DUKE OF NEWCASTLE,[G]

ONE OF HIS MAJESTY'S
MOST HONOURABLE PRIVY COUNCIL, AND OF THE
MOST NOBLE ORDER OF THE GARTER, &c.

MAY IT PLEASE YOUR GRACE,

Amongst those few persons of wit and honour, whose favourable opinion I have desired, your own virtue, and my great obligations to your grace, have justly given you the precedence. For what could be more glorious to me, than to have acquired some part of your esteem, who are admired and honoured by all good men; who have been, for so many years together, the pattern and standard of honour to the nation; and whose whole life has been so great an example of heroic virtue, that we might wonder how it happened into an age so corrupt as ours, if it had not likewise been a part of the former. As you came into the world with all the advantages of a noble birth and education, so you have rendered both yet more conspicuous by your virtue. Fortune, indeed, has perpetually crowned your undertakings with success, but she has only waited on your valour, not conducted it. She has ministered to your glory like a slave, and has been led in triumph by it; or, at most, while honour led you by the hand to greatness, fortune only followed to keep you from sliding back in the ascent. That, which Plutarch accounted her favour to Cymon and Lucullus, was but her justice to your grace; and, never to have been overcome where you led in person, as it was more than Hannibal could boast, so it was all that Providence could do for that party, which it had resolved to ruin. Thus, my lord, the last smiles of victory were on your arms; and, everywhere else declaring for the rebels, she seemed to suspend herself, and to doubt, before she took her flight, whether she were able wholly to abandon that cause, for which you fought[H].

But the greatest trials of your courage and constancy were yet to come: Many had ventured their fortunes, and exposed their lives to the utmost dangers for their king and country, who ended their loyalty with the war; and, submitting to the iniquity of the times, chose rather to redeem their former plenty, by acknowledging an usurper, than to suffer with an unprofitable fidelity (as those meaner spirits called it) for their lawful sovereign. But, as I dare not accuse so many of our nobility, who were content to accept their patrimonies from the clemency of the conqueror, and to retain only a secret veneration for their prince, amidst the open worship which they were forced to pay to the usurper, who had dethroned him; so, I hope, I may have leave to extol that virtue which acted more generously; and which was not satisfied with an inward devotion to monarchy, but produced itself to view, and asserted the cause by open martyrdom. Of these rare patterns of loyalty, your grace was chief: Those examples you could not find, you made. Some few Cato's there were with you, whose invincible resolution could not be conquered by that usurping CÆsar. Your virtue opposed itself to his fortune, and overcame it, by not submitting to it. The last and most difficult enterprize he had to effect, when he had conquered three nations, was to subdue your spirit; and he died weary of that war, and unable to finish it.

In the mean time, you lived more happily in your exile, than the other on his throne. Your loyalty made you friends and servants amongst foreigners; and you lived plentifully without a fortune; for you lived on your own desert and reputation. The glorious name of the valiant and faithful Newcastle, was a patrimony which could never be exhausted.

Thus, my lord, the morning of your life was clear and calm; and, though it was afterwards overcast, yet, in that general storm, you were never without a shelter. And now you are happily arrived to the evening of a day, as serene as the dawn of it was glorious; but such an evening as, I hope, and almost prophecy, is far from night: 'Tis the evening of a summer's sun, which keeps the day-light long within the skies. The health of your body is maintained by the vigour of your mind: Neither does the one shrink from the fatigue of exercise, nor the other bend under the pains of study. Methinks, I behold in you another Caius Marius, who, in the extremity of his age, exercised himself almost every morning in the Campus Martius, amongst the youthful nobility of Rome. And afterwards in your retirements, when you do honour to poetry, by employing part of your leisure in it, I regard you as another Silius Italicus, who, having passed over his consulship with applause, dismissed himself from business, and from the gown, and employed his age, amongst the shades, in the reading and imitation of Virgil.

In which, lest any thing should be wanting to your happiness, you have, by a rare effect of fortune, found, in the person of your excellent lady, not only a lover, but a partner of your studies; a lady whom our age may justly equal with the Sappho of the Greeks, or the Sulpitia of the Romans; who, by being taken into your bosom, seems to be inspired with your genius; and, by writing the history of your life[I], in so masculine a style, has already placed you in the number of the heroes. She has anticipated that great portion of fame, which envy often hinders a living virtue from possessing; which would, indeed, have been given to your ashes, but with a later payment; and of which you could have no present use, except it were by a secret presage of that which was to come, when you were no longer in a possibility of knowing it. So that if that were a praise, or satisfaction to the greatest of emperors, which the most judicious of poets gives him—

that the adoration, which was not allowed to Hercules and Romulus till after death, was given to Augustus living, then certainly it cannot be denied, but that your grace has received a double satisfaction: the one, to see yourself consecrated to immortality while you are yet alive; the other, to have your praises celebrated by so dear, so just, and so pious an historian.

It is the consideration of this that stops my pen; though I am loth to leave so fair a subject, which gives me as much field as poetry could wish, and yet no more than truth can justify. But to attempt any thing of a panegyric, were to enterprize on your lady's right; and to seem to affect those praises, which none but the duchess of Newcastle can deserve, when she writes the actions of her lord. I shall, therefore, leave that wider space, and contract myself to those narrow bounds, which best become my fortune and employment.

I am obliged, my lord, to return you not only my own acknowledgments, but to thank you in the names of former poets; the names of Jonson and D'Avenant[J] seem to require it from me, that those favours, which you placed on them, and which they wanted opportunity to own in public, yet might not be lost to the knowledge of posterity, with a forgetfulness unbecoming of the Muses, who are the daughters of memory. And give me leave, my lord, to avow so much of vanity, as to say, I am proud to be their remembrancer: For, by relating how gracious you have been to them, and are to me, I, in some measure, join my name with theirs: And the continued descent of your favours to me is the best title which I can plead for my succession. I only wish, that I had as great reason to be satisfied with myself, in the return of our common acknowledgments, as your grace may justly take in the conferring them: For I cannot but be very sensible, that the present of an ill comedy, which I here make you, is a very unsuitable way of giving thanks for them, who, themselves, have written so many better. This pretends to nothing more, than to be a foil to those scenes, which are composed by the most noble poet of our age and nation; and to be set as a water-mark of the lowest ebb, to which the wit of my predecessor has sunk, and run down in me. But, though all of them have surpassed me in the scene, there is one part of glory, in which I will not yield to any of them: I mean, my lord, that honour and veneration which they had for you in their lives; and which I preserve after them, more holily than the vestal fires were maintained from age to age; but with a greater degree of heat, and of devotion, than theirs, as being with more respect and passion than they ever were,

Your Grace's
Most obliged, most humble,
and most obedient Servant,
John Dryden.