Illustrious VERE, or HORACE; fit to be
Sung by a Horace, or a Muse as free;

Which thou art to thyself: whose fame was won In the eye of Europe, where thy deeds were done,

When on thy trumpet she did sound a blast,
Whose relish to eternity shall last.

I leave thy acts, which should I prosecute
Throughout, might flattery seem; and to be mute
To any one, were envy; which would live
Against my grave, and time could not forgive.
I speak thy other graces, not less shown,
Nor less in practice; but less mark'd, less

known:

Humanity, and piety, which are

As noble in great chiefs, as they are rare;
And best become the valiant man to wear,
Who more should seek men's reverence, than
fear.

XCII.

THE NEW CRY.

Ere cherries ripe ! and strawberries! be gone;
Unto the CRIES OF LONDON I'll add one.
Ripe statesmen, ripe! they grow in every street;
At six and twenty, ripe. You shall them meet,
And have them yield no savour, but of state.
Ripe are their ruffs, their cuffs, their beards,
their gait,

And grave as ripe, like mellow as their faces. They know the states of Christendom, not the places ;

unfortunate sovereign. They could not be in better hands, for she was a person of excellent character." Sir Horace was created Lord Vere of Tilbury in 1625, being, as Fuller says, the first baron made by Charles I.

Yet they have seen the maps, and bought 'em too,
And understand them, as most chapmen do.
The councils, projects, practices they know,
And what each prince doth for intelligence owe,
And unto whom; they are the almanacks,
For twelve years yet to come, what each state
lacks.

They carry in their pockets Tacitus,

And the Gazetti, or Gallo-Belgicus;

And talk reserv'd, lock'd up, and full of fear,
Nay, ask you, how the day goes, in your ear;
Keep a Star-chamber sentence close twelve days,
And whisper what a Proclamation says.
They meet in sixes, and at every mart,
Are sure to con the catalogue by heart;
Or every day, some one at Rimee's looks,
Or Bill's, and there he buys the names of books.
They all get Porta, for the sundry ways
To write in cipher, and the several keys,
To ope the character; they've found the slight
With juice of limons, onions, piss, to write;
To break up seals, and close them: and they
know,

If the States make [not] peace, how it will go
With England. All forbidden books they get,
And of the powder-plot, they will talk yet:
At naming the French king their heads they
shake,

And at the Pope and Spain slight faces make;
Or 'gainst the bishops, for the brethren rail,
Much like those brethren; thinking to prevail

6 Some one at Rimee's looks,

Or Bill's

They all get Porta.] The two first were booksellers in that age: the last was the famous Neapolitan, Johannes Baptista Porta, who has a treatise extant in Latin, De furtivis literarum notis, vulgo de Ziferis, printed at Naples 1563. He died 1615. WHAL.

With ignorance on us, as they have done
On them and therefore do not only shun
Others more modest, but contemn us too,
That know not so much state, wrong, as they do.

XCIII.

TO SIR JOHN RADCLIFFE.

How like a column, RADCLIFFE, left alone'
For the great mark of virtue, those being gone
Who did, alike with thee, thy house up-bear,
Stand'st thou, to shew the times what you all
were?

• How like a column, Radcliffe, &c.] This epigram (a very admirable one) is addressed to the surviving brother of Margaret Radcliffe. (see Epig. xl.) It undoubtedly furnished Edwards with the model for his affecting sonnet, On a Family Picture, which the reader will find subjoined, and which may be counted among the best of this polished and amiable man.

ON A FAMILY PICTURE.

"When pensive on that portraiture I gaze,

Where my four brothers round about me stand,
And four fair sisters smile with graces bland,
The goodly monument of happier days;

And think how soon insatiate death, who preys
On all, has cropt the rest with ruthless hand;
While only I survive of all that band,
Which one chaste bed did to my father raise :

It seems that like a column left alone,

The tottering remnant of some splendid fane,
Scaped from the fury of the barbarous Gaul,
And wasting time which has the rest o'erthrown,
Amidst our house's ruins I remain

Single, unpropt, and nodding to my fall."

It is melancholy to add to the little history of Sir J. Radcliffe's family, that this "column" also, this " great mark of virtue," fell, not many years afterwards, like the rest." That valiant and

Two bravely in the battle fell and died,"
Upbraiding rebels' arms, and barbarous pride:
And two that would have fall'n as great as they,
The Belgic fever ravished away.

Thou, that art all their valour, all their spirit,
And thine own goodness to encrease thy merit,
Than whose I do not know a whiter soul,
Nor could I, had I seen all nature's roll,
Thou yet remain'st, unhurt in peace or war,
Though not unprov'd; which shews thy fortunes

are

Willing to expiate the fault in thee,

Wherewith, against thy blood, they 'offenders be.

XCIV.

TO LUCY COUNTESS OF BEDFORD, WITH MASTER
DONNE'S SATIRES.

LUCY, you brightness of our sphere, who are,
Life of the Muses' day, their morning star!

generally beloved gentleman (Weever says,) sir John Radcliffe, lieutenant colonell, was slaine fighting against the French in the isle of Rhee, the 29th of October, in the year of our Lord, 1627.

• In Ireland.

6 Daniel, who has a poem addressed to the countess, terms her "learned;" undoubtedly she was a most accomplished lady, and skilled in a variety of arts, not much studied by the females of those days. Sir Thomas Roe has a letter to her, in which he speaks of her proficiency in the knowledge of ancient medals; and sir William Temple mentions her with applause. in his Essay on the gardens of Epicurus, for "projecting the most perfect figure of a garden that he ever saw." Granger attempts to be severe on her bounty to the poets; but as Drayton, Donne, Daniel, and our author were among the number, her liberality seems to be nearly as secure from censure as her judgment.

It is pleasing to mark the habitual kindness with which Jonson

If works, not authors, their own grace should

look,

Whose poems would not wish to be your book?
But these, desired by you, the maker's ends
Crown with their own: Rare poems ask rare
friends.

Yet satires, since the most of mankind be
Their unavoided subject, fewest see;

For none e'er took that pleasure in sin's sense,
But, when they heard it tax'd, took more offence.
They then, that living where the matter's bred,
Dare for these poems yet both ask, and read,
And like them too; must needfully, though few,
Be of the best, and 'mongst those best are you:
Lucy, you brightness of our sphere, who are
The Muses' evening, as their morning star!

XCV.

TO SIR HENRY SAVILE.

If, my religion safe, I durst embrace
That stranger doctrine of Pythagoras,
I should believe, the soul of Tacitus
In thee, most weighty SAVILE lived to us:
So hast thou render'd him in all his bounds,
And all his numbers, both of sense and sounds.
But when I read that special piece restored,
Where Nero falls, and Galba is adored,
To thine own proper I ascribe then more,
And gratulate the breach I griev'd before;
Which fate, it seems, caus'd in the history,
Only to boast thy merit in supply.

recommends his friend's works, and the ingenious mode in which he compliments his patroness for desiring to have a copy of the Satires.