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20. Duke of Guise, a Tragedy, 1688.

21. Albion and Albanius, an Opera, 1685.

22. Don Sebastian King of Portugal, a Tragedy,

1690.

23. King Arthur; or the British Worthy, a Tragedy, 1691.

24. Amphytrion; or the two Sosias, a Comedy, 1691.

25. Cleomenes, the Spartan Hero, a Tragedy, 1692.

26. Love Triumphant; or, Nature will prevail, a Tragi-comedy, 1694.

Mr. Dryden had no monument erected to him for several years; to which Mr. Pope alludes in his epitaph intended for Mr. Rowe, in this line:

Beneath a rude and nameless stone he lies.

In a note upon which we are informed, that the tomb of Mr. Dryden was erected upon this hint, by Sheffield duke of Buckingham, to which was originally intended this epitaph:

۱

This Sheffield rais'd.--The sacred dust below

Was Dryden once; the rest who does not know?

Which was since changed into the plain inscrip. tion now upon it, viz.

J. DRYDEN,

NATUS AUG. 9. 1631.

MORTUS MAII I. 1701.

Johannes Sheffield, Dux Buckinghamiensis fecit.

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THE Public is hereobliged with the Poetical Works of Mr. Dryden, detached from the compositions of inferior writers, with which most of them have been hitherto blended in the Miscellanies *. It was thought but justice to the productions of so excellent a Poet, to set them free, at last, from so disadvantageous, if not unnatural, an union; which, like the cruelty of Mezentius in Virgil, was no less than a junction of living and dead bodies. We say this in respect to numberless pieces in Mr. Dryden's Miscellanies, without derogating from that praise which is justly due to others among them. But, not to enter into the merit of Mr. Dryden's fellow undertakers + in that Collection, or the motives which induced him to write in conjunction with others, we may venture to say it is now high time the partnership should be dissolved, and Mr. Dryden left to stand upon his own bottom. His credit, as a Poet, is out of all danger, though the withdrawing his stock may probably expose many of his copartners to the hazard of a poetical bankruptcy.

There is, indeed, a Collection of original poems and translations by Mr. Dryden, published for J. Tonson in 1701, in a thin folio; and another by J. and R. Tonson, in two volumes duodecimo, in 1733;

Those published by Mr. Dryden himself in Six Parts, and others. † So he himself calls them, Preface to the Miscellanies.

but the first does not contain much above half the pieces, and the last is not complete, several of the Prologues, Epilogues, Songs, and Epitaphs, being entirely omitted; so that neither the one nor the other did fully answer the design of the present Collection, which is meant to include the whole of Mr. Dryden's original Poems, upon which, as has been observed by one of his biographers, (Biograph. Dict. vol. IV. p. 228) his poetical reputation is chiefly built.

In all the editions we have seen of Mr. Dryden's original Poems, the second part of his Absalom and Achithophel has been printed imperfect, the lines wrote by Mr. Tate, upwards of 300 in number, being entirely omitted. In order to connect the reading and sense of the Poem, thus interrupted, these lines we have restored, as well as the desultory Prologues, Epilogues, Songs, &c. and, by the restoration, offer to the Reader, in the present Edition, not a mutilated, but a perfect poem; not a partial, but a com. plete Collection of Mr. Dryden's original poetical pieces.

IN PRAISE OF MR. DRYDEN.

ON MR. DRYDEN's RELIGIO LAICI.

BY THE EARL OF ROSCOMMON.

Be gone, you slaves, you idle vermin go,
Fly from the scourges, and your master know;
Let free, impartial men from Dryden learn
Mysterious secrets, of a high concern,
And weighty truths, solid convincing sense,
Explain'd by unaffected eloquence.
What can you (Rev'rend Levi) here take ill?
Men still had faults, and men will have them still;
He that hath none, and lives as angels do,

Must be an angel; but what's that to you?

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While mighty Lewis finds the Hope too great, And dreads the yoke of his imposing seat, Our sects a more tyrannic pow'r assume, And would for scorpions change the rods of Rome; That church detain'd the legacy divine: Fanatics cast the pearls of heav'n to swine: What then have thinking honest men to do, But choose a mean between th' usurping two ? Nor can the Egyptian patriarch blame thy muse, Which for his firmness does his heat excuse;

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Whatever councils have approv'd his creed,
The preface, sure, was his own act and deed.
Our church will have that preface read you'll say:

'Tis true; but so she will the Apocrypha; And such as can believe them freely may.

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But did that God (so little understood) Whose darling attribute is being good, From the dark womb of the rude chaos bring Such various creatures, and make man their king, Yet leave his favourite man, his chiefest care, More wretched than the vilest insects are ?

O! how much happier and more safe are they?

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If helpless millions must be doom'd a prey

To yelling furies, and for ever burn
In that sad place from whence is no return,

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For unbelief in one they never knew,
Or for not doing what they could not do!
The very fiends know for what crime they fell,
And so do all their followers that rebel:

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If then a blind, well-meaning, Indian stray,
Shall the great gulf be shew'd him for the way?
For better ends our kind Redeemer dy'd,
Or the fall'n angels' rooms will be but ill supply'd.
That Christ, who at the great deciding day,

(For he declares what he resolves to say)
Will damn the goats for their ill-natur'd faults,
And save the sheep for actions, not for thoughts,

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