An universal harmony above

Inspired us all with gaiety and love;

A horrid sound dashed our immortal mirth,
Wafted by sighs from the unlucky earth,
Et cætera, et cætera.

Polyhymnia, the Muse of Rhetoric, by Mrs. D. E. This lady concludes the volume thus:

Incessant groans be all my rhetoric now!
My immortality I would forego,

Rather than drag this chain of endless woe.
O mighty Father, hear a daughter's prayer,
Cure me by death from deathless sad despair!

These extracts are taken from the presentation copy of this rare book, in the library of Mr. Bindley, of Somerset House, whose liberality I have had already repeated occasion to acknowledge.

No. XIII.

VERSES

IN PRAISE OF MR. DRYDEN.

To Mr. DRYDEN, by Jo. ADDISON, Esq.

How long, great poet, shall thy sacred lays
Provoke our wonder, and transcend our praise!
Can neither injuries of time, or age,

Damp thy poetic heat, and quench thy rage?
Not so thy Ovid in his exile wrote;

Grief chilled his breast, and checked his rising thought;

Pensive and sad, his drooping muse betrays
The Roman genius in its last decays.
Prevailing warmth has still thy mind possest,
And second youth is kindled in thy breast.
Thou mak'st the beauties of the Romans known,
And England boasts of riches not her own:
Thy lines have heightened Virgil's majesty,
And Horace wonders at himself in thee.
Thou teachest Persius to inform our isle
In smoother numbers, and a clearer style:
And Juvenal, instructed in thy page,
Edges his satire, and improves his rage.
Thy copy casts a fairer light on all,
And still outshines the bright original.

Now Ovid boasts the advantage of thy song,
And tells his story in the British tongue;
Thy charming verse, and fair translations show
How thy own laurel first began to grow;

How wild Lycaon, changed by angry Gods,
And frighted at himself, ran howling through the

woods.

O may'st thou still the noble tale prolong,
Nor age, nor sickness interrupt thy song!
Then may we wond'ring read, how human limbs
Have watered kingdoms, and dissolved in streams,
Of those rich fruits that on the fertile mould
Turned yellow by degrees, and ripened into gold :
How some in feathers, or a ragged hide,

Have lived a second life, and different natures tried.
Then will thy Ovid, thus transformed, reveal
A nobler change than he himself can tell.

Mag. Coll. Oxon. June 2, 1693.

APPENDIX. B.

TO THE PRESENT EDITION.

No. I.

HYMNS RECENTLY ATTRIBUTED TO DRYDEN.

[SOME time after the appearance of the first few volumes of this edition I received independent communications from three different persons-all great authorities on the subject of hymns -partly directing my attention to, and partly requesting any assistance I could give them as regards, the possible existence of a large and hitherto uncollected addition to Dryden's work of this kind. My first, fullest, and most obliging correspondent was Mr. Orby Shipley; the others, whom I have also to thank, were Mr. W. T. Brooke and the Reverend H. Leigh Bennett. I shall endeavour to state briefly the circumstances of which they apprised me.

Not very many Englishmen, probably, who are not Roman Catholics are aware that, from the time of the Reformation onward, there was a series of vernacular books of devotion, officially or semi-officially arranged for the use of laymen who adhered to the old faith. The chief of these was called the Primer, and one main feature of this Primer, which very frequently constituted the whole devotional library of the layman, was the presence of a body of translation from the Latin hymns of the Breviary. Now in successive versions or editions of this Primer these translations were not uncommonly changed, with the idea, sensible enough, of accommodating their presentation to the taste of the presumed reader. It would be natural that the most eminent hands obtainable among English Roman Catholics a somewhat restricted field of choice-should be employed; but the actual authorship seems to have been always or nearly always anonymous. This fact has naturally given rise to a great deal of conjectural attribution, and it is one of these conjectural attributions which will here occupy us.