full effect of sublime obscurity. Dryden has undoubtedly reaped considerable advantage from religion in the present poem. It must, however, be owned, that the effect of these passages is much injured by the frequent allusion to the deities of classical mythology; and that Dryden has ranked the gods and goddesses of ancient Rome with the saints of her modern church, in the same indiscriminate order in which they are classed in the Pantheon. We have the Giants' War immediately preceding the miracle wrought on the Shunamite's son; and the serpents of the infant Hercules are classed in the very sentence with the dragons of the Apocalypse. On one occasion he has stooped yet lower, and condescended to pun upon the child's being born on Trinity Sunday, as promising at least a trine of infant princes.

Still, however, the strain of the poem is, upon the whole, grave and exalted. Besides the general tone of "Britannia Rediviva,” there are many passages in it deserving the reader's attention. The address to the queen, beginning, "But you, propitious queen," has all the smoothness with which Dryden could vary the masculine character of his general poetry, when he addressed the female sex, and forms a marked contrast to the more majes tic tone of the rest of the piece. It may indeed be said of Dryden, as he himself says of Virgil, that though he is smooth where smoothness is required, yet he is so far from affecting that general character, that he seems rather to disdain it.

The original edition of the "Britannia Rediviva" is in quarto, printed, as usual, for Tonson, with a motto from the first book of the Georgics, which is now restored. The concluding lines refer to the death of so many Catholics by the perjured evidences of Oates and Bedlow:

satis jampridem sanguine nostro Laomedontea luimus perjuria Troja.

The word perjuria, as well as Puerum, in the preceding passage, are marked by a difference of type; a mode of soliciting the attention of the reader to a pointed remark or inuendo, which was first used in Charles II.'s time, and seems to have been introduced by L'Estrange, who carried it to a most extravagant degree, chequering his Observators with all manner of characters, from the Roman to the Anglo-Saxon.

BRITANNIA REDIVIVA.

UR VOWS are heard betimes, and heaven takes care
To grant, before we can conclude the prayer;
Preventing angels met it half the way,
And sent us back to praise, who came to pray.
Just on the day, when the high-mounted sun
Did farthest in its northern progress run, *
He bended forward, and even stretched the sphere
Beyond the limits of the lengthened year,
To view a brighter sun in Britain born;
That was the business of his longest morn;
The glorious object seen, 'twas time to turn.
Departing spring could only stay to shed
Her gloomy beauties on the genial bed,
But left the manly summer in her stead,
With timely fruit the longing land to cheer,
And to fulfil the promise of the year.

Betwixt two seasons comes the auspicious heir,
This age to blossom, and the next to bear.

Last solemn Sabbath † saw the church attend,
The Paraclete in fiery pomp descend;
But when his wonderous octave* rolled again,
He brought a royal infant in his train :
So great a blessing to so good a king,
None but the Eternal Comforter could bring.
Or did the mighty Trinity conspire,

As once in council to create our sire?
It seems as if they sent the new-born guest,
To wait on the procession of their feast;
And on their sacred anniverse decreed
To stamp their image on the promised seed.
Three realms united, and on one bestowed,
An emblem of their mystic union showed;
The Mighty Trine the triple empire shared,
As every person would have one to guard.

Hail, son of prayers! by holy violence Drawn down from heaven; but long be banished thence,

And late to thy paternal skies retire!

To mend our crimes, whole ages would require;
To change the inveterate habit of our sins,
And finish what thy godlike sire begins.
Kind heaven, to make us Englishmen again,
No less can give us than a patriarch's reign.

The sacred cradle to your charge receive,
Ye seraphs, and by turns the guard relieve;
Thy father's angel, and thy father join,
To keep possession, and secure the line;
But long defer the honours of thy fate;
Great may they be like his, like his be late,
That James this running century may view,
And give this son an auspice to the new.

+ Whitsunday.

*Trinity Sunday, the octave of Whitsunday.
‡ Note I.

Our wants exact at least that moderate stay;
For, see the dragon † winged on his way,
To watch the travail, and devour the prey:
Or, if allusions may not rise so high,

Thus, when Alcides raised his infant
cry,
The snakes besieged his young divinity;

But vainly with their forked tongues they threat,
For opposition makes a hero great.

To needful succour all the good will run,
And Jove assert the godhead of his son.

O still repining at your present state,
Grudging yourselves the benefits of fate;
Look up, and read in characters of light
A blessing sent you in your own despite !
The manna falls, yet that celestial bread,
Like Jews, you munch, and murmur while you feed.
May not your fortune be, like theirs, exiled,
Yet forty years to wander in the wild!
Or, if it be, may Moses live at least,

To lead you to the verge of promised rest!
Though poets are not prophets, to foreknow
What plants will take the blight, and what will grow,
By tracing heaven, his footsteps may be found;
Behold, how awfully he walks the round!
God is abroad, and, wondrous in his ways,
The rise of empires, and their fall, surveys;
More, might I say, than with an usual eye,
He sees his bleeding church in ruins lie,

And hears the souls of saints beneath his altar cry.

+ Alluding only to the commonwealth party here, and in other parts of the poem. DRYDEN.-See Note II.

↑ Rev. xii. v. 4.

Already has he lifted high the sign,

Which crowned the conquering arms of Constantine. *

The moon † grows pale at that presaging sight,
And half her train of stars have lost their light.
Behold another Sylvester, to bless

The sacred standard, and secure success;
Large of his treasures, of a soul so great,
As fills and crowds his universal seat.
Now view at home a second Constantine ; §
(The former too was of the British line,)
Has not his healing balm your breaches closed,
Whose exile many sought, and few opposed? ¶
O, did not heaven, by its eternal doom,
Permit those evils, that this good might come?
So manifest, that even the moon-eyed sects
See whom and what this Providence protects.
Methinks, had we within our minds no more
Than that one shipwreck on the fatal Ore, ||
That only thought may make us think again,
What wonders God reserves for such a reign.
To dream, that chance his preservation wrought,
Were to think Noah was preserved for nought;
Or the surviving eight were not designed
To people earth, and to restore their kind.

* The Cross.

+ The Crescent, which the Turks bear for their arms. DRYDEN. Note III.

The Pope, in the time of Constantine the Great; alluding to the present Pope. DRYDEN.-See Note IV.

§ King James II.

¶ Bill of Exclusion.

The Lemmon Ore, on which the vessel of King James was lost in his return from Scotland. The crew perished, and he himself escaped with difficulty. See Vol. IX. p. 401.