6. A godless regent tremble at a star *.

66

THE duke of Orleans, here pointed at, was an infidel and libertine, and at the same time, as well as BOULANVILLIERS and CARDAN who calculated the nativity of Jesus Christ, was a bigotted believer in judicial astrology; he was faid to be the author, which however has been doubted, of many of those flimsy songs, nugæ canoræ, to which the language and the manners of France seem to be peculiarly adapted. He knew mankind. Quiconque est sans honneur & fans humeur, said he frequently, est un courtisan parfaite." Crebillon the father, a writer far superior to his son, during this profligate and debauched regent's administration, wrote a set of odes against him, of wonderful energy and keenness, and almost in the spirit of Alceus; if it be not a kind of profanation to speak thus, of any production of a poet that writes under a despotic government.

7. Alas in truth the man but chang'd his mind, Perhaps was fick, in love, or had not din'd *.

For the destruction of a kingdom, faid a man of wit, nothing more is sometimes requifite than a bad digestion of the prime minifter. The Grand Seignior offered to afsist Henry IV. against his rebellious fubjects, not for any deep political reason, but only because he hated the word, League. It is a fault in Davila, as well as Tacitus, never to afcribe great events, to whim, caprice, private paffions, and petty causes.

8. Judge we by nature? Habit can efface,
Interest o'ercome, or policy take place :
By actions? those uncertainty divides;
By passions? these dissimulation hides;
Opinions? they still take a wider range :
Find if you can in what you cannot change.
Manners with fortunes, humours turn with climes,
Tenets with books, and principles with times †.

We find here in the compass of eight lines, an anatomy of human nature; more sense and observation cannot well be compressed and concluded in a narrower space.

* Ver. 127.

† Ver 182.

K4

This

This passage might be drawn out into a voluminous commentary, and be worked up into a system concerning the knowledge of the world: There seems to be an inaccuracy in the use of the last verb; the natural temperament is by no means suddenly changed, or turned with a change of climate, though undoubtedly the humours are originally formed by it: influenced by, would be a more proper expreffion than turn with, if the metre would admit it.

9. His passion still, to covet gen'ral praise,
His life, to forfeit it a thousand ways;
A constant bounty which no friend has made;
An angel tongue which no man can perfuade;
A fool with more of wit than half mankind,
Too rash for thought, for action too refin'd;
A tyrant to the wife his heart approves;
A rebel to the very king he loves;
He dies an out-caft of each church and state,
And harder still flagitious yet not great *,

THIS character of the Duke of Wharton is finished with much force and expressiveness; the contradictions that were in it * Ver. 205,

† Compare it with that of Zimri, the Duke of Buckingham, in Abfalom and Achitopel: in which Dryden has excelled our author.

are

are strongly contrasted. In an entertaining work lately published, which it is hoped will diffuse a relish for biography, we have a remarkable anecdote relating to this nobleman's speech in favour of the bishop of Rochester. His Grace, then in oppofition to Court, went to Chelsea the day before the last debate on that prelate's affair, where acting contrition, he professed being determined to work out his pardon at Court by speaking against the bishop, in order to which he begged some hints. The minister was deceived, and went through the whole cause with him, pointing out where the strength of the argument lay, and where it's weakness. The Duke was very thankful, returned to town, passed the night in drinking, and without going to bed, went to the House of Lords, where he spoke For the bishop, recapitulating in the most masterly manner, and answering all that had been urged against him *.

10. When Cataline by rapine swell'd his store; When Cæfar made a noble dame a whore;

*

Catalogue of the Royal and Noble Authors of Eng

land, vol. ii. p. 133.

In this the luft, in that the avarice
Were means, not ends; ambition was the vice *.

THE same paffion excited Richlieu to throw up the dyke at Rochelle, and to difpute the prize of poetry with Corneille; whom to traduce was the surest method of gaining the affection of this ambitious minifter, who aspired equally to excel in all things; nay, who formed a design to be canonized as a faint. A perfect contrast to the character of Cardinal Fleury, who fhewed that it was possible to govern a great state with moderate abilities, and a mild temper. His ministry is impartially represented by Voltaire in the age of Louis XIV.

11. Lucullus, when frugality could charm, Had roafted turnips in the Sabin farm †.

FEW writers of his country have difplayed a greater energy of sentiment than Crebillon; in his Cataline we have a noblę

* Ver. 214.

† Ver. 218. See Confiderations on Lucullus, in the fecond vol. of L' Abbé de St. Real, p. 1.

‡ The creditors of Crebillon would have stopped the profits of this tragedy, but the spirited old bard appealed

to