Thy scenes are precepts; every verse doth give In a third elegy he rises to a more rapturous strain :— What thou wert, like the hard oracles of old, We must be ravished first; thou must infuse Else, though we all conspired to make thy hearse The Liturgy, and buried thee in rhyme; So that in metre we had heard it said, Poetic dust is to poetic laid; And though, that dust being Shakespeare's, thou might'st have, So that, as thou didst prince of numbers die, And live, so thou mightest in numbers lie; And not like thine, would but kind libels be; And we, not speaking thy whole worth, should raise Worse blots than they that envied thy praise. Of several elegies by this poet upon Charles I. the following is perhaps the most striking: - Charles! ah! forbear, forbear, lest mortals prize His name too dearly, and idolatrize. His name! our loss! Thrice cursed and forlorn Be that black night which ushered in this morn. Charles our dread sovereign! - hold! lest outlawed sense Bribe and seduce tame reason to dispense With those celestial powers, and distrust Heaven can behold such treason and prove just. Charles our dread sovereign's murdered! - tremble, and Court, city, country, nay three kingdoms run Charles our dread sovereign's murdered at his gate! Charles of Great Britain! He! who was the known No more! no more! Fame's trump shall echo all The blow struck Britain blind; each well-set limb And, though she yet lives, she lives but to condole Religion puts on black; sad Loyalty Blushes and mourns to see bright Majesty Butchered by such assassinates; nay both 'Gainst God, 'gainst Law, Allegiance, and their Oath. Farewell, sad Isle! farewell! Thy fatal glory Is summed, cast up, and cancelled in this story. Cleveland, however, after all, is perhaps most in his element when his chief inspiration is scorn, and facit indignatio versum. The most elaborate of his satires or invectives is that which he calls The Rebel Scot. It is rather too long to be given entire ; and in truth a good deal of it is more furious than forcible; but we will transcribe the commencing portion, which contains the most effective passages: How! Providence! and yet a Scottish crew! Unto a land that truckles under us? Ring the bells backward: I am all on fire; Shall quench my rage. A poet should be feared 1 Commonly printed : "Who lived and Faith's defender stood." By Scotch invasion to be made a prey To such pig-widgeon myrmidons as they? But that there's charm in verse, I would not quote Unless my head were red,1 that I might brew Come, keen Iambics, with your badger's feet, you No more let Ireland brag her harmless nation Since they came in, England hath wolves again. A land that brings in question and suspense then. God's omnipresence, but that Charles came thence 1 Red hair was in the worst repute formerly, and was attributed alike to Cain, to Judas, and to the Devil 2 Perhaps this should be high-lows—that is, rustics. But that Montrose and Crawford's royal band A land where one may pray with cursed intent, 0 may they never suffer banishment! Had Cain been Scot, God would have changed his doom, Not forced him wander, but confined him home. Like Jews they spread, and as infection fly, As if the Devil had ubiquity. Hence 'tis they live as rovers, and defy This or that place, rags of geography: They're citizens o' the world, they 're all in all; Scotland's a nation epidemical. The poem is accompanied by a Latin version on the opposite page, which, however, is not by Cleveland, but by Thomas Gawen, a Fellow of New College, Oxford. This may be fitly followed up by the verses headed The Definition of a Protector: What's a Protector? He's a stately thing A tragic actor, Cæsar in a clown; He's a brass farthing stamped with a crown: Esop's proud Ass veiled in the Lion's skin; The brewer's with the king's arms quartered: In fine, he 's one we must Protector call ; — And we fear the still more bitter bile of the following effusion On O. P. Sick, with which we shall conclude our extracts, must be understood to be directed against the same illustrious quarter: Yield, periwigged impostor, yield to fate, Down to the lowest abyss, the blackest shade, That night does own; that so the earth thou 'st made Delivered from heaven's vengeance, and from thee. Would spot the stars, and menstruate the skies; Force them to break the league they 've made with men, In one of his prose pieces, The Character of a London Diurnal, Cleveland introduces other personal peculiarities of Cromwell besides his fiery nasal organ. "This Cromwell," he observes, "is never so valorous as when he is making speeches for the Association; which, nevertheless, he doth, somewhat ominously, with his neck awry, holding up his ear as if he expected Mahomet's pigeon to come and prompt him. He should be a bird of prey, too, by his bloody beak;" &c. It is probable enough that this attitude of one threading a needle, or trying to look round a corner, may have been customary with Cromwell in speaking at the early date to which the description refers, as it appears to have been with his sect in general: in another poem Cleveland depicts the Puritan preacher as With face and fashion to be known For one of sure election; With eyes all white, and many a groan; With harp in 's nose, &c. 1 Misprinted "fate" in the edition before us. |