This fiery game your active youth maintained, Thus princes ease their cares; but happier he, So lived our sires, ere doctors learned to kill, 60 55 70 75 The doom of death, pronounced by God, were vain. Fate fastens first, and vindicates the prey. What help from art's endeavours can we have? Guibbons but guesses, nor is sure to save; But Maurus sweeps whole parishes, and peoples every grave, And no more mercy to mankind will use Than when he robbed and murdered Maro's muse. 85 Wouldst thou be soon dispatched, and perish whole, Trust Maurus with thy life, and Milbourn§ with thy soul. By chase our long-lived fathers earned their food ; Toil strung the nerves and purified the blood : Are dwindled down to threescore years and ten. The meaning is, "It is a pity that the generous kind," &c. 90 + Dr. Guibbons, a celebrated physician of the day. He is mentioned by Dryden, in conjunction with Hobbes, in his Postscript to the Translation of Virgil. "That to have recovered, in some measure, the health which I had lost by application to this work, is owing, next to God's mercy, to the skill of Dr. Guibbons and Dr. Hobbes, the two ornaments of their profession, which I can only pay by this acknowledgment." He is Mirmillo the famed Opifer" in Garth's "Dispensary." 1 Maurus, Sir Richard Blackmore, a poet and physician, who had attacked Dryden in print, and whom here and elsewhere he pillories in revenge. Quack Maurus" Dryden calls him in his Prologue to "The Pilgrim :" "Quack Maurus, though he never took degrees Blackmore was a Master of Arts at Oxford, but he had his medical diploma from the University of Padua. See § The Rev. Luke Milbourn, who had published an offensive criticism on Dryden's Virgil. the conclusion of the Preface to the Fables, where Dryden again lashes Blackmore and Milbourn together. The wise for cure on exercise depend; The tree of knowledge, once in Eden placed, Garth,* generous as his Muse, prescribes and gives; 95 100 105 110 Let them, but under their superiors, kill, When doctors first have signed the bloody bill: He scapes the best, who, nature to repair, 115 Draws physic from the fields in draughts of vital air. When, often urged, unwilling to be great, Your country calls you from your loved retreat, 120 And sends to senates, charged with common care, 125 Well-born and wealthy, wanting no support, Good senators (and such are † you) so give, But on our native strength in time of need relies. 130 135 * Garth: the celebrated physician, Sir Samuel Garth, author of "The Dispensary." Garth's establishment of the dispensary for supplying advice and medicines gratuitously to the poor is the generosity alluded to. This dispensary was opposed by many doctors, which led Garth to write his witty satire. ↑ Such as is printed in Scott's and other editions, incorrectly. Munster was bought, we boast not the success; 140 Who fights for gain for greater makes his peace.+ Our foes, compelled by need, have peace embraced; The peace both parties want is like to last; The rest besieged, but we constrained the town :‡ France, though pretending arms, pursued the peace, 155 What twenty years of war had won before. 160 And left the son of Jove to quarrel for the rest. Thus Hannibal, with foreign laurels won, 165 To Carthage was recalled, too late to keep his own. While sore of battle, while our wounds are green, May neither overflow, for then they drown the land. 180 *The Bishop of Munster, who joined England in consideration of a large subsidy in Charles II.'s first Dutch war, and afterwards deserted us and made a separate peace with Holland. This is referred to in "Annus Mirabilis," stanza 37: "Let Munster's prelate ever be accurst, See the note on that passage. + The Peace of Ryswick. In whom we seek the German faith in vain." The taking of Namur by William III. in 1695, after a siege of one month. Here probably Dryden introduced the lines reflecting on Dutch valour, which he told Montague he had omitted by the advice of his cousin. Consuls of moderate power in calms were made; Patriots in peace assert the people's right, 185 Such was your generous grandsire, free to grant In parliaments that weighed their Prince's want: But so tenacious of the common cause 190 As not to lend the king against his laws; And, in a loathsome dungeon doomed to lie, In bonds retained his birth-right liberty, And shamed oppression, till it set him free.* O true descendant of a patriot line, 195 Who, while thou sharest their lustre, lendst them thine, Vouchsafe this picture of thy soul to see; 'Tis so far good as it resembles thee. The beauties to the original I owe, Which when I miss, my own defects I show. Praiseworthy actions are by thee embraced; 200 205 For even when death dissolves our human frame, Scott, following Malone, has explained this as referring to John Driden's maternal grandfather, Sir Robert Bevile, who, it is said, "appears to have been imprisoned in the time of Charles I. for resisting some irregular levy of money:" but this is apparently a conjecture The laborious and accurate Mr. Holt resting exclusively on this passage of Dryden's poem. White, in his MS. notes, ascertained that Sir Erasmus Dryden, the common grandfather of the two cousins, is referred to; and he refers to a list in Rushworth's "Historical Collections" (i. 473) where occurs the name of Sir Erasmus Draiton, as one of those sent to prison on account of the loan-money, and liberated on the eve of the general election for Charles I.'s third parliament, 1628. Sir Erasmus Dryden died May 22, 1632. |