Volume 9 — TO LORD CHANCELLOR HYDE. &c.
Reading edition
The great statesman, to whom Dryden made this new-year's offering, was the well known Earl of Clarendon, of whose administration Hume gives the following striking account:
"Clarendon not only behaved with wisdom and justice in the office of chancellor: all the counsels, which he gave the king, tended equally to promote the interest of prince and people. Charles, accustomed, in his exile, to pay entire deference to the judgment of this faithful servant, continued still to submit to his direction; and for some time no minister was ever possessed of more absolute authority. He moderated the forward zeal of the royalists, and tempered their appetite for revenge. With the opposite party, he endeavoured to preserve, inviolate, all the king's engagements. He kept an exact register of the promises which had been made, for any service; and he employed all his industry to fulfil them."
Notwithstanding the merits of Clarendon, and our author's prophecy in the following verses, that
He had already wearied fortune so, She could no longer be his friend or foe;
this great statesman was doomed to be one of the numberless victims to the uncertainty of court favour. His fall took place in 1667, when he was attainted and banished. The popular discontent was chiefly excited against him, by a groundless charge of corruption; an accusation to which the vulgar lend a greedy and implicit faith, because ignorance is always suspicious, and low minds, not knowing how seldom avarice is the companion of ambition, conceive the opportunities of peculation to be not only numerous, but irresistibly tempting. Accordingly, the heroes of Athens, as well as the patriots of Rome, were usually stigmatized with this crime; bare suspicion of which, it would seem, is usually held adequate to the fullest proof. Nor have instances been wanting in our own days, of a party adopting the same mode, to blacken the character of those, whose firmness and talents impeded their access to power, and public confidence.
In the address to the Chancellor, Dryden has indulged his ingenuity in all the varied and prolonged comparisons and conceits, which were the taste of his age. Johnson has exemplified Dryden's capacity of producing these elaborate trifles, by referring to the passage, which compares the connection between the king and his minister, to the visible horizon. "It is," says he, "so successfully laboured, that though at last it gives the mind more perplexity than pleasure, and seems hardly worth the study that it costs; yet it must be valued, as the proof of a mind at once subtle and comprehensive." The following couplet, referring to the friendship of Charles I, when in his distresses, for Clarendon, contains a comparison, which is eminently happy:
Our setting sun, from his declining seat, Shot beams of kindness on you, not of heat.
In general, this poem displays more uniform adherence to the metaphysical style of Cowley, and his contemporaries, than occurs in any of Dryden's other compositions. May we not suppose, that, in addressing Clarendon, he adopted the style of those muses, with whom the Chancellor had conversed in his earlier days, in preference to the plainer and more correct taste, which Waller, and Denham, had begun to introduce; but which, to the aged statesman, could have brought no recollection of what he used to consider as poetry? Certain, at least, it is, that, to use the strong language of Johnson, Dryden never after ventured "to bring on the anvil such stubborn and unmanageable thoughts;" and these lines afford striking evidence, how the lever of genius, like that of machinery applied to material substances, can drag together, and compel the approximation of the most unsociable ideas. Our admiration of both, however, is much qualified, when they are applied rather to make exhibition of their own powers, than for any better purpose.
TO
THE LORD-CHANCELLOR HYDE.
presented on new-year's day, 1662.
