For close designs and crooked counsels fit,
Sagacious, bold, and turbulent of wit:

5 Restless, unfixed in principles and place;
In power unpleased, impatient of disgrace,
A fiery soul which working out its way,
Fretted the pigmy body to decay,

And o'er informed its tenement of clay : 10 A daring pilot in extremity;

Pleased with the danger, when the waves went high
He sought the storms; but, for a calm unfit,
Would steer too nigh the sands to show his wit.
Great wits are sure to madness near allied,

15 And thin partitions do their bounds divide :

Else, why should he, with wealth and honours blest,
Refuse his age the needful hours of rest?

Punish a body which he could not please;
Bankrupt of life, yet prodigal of ease?

20 In friendship false, implacable in hate,
Resolved to ruin or to rule the state.
To compass this the triple bond he broke,
The pillars of the public safety shook,
And fitted Israel with a foreign yoke :
25 Then, seized with fear, yet still affecting fame,
Usurped a patriot's all-atoning name;
So easy still it proves, in factious times,
With public zeal to cancel private crimes.
How safe is treason, and how sacred ill,
30 Where none can sin against the people's will!
Where crowds can wink, and no offence be known,
Since in another's guilt they find their own!

8. Pigmy: more correctly spelt pygmy, fr. Gk. muyμaios, one who is the size of a πʊуμý, or fist.

9. O'er-inform: one of the meanings of inform was to animate, to give energy or vitality to.

19. Bankrupt: a merchant who has had his bank (It. banco, E. bench), or place of business, broken up (ruptus).

22. The triple bond: a reference to

the Triple Alliance, 1668, between England, Holland, and Sweden, to check the ambition of Louis XIV.

24. By becoming a consenting party to the infamous Treaty of Dover in 1670, when he was a member of the Cabal Administration.

29. Treason, fr. Fr. trahison, (Lat. traditio, fr. tradere, to betray).

Yet fame deserved no enemy can grudge;
The statesman we abhor, but praise the judge.
35 In Israel's courts ne'er sat an Abethdin

With more discerning eyes or hands more clean,
Unbribed, unsought, the wretched to redress;
Swift of dispatch and easy of access.

Oh had he been content to serve the crown 40 With virtue only proper to the gown;

Or had the rankness of the soil been freed
From cockle, that oppressed the noble seed;
David for him his tuneful harp had strung.

37. Unbribed: bribe is Fr. bribe (de pain), a piece, lump (of bread); from which, by an intelligible transition, it passed to mean some good thing thrown to a person to gain his favour or adhe

sion. In Chaucer (Frere's Tale, 1. 69) bribour signifies a thief, a rogue; and even Bacon uses briber in the sense of "a taker of bribes."

43. David, King Charles II.

113. CHARACTER OF ZIMRI (VILLIERS, Duke of Buckingham).

Some of their chiefs were princes of the land;

In the first rank of these did Zimri stand:
A man so various, that he seem'd to be
Not one, but all mankind's epitome:
5 Stiff in opinions, always in the wrong;
Was every thing by starts, and nothing long;
But, in the course of one revolving moon,
Was chemist, fiddler, statesman, and buffoon.
Blest madman, who could every hour employ
10 With something new to wish, or to enjoy!

Railing and praising were his usual themes,
And both, to show his judgment, in extremes;
So over violent, or over civil,

That every man with him was God or Devil. 15 In squandering wealth was his peculiar art; Nothing went unrewarded but desert.

Beggar'd by fools, whom still he found too late;
He had his jest, and they had his estate.

18. Jest this word is a notable example of the sad process of degradation

through which many honourable English terms have passed. A gest was originally

He laugh'd himself from court, then sought relief
20 By forming parties, but could ne'er be chief;
For spite of him the weight of business fell
On Absalom, and wise Achitophel :
Thus, wicked but in will, of means bereft,
He left not faction, but of that was left.

a gestum, or heroic exploit; and a gestour was a narrator of such deeds for the entertainment of great personages,' in which sense the word is used by Chaucer. As the tastes of his employers degenerated, and became frivolous or gross, the function of the gestour also got degraded; and the word jester and jest shared its fate.

