This was the gift, if you the truth will have,
That Constantine to good Sylvester gave.

HORACE.

Whom do we count a good man? Whom but he
Who keeps the laws and statutes of the senate,
Who judges in great suits and controversies,
Whose witness and opinion wins the cause ?
But his own house, and the whole neighbourhood,
Sees his foul inside through his whited skin.

HORACE.

The power that did create can change the scene
Of things, make mean of great, and great of mean:
The brightest glory can eclipse with might,
And place the most obscure in dazzling light.

ALL barbarous people and their princes too,
All purple tyrants honour you,

The very wandering Scythians do.
Support the pillar of the Roman state,
Lest all men be involv'd in one man's fate,

Continue us in wealth and state,
Let wars and tumults ever cease.

VOL. III.

CATULLUS.

The worst of poets I nyself declare,
By how much you the best of poets are.

OVID.

ABSTAIN, as manhood you esteem,
From Salmacis' pernicious stream;
If but one moment there you stay,

Too dear you'll for your bathing pay.-
Depart nor man, nor woman, but a sight
Disgracing both, a loath'd Hermaphrodite.

a

EURIPIDES.

This is true liberty, when freeborn men
Having t’advise the public may speak free;
Which he who can, and will, deserves high praise:
Who neither can nor will, may hold his

peace, What can be a juster in a state than this?

VIRGIL.

No eastern nation ever did adore
The majesty of sovereign princes more.

VIRGIL.

And Britons interwove held the purple hangings.

HORACE.

LAUGHING, to teach the truth, What hinders ? As some teachers give to boys Junkets and knacks, that they may learn apace.

HORACE.

JOKING decides great things. Stronger and better oft than earnest can.

SOPHOCLES.

'Tis
you
that
say
it, not I.

You do the deeds, And your ungodly deeds find me the words.

SENECA.

THERE can be slain
No sacrifice to God more acceptable,
Than an unjust and wicked king.

TERENCE.

In silence now and with attention wait,
That ye may know what th’Eunuch has to prate.

HOMER.

Glaucus, in Lycia we're ador'd as gods,
What makes 'twixt us and others so great odds ?

EPIGRAM ON SALMASIUS'S HUNDREDA.

W110 taught Salmasius, that French chattering
To aim at English, and HUNDREDA cry? (pye
The starving rascal, flush'd with just a hundred
English Jacobusses, HUNDREDA blunder'd :
An outlaw'd king's last stock. A hundred more
Would make him pimp for th' antichristian whore;
And in Rome's praise employ his poison'd breath,
Who threaten’d once to stink the pope to death.

ON THE NEW FORCERS OF CONSCIENCE

UNDER THE LONG PARLIAMENT.*

BECAUSE you have thrown off your Prelate Lord,

And with stiff vows renounced his Liturgy,
To seize the widow'd whore Plurality

From them whose sin ye envied, not abhorr'd, Dare ye for this adjure the civil sword

To force our consciences that Christ set free, And ride us with a classic hierarchy

5

Taught ye by mere A. S. and Rotherford ? Men whose life, learning, faith, and pure intent

Would have been held in high esteem with Paul,

Must now be nam'd and printed Heretics By shallow Edwards and Scotch what d'ye call :

But we do hope to find out all your tricks, Your plots and packing worse than those of Trent,

That so the Parliament May with their wholesome and preventive shears Clip your phylacteries, though bauk your ears,

And succour our just fears, When they shall read this clearly in your charge, New Presbyter is but Old Priest writ large.

20

8 A. S.] A polemical writer of the times, named • Adam Steuart.' See the notes of Warton and Todd. Rotherford was one of the Chief Commissioners of the Church of Scotland; also sat with the Assembly at Westminster. He was Professor of Divinity in the University of St. Andrew's; wrote many Calvinistic tracts; and was an avowed enemy of the Independents. T. Edwards had attacked Milton's Plan of Independency in his Antapologia, 1644. On Rotherford. See Heber's Life of I. Taylor, ii. 203. 17 Clip] In the MS. the lines stand thus :

Crop ye as close as marginal P -'s ears 3—that is, Prynne's. Warton. !7 bauk] i. e. spare.

Warton.