MY LORD,
While flattering crouds officiously appear To give themselves, not you, an happy year, And by the greatness of their presents prove How much they hope, but not how well they love,— The Muses, who your early courtship boast, Though now your flames are with their beauty lost, Yet watch their time, that, if you have forgot They were your mistresses, the world may not. Decayed by time and wars, they only prove Their former beauty by their former love; And now present, as ancient ladies do, That, courted long, at length are forced to woo: For still they look on you with such kind eyes, As those, that see the Church's sovereign rise, From their own order chose, in whose high state They think themselves the second choice of fate. When our great monarch into exile went, Wit and religion suffered banishment. Thus once, when Troy was wrapped in fire and smoke, The helpless gods their burning shrines forsook; They with the vanquished prince and party go, And leave their temples empty to the foe. At length the Muses stand, restored again To that great charge which nature did ordain; And their loved druids seem revived by fate, While you dispense the laws, and guide the state. The nation's soul, our monarch, does dispense, Through you, to us his vital influence: You are the channel, where those spirits flow, And work them higher, as to us they go. In open prospect nothing bounds our eye, Until the earth seems joined unto the sky: So in this hemisphere, our utmost view Is only bounded by our king and you; Our sight is limited where you are joined, And beyond that no farther heaven can find. So well your virtues do with his agree, That, though your orbs of different greatness be, Yet both are for each other's use disposed, His to inclose, and yours to be inclosed: Nor could another in your room have been, Except an emptiness had come between. Well may he, then, to you his cares impart, And share his burden where he shares his heart. In you his sleep still wakes; his pleasures find Their share of business in your labouring mind. So, when the weary sun his place resigns, He leaves his light, and by reflection shines. Justice, that sits and frowns where public laws Exclude soft mercy from a private cause, In your tribunal most herself does please; There only smiles because she lives at ease; And, like young David, finds her strength the more, When disincumbered from those arms she wore. Heaven would your royal master should exceed Most in that virtue, which we most did need; And his mild father (who too late did find All mercy vain but what with power was joined) His fatal goodness left to fitter times, Not to increase, but to absolve our crimes: But when the heir of this vast treasure knew How large a legacy was left to you, (Too great for any subject to retain) He wisely tied it to the crown again; Yet, passing through your hands, it gathers more, As streams, through mines, bear tincture of their ore. While emp'ric politicians use deceit, Hide what they give, and cure but by a cheat; You boldly shew that skill which they pretend, And work by means as noble as your end; Which should you veil, we might unwind the clue, As men do nature, till we came to you. And, as the Indies were not found before Those rich perfumes, which, from the happy shore, The winds upon their balmy wings conveyed, Whose guilty sweetness first their world betrayed; So, by your counsels, we are brought to view A rich and undiscovered world in you. By you our monarch does that fame assure, Which kings must have, or cannot live secure: For prosperous princes gain their subjects' heart, Who love that praise in which themselves have part. By you he fits those subjects to obey, As heaven's eternal monarch does convey His power unseen, and man, to his designs, By his bright ministers, the stars, inclines. Our setting sun, from his declining seat, Shot beams of kindness on you, not of heat; And, when his love was bounded in a few That were unhappy, that they might be true, Made you the favourite of his last sad times, That is a sufferer in his subjects' crimes: Thus, those first favours you received, were sent, Like heaven's rewards, in earthly punishment: Yet fortune, conscious of your destiny, E'en then took care to lay you softly by, And wrapped your fate among her precious things, Kept fresh to be unfolded with your king's. Shewn all at once, you dazzled so our eyes, As new-born Pallas did the gods surprise, When, springing forth from Jove's new-closing wound, She struck the warlike spear into the ground; Which sprouting leaves did suddenly inclose, And peaceful olives shaded as they rose. How strangely active are the arts of peace, Whose restless motions less than war's do cease! Peace is not freed from labour, but from noise; And war more force, but not more pains employs. Such is the mighty swiftness of your mind, That, like the earth, it leaves our sense behind, While you so smoothly turn and roll our sphere, That rapid motion does but rest appear. For, as in nature's swiftness, with the throng Of flying orbs while ours is borne along, All seems at rest to the deluded eye, Moved by the soul of the same harmony; So, carried on by your unwearied care, We rest in peace, and yet in motion share. Let envy, then, those crimes within you see, From which the happy never must be free; (Envy, that does with misery reside, The joy and the revenge of ruined pride.) Think it not hard, if, at so cheap a rate, You can secure the constancy of fate, Whose kindness sent what does their malice seem, By lesser ills the greater to redeem; Nor can we this weak shower a tempest call, But drops of heat that in the sun-shine fall. You have already wearied Fortune so, She cannot farther be your friend or foe; But sits all breathless, and admires to feel A fate so weighty, that it stops our wheel. In all things else above our humble fate, Your equal mind yet swells not into state, But, like some mountain in those happy isles, Where in perpetual spring young nature smiles, Your greatness shews; no horror to affright, But trees for shade, and flowers to court the sight: Sometimes the hill submits itself a while In small descents, which do its height beguile; And sometimes mounts, but so as billows play, Whose rise not hinders, but makes short, our way. Your brow, which does no fear of thunder know, Sees rolling tempests vainly beat below; And, like Olympus' top, the impression wears Of love and friendship writ in former years. Yet unimpaired with labours, or with time, Your age but seems to a new youth to climb. Thus heavenly bodies do our time beget, And measure change, but share no part of it. And still it shall without a weight increase, Like this new-year, whose motions never cease: For, since the glorious course you have begun Is led by Charles, as that is by the sun, It must both weightless and immortal prove, Because the centre of it is above.