they still persisted in that course, it would look as if they minded not the way to any better. Whereupon I ftood corrected as long as I had the honour to wait upon him, and at his departure from Hampton-Court, he was pleased to command me to ftay privately at London, to fend to him and receive from him all his letters from and to all his correfpondents at home and abroad, and I was furnished with nine feveral cyphers in order to it: which truft I performed with great fafety to the perfons with whom we corresponded; but about nine months after being discovered by their knowledge of Mr. Cowley's hand, I happily escaped both for myself, and those that held correfpondence with me. That time was too hot and bufy for such idle fpeculations: but after I had the good fortune to wait upon your majesty in Holland and France, you were pleafed fometimes to give me arguments to divert and put off the evil hours of our banishment, which now and then fell not fhort of your majesty's expectation. After, when your majesty, departing from St. Germains to Jersey, was pleased freely (without my afking) to confer upon me that place wherein I have now the honour to ferve you, I then gave over poctical lines, and made it my business to draw fuch others as might be more ferviceable to your majesty, and I hope more lafting. Since that time I never difobeyed my old master's commands till this fummer at the Wells, my retirement there tempting me to divert thofe melancholy thoughts, which the new apparitions of fo reign invafion and domestic discontent gave us but thefe clouds being now happily blown over, and our fun clearly fhining out again, I have recovered the relapfe, it being fufpected that it would have proved the epidemical disease of age, which is apt to fall back into the follies of youth; yet Socrates, Aristotle, and Cato did the fame; and Scaliger faith, that fragment of Aristotle was beyond any thing that Pindar or Homer ever wrote. I will not call this a dedication, for those epistles are commonly greater abfurdities than any that come after; for what author can reafonably believe, that fixing the great name of fome eminent patron in the forehead of his book can charm away cenfure, and that the firft leaf fhould be a curtain to draw over and hide all the deformities that stand behind it? neither have I any need of fuch fhifts, for most of the parts of this body have already had your majesty's view, and having paft the test of fo clear and fharp-fighted a judgment, which has as good a title to give law in matters of this nature as in any other, they who shall presume to diffent from your majefty, will do more wrong to their own judgment than their judgment can do to me and for those latter parts which have not yet received your majesty's favourable afpect, if they who have feen them do not flatter me (for I dare not truft my own judgment) they will make it appear, that it is not with me as with most of mankind, who never forfake their darling vices, till their vices forfake them; and that this divorce was not Frigiditatis caufa, but an act of choice, and not of neceffity. Therefore, fir, I fhall only call it an humble petition, that your majesty will please to pardon this new amour to my old mistress, and my difobedience to his commands, to whofe memory I look up with great reverence and devotion: and making a ferious reflection upon that wife advice, it carries much greater weight with it now, than when it was given; for when age and experience has fo ripened man's difcretion as to make it fit for use, cither in private or public affairs, nothing blasts and corrupts the fruit of it fo much as the empty, airy reputation of being Nimis Poëta; and therefore I fhall take my leave of the Mufes, as two of my predeceffors did, faying, "Splendidis longum valedico nugis. Your majefty's most faithful and loyal fubject, and most dutiful and devoted fervant, JO. DENHAM, POEMS POE M S BY SIR JOHN DENHAM. COOPER'S URE. there are poets HILL.. which did never dream Upon Parnaffus, nor did taste the stream Of Helicon; we therefore may fuppofe Those made not poets, but the poets those. And as courts make not kings, but kings the court,, Nor wonder, if (advantag'd in my flight, Uncertain feems, and may be thought a proud Paul's, the late theme of fuch a Mufe whofe flight Has bravely reach'd and foar'd above thy height : And like a mift beneath a hill doth rife; Whose state and wealth, the business and the crowd, And is, to him who rightly things esteems, Where, with like haste, though several ways, they run, Are each the other's ruin, and increase ; As rivers loft in feas, some secret vein To be at once fecure, and innocent. Windfor the next (where Mars with Venus dwells, With fuch an easy and unforc'd ascent, * Mr. Waller. But |