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He drives diseases from our folds,
The thief from spoil his presence holds :
Pan knows no other power than his,
This only the great shepherd is.
Cho. 'Tis he, 'tis he; &c.

XCVIII.

ON THE KING'S BIRTH-DAY.9

OUSE up thyself, my gentle Muse,

Though now our green conceits be gray, And yet once more do not refuse

To take thy Phrygian harp, and play

In honour of this cheerful day :

Long may they both contend to prove,
That best of crowns is such a love.

Make first a song of joy and love,
Which chastly flames in royal eyes,
Then tune it to the spheres above,
When the benignest stars do rise,
And sweet conjunctions grace the skies.
Long may, &c.

To this let all good hearts resound,
Whilst diadems invest his head;
Long may he live, whose life doth bound
More than his laws, and better led
By high example, than by dread.
Long may, &c.

In the old copy, several love verses are ridiculously tacked to this chorus: they have already appeared, and the circumstance is only noted here, to mark the carelessness or ignorance of those who had the ransacking of the poet's study, after his death.

This is probably Ben's last tribute of duty to his royal master: it is not his worst; it was, perhaps, better as it came from the poet, for a stanza has apparently been lost, or confounded with the opening one.

Long may he round about him see

His roses and his lilies blown:
Long may his only dear and he
Joy in ideas of their own,

And kingdom's hopes so timely sown.
Long may they both contend to prove,
That best of crowns is such a love.

XCIX.

TO MY LORD THE KING,

ON THE CHRISTENING HIS SECOND SON JAMES.1

HAT thou art lov'd of God, this work is

done,

Great king, thy having of a second son :
And by thy blessing may thy people see
How much they are belov'd of God in thee.
Would they would understand it ! princes are
Great aids to empire, as they are great care
To pious parents, who would have their blood
Should take first seisin of the public good,
As hath thy James; cleans'd from original dross,
This day, by baptism, and his Saviour's cross.
Grow up, sweet babe, as blessed in thy name,
As in renewing thy good grandsire's fame:
Methought Great Britain in her sea, before
Sate safe enough, but now secured more.
At land she triumphs in the triple shade,
Her rose and lily inter-twined, have made.

Oceano secura meo, securior umbris.

1 James II. was born October 15, 1633, and the ceremony, here mentioned, took place in the succeeding month. In the Diary of Laud's Life, (fol. 1695, p. 49,) is the following memorandum by the archbishop. "November 24, 1633. Sunday in the afternoon, I christened king Charles his second son, James duke of York, at St. James's."

C.

AN ELEGY ON THE LADY JANE PAWLET,

MARCHIONESS OF WINTON.2

HAT gentle ghost, besprent with April dew,
Hails me so solemnly to yonder yew,3
And beckoning woos me, from the fatal tree
To pluck a garland for herself or me?

I do obey you, beauty! for in death

You seem a fair one. O that you had breath
To give your shade a name! Stay, stay, I feel
A horror in me, all my blood is steel;

Stiff, stark! my joints 'gainst one another knock!
Whose daughter?-Ha! great Savage of the Rock.*

2 An Elegy on the lady Jane Pawlet, &c.] The folio reads lady Anne, though Jane, the true name, occurs, as Whalley observes, just below. This wretched copy is so full of errors, that the reader's attention would be too severely proved, if called to notice the tithe of them; in general, they have been corrected in silence.

This lady Jane was the first wife of that brave and loyal nobleman, John, fifth marquis of Winchester. He was one of the greatest sufferers by the Usurpation; but he lived to see the restoration of the royal family, and died full of years and honour in 1674. The marchioness died in 1631, which is therefore the date of the Elegy.

3 What gentle ghost besprent with April dew,

Hails me so solemnly to yonder yew?] Pope seems to have imitated the first lines of this elegy, in his poem to the Memory of an unfortunate Lady:

"What beck'ning ghost, along the moonlight shade,

Invites my steps, and points to yonder glade?" WHAL.

Pope's imitation, however, falls far short of the picturesque and awful solemnity of the original.

4

A Great Savage of the Rock.] The seat of that family in

He's good as great. I am almost a stone,
And ere I can ask more of her, she's gone!-
Alas, I am all marble! write the rest

Thou would'st have written, Fame, upon my breast:
It is a large fair table, and a true,

And the disposure will be something new,
When I, who would the poet have become,
At least may bear the inscription to her tomb.
She was the Lady Jane, and marchionisse
Of Winchester; the heralds can tell this.
Earl Rivers' grand-child-'serve not forms, good
Fame,

Sound thou her virtues, give her soul a name.
Had I a thousand mouths, as many tongues,
And voice to raise them from my brazen lungs,
I durst not aim at that; the dotes were such
Thereof, no notion can express how much
Their caract was: I or my trump must break,
But rather I, should I of that part speak;
It is too near of kin to heaven, the soul,
To be described! Fame's fingers are too foul
To touch these mysteries: we may admire
The heat and splendor, but not handle fire.
What she did here, by great example, well,
T'inlive posterity, her Fame may tell ;
And calling Truth to witness, make that good
From the inherent graces in her blood!
Else who doth praise a person by a new
But a feign'd way, doth rob it of the true.
Her sweetness, softness, her fair courtesy,
Her wary guards, her wise simplicity,
Were like a ring of Virtues 'bout her set,

Cheshire, from which the lady was descended. Camden gives us the following account of it: "The Wever flows between Frodsham, a castle of ancient note, and Clifton, at present called Rock Savage, a new house of the Savages, who by marriage have got a great estate here." Brit. p. 563. WHAL.

And Piety the centre where all met.
A reverend state she had, an awful eye,
A dazzling, yet inviting, majesty:
What Nature, Fortune, Institution, Fact
Could sum to a perfection, was her act!

How did she leave the world, with what contempt
Just as she in it lived, and so exempt
From all affection! when they urg'd the cure
Of her disease, how did her soul assure
Her sufferings, as the body had been away!
And to the torturers, her doctors, say,
Stick on your cupping-glasses, fear not, put
Your hottest caustics to, burn, lance, or cut:
'Tis but a body which you can torment,
And I into the world all soul was sent.
Then comforted her lord, and blest her son,5
Cheer'd her fair sisters in her race to run,
With gladness temper'd her sad parents' tears,
Made her friends' joys to get above their fears,
And in her last act taught the standers-by
With admiration and applause to die!

Let angels sing her glories, who did call
Her spirit home to her original;

Who saw the way was made it, and were sent

5 Then comforted her lord, and blest her son, &c.] Warton calls this a "pathetic Elegy," and indeed this passage has both pathos and beauty. It is a little singular that Jonson makes no allusion to her dying in childbed, which, it would appear from Milton's Epitaph, she actually did. He speaks of a disease: she was delivered of a dead child; and some surgical operation appears to have been performed, or attempted, without success. There can be no doubt of Jonson's accuracy; for he was living on terms of respectful friendship with the marquis of Winchester.

Jonson principally dwells on the piety of this lady; she seems also to have been a person of rare endowments and accomplishments. Howell (p. 182) puts her in mind that he taught her Spanish, and sends her a sonnet which he had translated into that language from one in English by her ladyship, with the music, &c., and Cartwright returns her thanks, in warm language, "for two

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