claims study, pretends to take things in motion, and to shoot flying, which appears to be very true, by his often missing of his mark. As for epithets, he always avoids those that are near akin to the sense. Such matches are unlawful and not fit to be made by a Christian poet; and therefore all his care is to choose out such as will serve, like a wooden leg, to piece out a maimed verse that wants a foot or two, and if they will but rhyme now and then into the bargain, or run upon a letter, it is a work of supererogation. For similitudes, he likes the hardest and most obscure best; for as ladies wear black patches to make their complexions seem fairer than they are, so when an illustration is more obscure than the sense that went before it, it must of necessity make it appear clearer than it did; for contraries are best set off with contraries. He has found out a new sort of poetical Georgics—a trick of sowing wit like clover-grass on barren subjects, which would yield nothing before. This is very useful for the times, wherein, some men say, there is no room left for new invention. He will take three grains of wit like the elixir, and, projecting it upon the iron age, turn it immediately into gold. All the business of mankind has presently vanished, the whole world has kept holiday; there has been no men but heroes and poets, no women but nymphs and shepherdesses: trees have borne fritters, and rivers flowed plum-porridge. When he writes, he commonly steers the sense of his lines by the rhyme that is at the end of them, as butchers do calves by the tail. For when he has made one line, which is easy enough, and has found out some sturdy hard word that will but rhyme, he will hammer the sense upon it, like a piece of hot iron upon an anvil, into what form he pleases. There is no art in the world so rich in terms as poetry; a whole dictionary is scarce able to contain them; for there is hardly a pond, a sheep-walk, or a gravel-pit in all Greece,

but the ancient name of it is become a term of art in poetry. By this means, small poets have such a stock of able hard words lying by them, as dryades, hamadryades, aönides, fauni, nymphæ, sylvani, &c. that signify nothing at all; and such a world of pedantic terms of the same kind, as may serve to furnish all the new inventions and "thorough reformations" that can happen between this and Plato's great year.

ANDREW MARVELL.

(1621-1678.)

XVI. NOSTRADAMUS'S PROPHECY.

From Political Satires and other Pieces. It is curious to note how much of the prophecy was actually fulfilled.

FOR faults and follies London's doom shall fix,

And she must sink in flames in "sixty-six";
Fire-balls shall fly, but few shall see the train,
As far as from Whitehall to Pudding-Lane;
To burn the city, which again shall rise,
Beyond all hopes aspiring to the skies,

Where vengeance dwells. But there is one thing more

(Tho' its walls stand) shall bring the city low'r;

When legislators shall their trust betray,

Saving their own, shall give the rest away;
And those false men by th' easy people sent,
Give taxes to the King by Parliament;
When barefaced villains shall not blush to cheat
And chequer doors shall shut up Lombard Street.
When players come to act the part of queens,
Within the curtains, and behind the scenes:
When no man knows in whom to put his trust,
(M 569)

And e'en to rob the chequer shall be just,
When declarations, lies and every oath

Shall be in use at court, but faith and troth.
When two good kings shall be at Brentford town,
And when in London there shall not be one:
When the seat's given to a talking fool,

Whom wise men laugh at, and whom women rule;
A minister able only in his tongue

To make harsh empty speeches two hours long
When an old Scots Covenanter shall be
The champion for the English hierarchy:
When bishops shall lay all religion by,
And strive by law to establish tyranny,
When a lean treasurer shall in one year
Make himself fat, his King and people bare:
When the English Prince shall Englishmen despise,
And think French only loyal, Irish wise;

When wooden shoon shall be the English wear
And Magna Charta shall no more appear:
Then the English shall a greater tyrant know,

Than either Greek or Latin story show:

Their wives to 's lust exposed, their wealth to 's spoil,
With groans to fill his treasury they toil;
But like the Bellides must sigh in vain

For that still fill'd flows out as fast again;

Then they with envious eyes shall Belgium see,

And wish in vain Venetian liberty.

The frogs too late grown weary of their pain,
Shall pray to Jove to take him back again.

JOHN CLEIVELAND.

(1613-1658.)

XVII. THE SCOTS APOSTASIE.

From Poems and Satires, posthumously published in 1662.

S'T come to this? What shall the cheeks of fame

IST

Stretch'd with the breath of learned Loudon's name,
Be flogg'd again? And that great piece of sense,
As rich in loyalty and eloquence,

Brought to the test be found a trick of state,
Like chemist's tinctures, proved adulterate;
The devil sure such language did achieve,
To cheat our unforewarned grand-dam Eve,
As this imposture found out to be sot
The experienced English to believe a Scot,
Who reconciled the Covenant's doubtful sense,
The Commons argument, or the City's pence?
Or did you doubt persistence in one good,
Would spoil the fabric of your brotherhood,
Projected first in such a forge of sin,
Was fit for the grand devil's hammering?
Or was 't ambition that this damnéd fact
Should tell the world you know the sins you act?
The infamy this super-treason brings.

Blasts more than murders of your sixty kings;
A crime so black, as being advisedly done,
Those hold with these no competition.
Kings only suffered then; in this doth lie
The assassination of monarchy,

Beyond this sin no one step can be trod.
If not to attempt deposing of your God.
O, were you so engaged, that we might see
Heav'ns angry lightning 'bout your ears to flee,

Till you were shrivell'd to dust, and your cold land
Parch❜t to a drought beyond the Libyan sand!
But 't is reserv'd till Heaven plague you worse;
The objects of an epidemic curse,

First, may your brethren, to whose viler ends
Your power hath bawded, cease to be your friends;
And prompted by the dictate of their reason;
And may their jealousies increase and breed
Till they confine your steps beyond the Tweed.
In foreign nations may your loathed name be
A stigmatizing brand of infamy;

Till forced by general hate you cease to roam
The world, and for a plague live at home:
Till you resume your poverty, and be
Reduced to beg where none can be so free
To grant: and may your scabby land be all
Translated to a generall hospital.
Let not the sun afford one gentle ray,
To give you comfort of a summer's day;
But, as a guerdon for your traitorous war,
Love cherished only by the northern star.
No stranger deign to visit your rude coast,
And be, to all but banisht men, as lost.
And such in heightening of the indiction due
Let provok'd princes send them all to you.
Your State a chaos be, where not the law,
But power, your lives and liberties may give.
No subject 'mongst you keep a quiet breast
But each man strive through blood to be the best;
Till, for those miseries on us you've brought
By your own sword our just revenge be wrought.

To sum up all . . . let your religion be

As your allegiance-maskt hypocrisie

Until when Charles shall be composed in dust
Perfum'd with epithets of good and just.