And by the same great reason justified. 
When the bold Crescent late attacked the Cross,
Resolved the empire of the world to engross,
Had tottering Vienna’s walls but failed,
And Turkey over Christendom prevailed,
Long ere this I had crossed the Dardanello,
And reigned the mighty Mahomet’s hail fellow;
Quitting my duller hopes, the poor renown
Of Eton College, or a Dublin gown,
And commenced graduate in the grand divan,
Had reigned a more immortal Mussulman.”

The lines which follow are taken from “The Deliverance,” a poem to the
Prince of Orange, by a Person of Quality. 9th February, 1688-9.

  “Alas! how cruel is a poet’s fate! 
  Or who indeed would be a laureate,
  That must or fall or turn with every change of state? 
  Poor bard! if thy hot zeal for loyal Wem[29a]
  Forbids thy tacking, sing his requiem;
  Sing something, prithee, to ensure thy thumb;
  Nothing but conscience strikes a poet dumb. 
  Conscience, that dull chimera of the schools,
  A learned imposition upon fools,
  Thou, Dryden, art not silenced with such stuff,
  Egad thy conscience has been large enough. 
  But here are loyal subjects still, and foes,
  Many to mourn, for many to oppose. 
  Shall thy great master, thy almighty Jove,
  Whom thou to place above the gods bust strove,
  Shall be from David’s throne so early fall,
  And laureate Dryden not one tear let fall;
  Nor sings the bard his exit in one poor pastoral? 
  Thee fear confines, thee, Dryden, fear confines,
  And grief, not shame, stops thy recanting lines. 
  Our Damon is as generous as great,
  And well could pardon tears that love create,
  Shouldst thou, in justice to thy vexed soul,
  Not sing to him but thy lost lord condole. 
  But silence is a damning error, John;
  I’d or my master or myself bemoan.”
[29a] Lord Jeffries, Baron of Wem.

[30] In the dedication of “Bury-Fair” to his patron the Earl of Dorset, he claims the merit due to his political constancy and sufferings:  “I never could recant in the worst of times, when my ruin was designed, and my life was sought, and for near ten years I was kept from the exercise of that profession which had afforded me a competent subsistence; and surely I shall not now do it, when there is a liberty of speaking common sense, which, though not long since forbidden, is now grown current.”

[31] See Cibber or Shiels’s Life of Shadwell.

[32]
  “These wretched poetitos, who got praise
  For writing most confounded loyal plays,
  With viler, coarser jests than at Bear-garden,
  And silly Grub-street songs worse than Tom-farthing. 
  If any noble patriot did excel,
  His own and country’s rights defending well,
  These yelping curs were straight loo’d on to bark,
  On the deserving man to set a mark. 
  These abject, fawning parasites and knaves,