Volume 18 — No. XII. SOME ACCOUNT OF THE NINE MUSES; Or, Poems written by nine several Ladies, upon the death of the late famous John Dryden, Esq.
Reading edition
As earth thy body keeps, thy soul the sky, So shall this verse preserve thy memory; For thou shalt make it live, because it sings of thee.
London: printed for Richard Basset, at the Mitre, in Fleet Street, 1700.
The work is dedicated to the Right Hon. Charles Montague, (Lord Halifax,) by the publisher Basset, who thus apologizes for the intrusion:
“The ladies indeed themselves might have had a better plea for your reception; but since the modesty which is natural to the sex they are of, will not suffer them to do that violence to their tempers, I think myself obliged to make a present of what is written in honour of the most consummate poet among our English dead, to the most distinguished among the living. You have been pleased already to shew your respect to his memory, in contributing so largely to his burial, notwithstanding he had that unhappiness of conduct, when alive, to give you cause to disclaim the protection of him.”
The dedication is followed by a commendatory copy of verses, addressed to the publisher, and signed Philomusus; of which most readers will think the following lines a sufficient specimen:
Hence issues forth a most delightful song, Fair as their sex, and as their judgment strong; Moving its force, and tempting in its ease; Secured of fame, unknowing to displease; Its every word like Aganippe, clear, And close its meaning, and its sense severe: As virtuous thoughts with chaste expression join, And make them truly, what they feign, divine.
The poems of these divine ladies, as their eulogist phrases them, appear in the following order:
Melpomene, the Tragic Muse, personated by Mrs Manley, refers to his elegies and tragedies. Melpomene sorrows for him:
Who sorrowed Killigrew’s untimely fall, And more than Roman made her funeral; Inspired by me, for me he could command, Bright Abingdon’s rich monument shall stand For evermore the wonder of the land; Oldham he snatched from an ignoble fate, Changed his cross star for one more fortunate; For who would not with pride resign his breath, To be so loved, to be so blest in death?
The eulogiums on Cromwell and Charles then praised. Of the last it is said,
For this alone he did deserve the prize, As Ranelagh, for her victorious eyes.
Cleopatra and St Catharine are mentioned; then
——Dorax and Sebastian both contend To shew the generous enemy and friend.
Urania, the Divine Muse, by the Honourable the Lady Peirce. This lady, after much tragic dole, is wonderfully comforted by recollecting that Garth survives, though Dryden is dead:
More I’ll not urge, but know, our wishes can No higher soar, since Garth’s the glorious man; Him let us constitute in Dryden’s stead, Let laurels ever flourish on his head.
Urania, after mentioning Virgil, exclaims,
O give us Homer yet, thou glorious bard!
Erato, the Amorous Muse, by Mrs S. Field. She claims the merit of Dryden’s love poems, on the following grounds:
Oft I for ink did radiant nectar bring, And gave him quills from infant Cupid’s wing.
Euterpe, the Lyric Muse, by Mrs J. E. Euterpe, of course, pours forth her sorrow in a scrambling Pindaric ode:
But, oh! they could not stand the rage Of an ill-natured and lethargic age, Who, spite of wit, would stupidly be wise; All noble raptures, extasies despise, And only plodders after sense will prize.
Euterpe eulogizeth
Garth, whom the god of wisdom did foredoom, And stock with eloquence, to pay thy tomb The most triumphant rites of ancient Rome.
Euterpe is true to her own character; for one may plod in vain after sense through her lyric effusion.
Thalia, the Comic Muse, by Mrs Manley. A pastoral dialogue betwixt Alexis, Daphne, Aminta, and Thalia. After the usual questions concerning the cause of sorrow, Thalia, invoked by the nymphs and swains, sings a ditty, bearing the following burden:
Bring here the spring, and throw fresh garlands on, With all the flowers that wait the rising sun; These ever-greens, true emblems of his soul, Take, Daphne, these, and scatter through the whole, While the eternal Dryden’s worth I tell, My lovely bard, that so lamented fell.
Clio, or the Historic Muse, by Mrs Pix, the authoress of a tragedy called “Queen Catharine, or the Ruins of Love.”
Stop here, my muse, no more thy office boast, This drop of praise is in an ocean lost; His works alone are trumpets of his fame, And every line will chronicle his name.
Calliope, the Heroic Muse, by Mrs C. Trotter. This is the best of these pieces. Calliope complains, that she is more unhappy than her sisters of the sock and buskin, still worshipped successfully by Vanburgh and Granville, in the epic province:
————————Blackmore, in spite Of me and nature, still presumes to write; Heavy and dozed, crawls out the tedious length; Unfit to soar, drags on with peasant strength The weight he cannot raise.
The poem concludes,
———————————Now you who aim, With fading power, at bright immortal fame; Ambitious monarchs, all whom glory warms, Cease your vain toil, throw down your conquering arms; Your active souls confine, since you must die Like vulgar men, your names and actions lie Where Trojan heroes, had not Homer lived, Had lain forgot, nor ruined Troy survived; No more their glories I can e’er retrieve, For nature can no second Dryden give.
Terpsichore, a Lyric Muse, by Mrs L. D. ex tempore. Albeit a lyric muse, Terpsichore laments in hexameters:
Just as the gods were listening to my strains, And thousand loves danced o’er the etherial plains, With my own radiant hair my harp I strung, And in glad concert all my sisters sung: 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.