Page images
PDF
EPUB

DEDICATION

OF

ELEONORA;"

A PANEGYRICAL POEM.

TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE

THE EARL OF ABINGDON.

MY LORD,

THE

HE commands, with which you honoured me some months ago, are now performed: they had been sooner, but betwixt ill health, some bu

8 The lady in honour of whom this poem was written, was Eleonora, eldest daughter, and at length sole heir, of Sir Henry Lee, of Ditchley, in the county of Oxford, Baronet, by Anne, daughter of Sir John Danvers, and sister and heir to Henry Danvers, Esq., who was nephew and heir to Henry, Earl of Danby: she was the wife of James Bertie, first Earl of Abingdon, and died May 31, 1691. Her lord, in 1698, married a second wife, Catharine, daughter of Sir Thomas Chamberlaine, Bart.

It is a singular circumstance, that our author should have written this poem, (which was published in 4to. in 1692,) at the desire of a nobleman with whom he was not personally acquainted, in praise of a lady whom he never saw. This, therefore, was evidently a task undertaken for a pecuniary reward; and the commission, perhaps, was procured by Mr. Aubrey, a common friend of our author and the Earl of Abingdon.

siness, and many troubles, I was forced to defer them till this time. Ovid, going to his banishment, and writing from on shipboard to his friends, excused the faults of his poetry by his misfortunes; and told them, that good verses never flow, but from a serene and composed spirit. Wit, which is a kind of Mercury, with wings fastened to his head and heels, can fly but slowly in a damp air. I therefore chose rather to obey you late, than ill: if at least I am capable of writing anything, at any time, which is worthy your perusal and your patronage. I cannot say that I have escaped from a shipwreck; but have only gained a rock by hard swimming, where I may pant awhile and gather breath for the doctors give me a sad assurance, that my disease never took its leave of any man, but with a purpose to return. However, my lord, I have laid hold on the interval, and managed the small stock which age has left me, to the best advantage, in performing this inconsiderable service to my lady's memory. We, who are priests of Apollo, have not the inspiration when we please; but must wait till the god comes rushing on us, and invades us with a fury which we are not able to resist which gives us double strength while the fit continues, and leaves us languishing and spent, at its departure. Let me not seem to boast, my lord; for I have really felt it on this occasion, and prophecied beyond my natural power. Let me

9 Our author's disorder was the gout.

add, and hope to be believed, that the excellency of the subject contributed much to the happiness of the execution; and that the weight of thirty years was taken off me, while I was writing. I swam with the tide, and the water under me was buoyant. The reader will easily observe that I was transported, by the multitude and variety of my similitudes; which are generally the product of a luxuriant fancy, and the wantonness of wit. Had I called in my judgment to my assistance, I had certainly retrenched many of them. But I defend them not; let them pass for beautiful faults amongst the better sort of criticks: for the whole poem, though written in that which they call heroick verse, is of the Pindarick nature, as well in the thought as the expression; and as' such, requires the same grains of allowance for it. It was intended, as your lordship sees in the title, not for an elegy, but a panegyrick: a kind of apotheosis, indeed, if a heathen word may be applied to a Christian use. And on all occasions of praise, if we take the ancients for our patterns, we are bound by prescription to employ the magnificence of words, and the force of figures, to adorn the sublimity of thoughts. Isocrates amongst the Grecian orators, and Cicero and the younger Pliny amongst the Romans, have left us their precedents for our security: for I think I need not mention the inimitable Pindar, who stretches on these pinions out of sight, and is carried upward, as it were, into another world.

This at least, my lord, I may justly plead, that if I have not performed so well as I think I have, yet I have used my best endeavours to excel myself. One disadvantage I have had, which is, never to have known or seen my lady: and to draw the lineaments of her mind from the description which I have received from others, is for a painter to set himself at work without the living original before him which, the more beautiful it is, will be so much the more difficult for him to conceive, when he has only a relation given him, of such and such features, by an acquaintance or a friend, without the nice touches which give the best resemblance, and make the graces of the picture. Every artist is apt enough to flatter himself, (and I amongst the rest,) that their own ocular observations would have discovered more perfections, at least others, than have been delivered to them: though I have received mine from the best hands, that is, from persons who neither want a just understanding of my lady's worth, nor a due veneration for her memory.

Doctor Donne, the greatest wit, though not the best poet of our nation, acknowledges, that he had never seen Mrs. Drury, whom he has made immortal in his admirable ANNIVERSARIES; I have had the same fortune, though I have not succeeded to the same genius. However, I have followed his footsteps in the design of his panegyrick, which was to raise an emulation in the living to copy out the example of the dead. And there

fore it was, that I once intended to have called this poem, the PATTERN: and though on a second consideration, I changed the title into the name of that illustrious person, yet the design continues, and Eleonora is still the pattern of charity, devo-tion, and humility; of the best wife, the best mother, and the best of friends.

And now, my lord, though I have endeavoured to answer your commands, yet I could not answer it to the world, nor to my conscience, if I gave not your lordship my testimony of being the best husband now living: I say my testimony only; for the praise of it is given you by yourself. They who despise the rules of virtue both in their practice and their morals, will think this a very trivial commendation. But I think it the peculiar happiness of the Countess of Abingdon to have been so truly loved by you, while she was living, and so gratefully honoured, after she was dead. Few there are, who have either had, or could have, such a loss; and yet fewer, who carried their love and constancy beyond the grave. The exteriours of mourning, a decent funeral, and black habits, are the usual stints of common husbands: and perhaps their wives deserve no better than to be mourned with hypocrisy, and forgot with ease. But you have distinguished yourself from ordinary lovers, by a real and lasting grief for the deceased; and by endeavouring to raise for her the most durable monument, which is that of verse. And so it would have proved, if the workman had

« PreviousContinue »