19. Court: Lat. cohors, cors, first meant a cattle-yard; in mediæval Latin it took the form curtis, and was applied to the farms and castles built by the Roman settlers; then it came to mean the great enclosure, or royal residence, becoming in Italian corte, in French cour. See Max Müller's Lectures, 2nd series, pp. 252, 253.

114. From 'THE HIND AND THE PANTHER.'

FAITH AND REASON.

What weight of ancient witness can prevail,

If private reason hold the public scale?

But, gracious God, how well thou dost provide
For erring judgments an unerring guide!

5 Thy throne is darkness in th' abyss of light,
A blaze of glory that forbids the sight.

O teach me to believe thee thus conceal'd,
And search no farther than thyself reveal'd;
But her alone for my director take,

10 Whom thou hast promis'd never to forsake!

My thoughtless youth was wing'd with vain desires,
My manhood, long misled with wandering fires,

Follow'd false lights; and, when their glimpse was gone,
My pride struck out new sparkles of her own.
15 Such was I, such by nature still I am;

5. This line is an echo of Milton's"Dark with excessive bright thy skirts appear."

Search, Fr. chercher, It. cercare,

comes from Lat. circare, to traverse every accessible spot in a кíρкоs oг circle (Diez).

Be thine the glory, and be mine the shame.

Good life be now my task; my doubts are done;
What more could fright my faith, than three in one?

5

10

10

15

20

20

115. ALEXANDER'S FEAST.

(From An Ode in Honour of St. Cecilia's Day.')

Sooth'd with the sound, the king grew vain;

Fought all his battles o'er again;

And thrice he routed all his foes; and thrice he slew the slain.
The master saw the madness rise;

His glowing cheeks, his ardent eyes;

And, while he Heaven and Earth defied,
Chang'd his hand, and check'd his pride.
He chose a mournful Muse,

Soft pity to infuse :

He sung Darius great and good,

By too severe a fate,
Fallen, fallen, fallen, fallen,
Fallen from his high estate,

And welt'ring in his blood;
Deserted, at his utmost need,
By those his former bounty fed:
On the bare earth expos'd he lies,
With not a friend to close his eyes.
With downcast looks the joyless victor sate,
Revolving in his alter'd soul

The various turns of Chance below;
And, now and then, a sigh he stole;
And tears began to flow.

3. Rout, It. rotta, Fr. route, is derived from Lat. rupta, and means literally the breaking up of an army.

7. Check'd: the Persian schach, chieftain, king; Fr. échec, is the word check that occurs so frequently in the game of chess (which is supposed to be another form of checks); check-mate means king-dead, and all the other uses of the word are but

metaphors from the same game.

16. Bounty (Fr. bonté, Lat. bonitas), in accordance with its derivation, once signified goodness in general, but eventually came to be limited to a particular manifestation of goodness, charity; just as charity itself once was love, Lat. caritas.

The mighty master smil'd, to see
That love was in the next degree:
'Twas but a kindred sound to move,
For pity melts the mind to love.

Softly sweet, in Lydian measures,
Soon he sooth'd his soul to pleasures.
War, he sung, is toil and trouble;
Honour but an empty bubble;
Never ending, still beginning,
Fighting still, and still destroying;
If the world be worth thy winning,
Think, O think it worth enjoying:
Lovely Thais sits beside thee,

Take the good the gods provide thee!
The many rend the skies with loud applause;
So Love was crown'd, but Music won the cause.
The prince, unable to conceal his pain,

Gaz'd on the fair

Who caus'd his care,

And sigh'd and look'd, sigh'd and look'd,
Sigh'd and look'd, and sigh'd again :

45 At length, with love and wine at once oppress'd,
The vanquish'd victor sunk upon her breast.

38. Skies: sky is properly cloud; then it was used of a mass of clouds, whence it was extended to the entire firmament.

So welkin is a mere diminutive of welc, a cloud. See Manual of English Language, p. 64.

Dryden's Prose.

116. SHAKESPEARE AND BEN JONSON.

To begin, then, with Shakespeare. He was the man, who, of all modern, and perhaps ancient poets, had the largest and most comprehensive soul. All the images of nature were still present to him, and he drew them not laboriously, but luckily when he describes

any thing, you more than see it—you feel it too. Those who accuse him to have wanted learning, give him the greater commendation:

1. Luckily, by a sort of inborn happy facility.