O thou Ethereal palace Chrystalline!

Shut up for ever all thy gates of
Against my foul!-

The glorious fun of righteoufnefs

grace

Who fhall the mountains bruize with iron mace, Rule Heaven and Earth, and the infernal place.

the thund'ring voice of God,

PART THE THIRD,

THE LAW.

that fteepeft mount,

A

Whofe fnowy shoulders with their ftony pride
Eternally do Spain from France divide.

the conqueror of Hell,

The twice-born King,

Who dead fhall live again,

A lovely

f

A lovely babe, whofe fmiles implor'd the aid
And gentle pity of the royal maid;

Love and the graces, ftate and majesty,
Appear'd about his infant face to fly;

And on his head feem'd, as it were, to thine
Prefageful rays of fomething more divine.

Base of this univerfe; uniting chain
Of th' elements; the wifdom fov'reign;
Fountain of goodness; ever-fhining light;
Perfectly bleft; the One, the Good, the Right.

My facred ears are tired with the noise
Of thy poor brethren's juft-complaining voice
They've groan'd, alas! and panted, all too long,
Under that tyrant's unrelenting wrong.

Ö feven-horn'd Nile! O hundred-pointed plain!
O city of the Sun, O Thebes, and thou,
Renowned Pharos! do you all not bow
To us alone? Are you not only ours?

Ours at our beck? Then to what other powers
Owes your great Pharaoh homage or refpect?
Or by what Lord to be controll'd and check'd?

Now Omnipotence i odr

At Egypt shoots it's fhaft of peftilence ;

Is dried up,

the river's roaring pride.

Then the THRICE SACRED brings a fable cloud
Of horned locufts,-

Death, ghaftly Death, triumpheth * every where.

Great King, no more bay, with thy wilfulness,
His wrath's dread torrent! He is King of Kings,-
And, in his fight, the greateft of you all
A-e but as moats that in the fun do fall.

Nile's stubborn monarch stately drawn upon
A curious chariot, chac'd with pearl and ftone,
By two proud courfers,--.

Curfeth the Heavens, the Air, the Wind, and
L Waves,

And, urging his purfuit, blafphemes and braves:
Here a huge billow on his targe doth split;
Then comes a bigger, and a bigger yet,
To fecond thefe: the Sea grows ghaftly great;
Yet ftoutly ftill he thus doth dare and threat.

Bafe juggler, think'ft thou with thy hellish

charms

Thou shalt prevail againft our puiffant arms?

*Thus accented by Milton, triumpheth: See PAR. Lost, i. 123.—iii. 338.—xii. 452.

And

And thou, proud trait'rous sea, how darest thou
Falfely confpire 'gainst thine own Neptune now?
Dar'ft thou prefume 'gainst us to rise and roar?
I charge thee, cease! Be ftill, and rage no more!
Or I fhall clip thine arms in marble stocks
And yoak thy fhoulders with a bridge of rocks."
Here at the ocean more than ever fwells,-

And a black pillow, that aloft doth float,

With falt and fand stops his blafphemous throat. What now betides the tyrant? Water now

Hath reft his neck, his chin, his cheek, his eyes, his brow,

His front, his fore-top: now there's nothing feen, But his proud arm fhaking his falchion keen; Wherewith he seems, in spite of Heaven and Hell, To fight with Death, and menace Ifrael *.

Eternal

* Against this paffage, I would hope Dryden did not mean to point his fatire, where, fpeaking of those authors,

who themselves too much esteem,

Lose their own genius and mistake their theme,

he inftances Du Bartas;

Thus in times paft DU BARTAS vainly writ,
Allaying facred truth with trifling wit;
Impertinently, and without delight,
Defcrib'd the Ifraclites' triumphant flight,
And, following Mofes o'er the fandy plain,
Perish'd with Pharaoh in th' Arabian main.

Eternal iffue of eternal Sire!

Deep wisdom of the Father!

I believe the generality of readers would very oppofitely characterife Du Bartas's defcription of the death of Pharaoh. It is evidently given con amore, and con fpirito.

But I muft obferve, that Dryden probably never read Sylvefter's Du Bartas, after he was capable of judging of its When he was a boy he read it; as he himself has told us in the preface to his Spanish-Friar. At that time his favourite paffage was the very one which he has justly gibbeted in the ART OF POETRY, as a warning to bombastic poets. "I remember," says he, "when I was a boy, I thought the inimitable Spenfer a mean poet, in comparifon of Sylvefter's Du Bartas; and I was rapt into ecftacy, when I read these lines;

Now, when the Winter's keener, breath began
To cryftallize the Baltic ocean;

To glaze the lakes, to bridle up the floods,

And periwig with fnow the bald-pate woods."

T

"I am much deceived," adds he, "if this be not abomina. ble fuftian." I will venture to fay, Milton, at 12 years old, could have told him as much. This is not one of the paffages, which I fuppofe to have caught Milton when a boy, and to have hung on his mind after.-If in his abominable fuftian Dryden includes the "bridling up the floods," he should let the Roman poet have his share of the merit, by attributing it to the

curfus FRÆNARET aquarum.

The paffage from Sylvester (which I have already exhibited in a note, p. 15.) is in p. 223, of the folio Sylveft. Du Bartas,

edit. 1621.

O Ifrael,