barbican and balcony are both but various forms of a combination of two Persian words, meaning an upper chamber.

Hight=was called. Sometimes it has a present sense, sometimes it is a participle. Spenser uses it frequently in all these ways.

68. A nursery: a place where youthful would-be actors, and perhaps would-be play-wrights, made their first attempts, and so the headquarters of inferior theatrical art.

71. Maximins: Maximin was the god-defiant hero of Dryden's Tyrannic Love.

72. Fletcher seems to have been in Charles II.'s reign more popular than Shakspere. In his own day he was placed very near him. His name may be said to stand as for Beaumont and Fletcher. In the plays written during Beaumont's life it appears almost impossible to separate his work from that of his colleague, and in those which came after Beaumont's death (Beaumont died in 1616, Fletcher in 1625), there are probably posthumous parts.

74. Gentle Simpkin was a cobbler in an interlude of the day. Shoemaking was especially styled "the gentle craft."

75. Vanished minds of intellects departed, of idiotcy. Comp. Tennyson's.

"O for the touch of a vanish'd hand;"

and "a vanished life," in In Mem.

76. Clinches: In Taylor's Wit and Mirth "clinch" is used for a clencher, "an unanswerable reply." (Halliwell and Wright's Nares' Gloss.) It was used also for a witty saying, a repartee. (Halliwell's Dict.) Johnson defines it a word used in a double meaning, a pun, an ambiguity."

Suburbian: So "robustious

strous," Faerie Queene, II. xii. 85.

in Sam. Agon., 569; "Mon

77. Panton is said to have been a noted punster of the day. 80. Decker: Thomas Decker was one of the great Elizabethan

To whom true dulness should some

66

Psyches" owe,

85

66

But worlds of "Misers" from his pen should flow;
Humorists" and Hypocrites it should produce,
Whole Raymond families and tribes of Bruce.
Now empress Fame had publisht the renown
Of Shadwell's coronation through the town.
Rows'd by report of fame, the nations meet
From near Bunhill and distant Watling-street.
No Persian carpets spread th' imperial way,
But scattered limbs of mangled poets lay;
Much Heywood, Shirley, Ogleby there lay,
But loads of Shadwell almost choakt the way.
Bilkt stationers for yeomen stood prepar'd
And Herringman was captain of the guard.
The hoary prince in majesty appear'd,
High on a throne of his own labours rear'd.

90

95

dramatists. Jonson is supposed to have satirized him in his Poetaster. a compliment which he returned in his Satiromastix. Dryden intro duces him here because he was a "City poet." Dryden seems scarcely to have estimated him at his proper worth. There is a singularly musical and otherwise exquisite song by him.

"Art thou poor, but hast thou golden slumbers,"

qnoted in the Golden Treasury.

83. Psyche: The Miser-The Humorists, are plays by Shadwell. 86. Raymond is one of the characters in the Humorists, "a gentleman of wit and honour.'

Bruce is a character in The Virtuoso, "a gentleman of wit and sense."

90. Bunhill-Watling-street. See map of London.

93. Ogleby: at first a dancing-master, translated the Iliad, the Odyssey and the Eneid, besides producing some original poetry, and writing a History of China. See Dunciad, 1. 141 and 328.

95. Bilkt: who had been defrauded of their due payments.

Stationers booksellers. This was the original force of the word, and was still its force in Dryden's time. See Trench's Sel. Gloss.; Dunciad, ii. 30.

Yeomen: "He instituted for the security of his person a band of fifty archers under a captain to attend him, by the name of yeomen of his guard." (Bacon's Henry VII.) This word is variously connected with Fris. gaeman, a village: A. S. gemane, common; A.-S. yeonge, A.-S. geongra, a vassal; fancifully with yew.

# 96. Herringman was a well-known publisher of Charles II.'s reign. Dryden in the earlier part of his career, had been connected with him. He was the " bookseller" meant by Shadwell in his Medal of John Bayes:

"He turned a journeyman to a bookseller,
Writ prefaces to books for meat and drink,

And as he paid he would both write and think."

98. Throne: "state" in the first edition. "The state was a raised platform, on which was placed a chair with a canopy over it.'

At his right hand our young Ascanius sat,
Rome's other hope and pillar of the state.
His brows thick fogs instead of glories grace,
And lambent dulness plaied around his face.
As Hanniball did to the altars come,
Sworn by his syre a mortal foe to Rome:

100

So Shadwell swore, nor should his vow be vain,
That he till death true dulness would maintain,
And, in his father's right and realms defence,
Ne'er to have peace with wit or truce with sense.

105

The king himself the sacred unction made,

As king by office and as priest by trade.

110

In his sinister hand, instead of ball,

He plac❜d a mighty mug of potent ale;

"Love's Kingdom" to his right he did convey,

At once his sceptre and his rule of sway;

Whose righteous lore the prince had practis'd young

115

And from whose loyns recorded "Pscyhe " sprung.
His temples, last, with poppies were o'erspread,
That nodding seemed to consecrate his head.
Just at that point of time, if fame not lye,

On his left hand twelve reverend owls did fly.

120

So Romulus, 'tis sung, by Tyber's brook,
Presage of sway from twice six vultures took.

99. Ascanius: See Eneid, passim. Dryden did not produce his translation of Virgil's great poem till some fifteen years after the coming out of Mac Flecknoe, but he was already thoroughly familiar with it, as. indeed, all his age was.

100. Rome's other hope = spes altera Romæ (En. xii. 168). 101. Glories: See Keats' Eve of St. Agnes.

103. See Class. Dict. and Hist. Rome.

104. [What does sworn mean here ?]

107. What is meant by his father's right?]

08. What is the government of to have, etc.?]

109. Made-performed.

111. Ball: "Hear the tragedy of a young man that by right ought to hold the ball of a kingdom; but by fortune has made himself a ball, tossed from misery to misery, from place to place."

113. Love's Kingdom: a play by Flecknoc. Derrick says he wrote four plays, but could get only one of them acted, and that was damned."

Convey is used here in its technical sense. "The Earl of Desmond, before his breaking forth into rebellion conveyed secretly all his lands to feoffees in trust."

116. Recorded above mentioned; or rather sung, for Psyche was an opera. Record," to sing; applied particularly to the singing of birds. A recorder was a flageolet.