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DESCRIPTION OF HOLLAND.1

Holland, that scarce deserves the name of land,
As but the off-scouring of the British sand;
And so much earth as was contributed
By English pilots, when they heaved the lead;
Or what by the ocean's slow alluvion fell,
Of shipwrecked cockle and the mussel-shell.

Glad then, as miners who have found the ore,
They, with mad labor, fish'd the land to shore ;
And dived as desperately for each piece
Of earth, as if it had been of ambergreece;
Collecting anxiously small loads of clay,
Less than what building swallows bear away;
Or than those pills which sordid beetles rowl,
Transferring into them their dunghill soul.
How did they rivet with gigantic piles
Thorough the centre their new-catched miles;
And to the stake a struggling country bound,
Where barking waves still bait the forced ground;
Building their wat'ry Babel far more high
To catch the waves than those to scale the sky.
Yet still his claim the injured ocean layed,
And oft at leap-frog o'er their steeples played;
As if on purpose it on land had come

To show them what's their mare Liberum ;*
A daily deluge over them does boil;
And earth and water play at level-coyl ;†
The fish oft-times the burgher dispossessed,
And sat, not as a meat, but as a guest;
And oft the Tritons, and the sea-nymphs, saw
Whole shoals of Dutch served up for cabillau ;‡
Or, as they over the new level ranged,

For pickled herring, pickled Heeren changed.
Nature, it seem'd, asham'd of her mistake,
Would throw their land away at duck and drake:
Therefore necessity, that first made kings,
Something like government among them brings;

* A free ocean; for which the Dutch jurists were then contending with the English.

† I cannot discover the meaning of this word, and unfortunately am at a distance from linguists better informed.

Fresh cod.

For as with pigmys, who best kills the crane,
Among the hungry he that treasures grain,
Among the blind the one-eyed blinkard reigns,
So rules among the drowned he that drains.
Not who first sees the rising sun, commands;
But who could first discern the rising lands.
Who best could know to pump an earth so leak,
Him they their lord and country's father speak.
To make a bank was a great plot of state;
INVENT A SHOVEL, AND BE A MAGISTRATE.

Description of Holland.—The jest of this effusion lies in the intentional and excessive exaggeration. To enjoy it thoroughly, it is necessary perhaps that the reader should be capable, in some degree, of the like sort of jesting, or at least have animal spirits enough to run willing riot with the extravagance. Mr. Hazlitt, for defect of these, could see no kind of joke in it, notwithstanding his admiration of Marvel. He once began an argument with Charles Lamb and myself, to prove to us that we ought not to laugh at such things. Somebody meanwhile was reading the verses; and the only answer which they left us the power to make to our critical friend was by laughing immeasurably. But I have mentioned this in the Introductory Essay.

FLECNOE, AN ENGLISH PRIEST AT ROME.1

Obliged by frequent visits of this man,
Whom as a priest, poet, and musician,
I for some branch of Melchizedec took

(Tho' he derives himself from my Lord Brooke)

I sought his lodging; which is at the sign

Of the Sad Pelican; subject divine

For poetry. There, three stair-cases high,
Which signifys his triple property,

I found at last a chamber, as 'twas said,

But seem'd a coffin set on the stairs' head,
Not higher than sev'n, nor larger than three feet:
There neither was or ceiling, or a sheet,
Save that th' ingenious door did, as you come,

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Straight without further information,

In hideous verse, he in a dismal tone,
Begins to exercise; as if I were

Possess'd; and sure the devil brought me there.
But I, who now imagin'd myself brought
To my last tryal, in a serious thought
Calmed the disorders of my youthful breast,

And to my martyrdom prepared rest.
Only this frail ambition did remain,
The last distemper of the sober brain,
That there had been some present to assure
The future ages how I did endure:
And how I, silent, turn'd my burning ear

Towards the verse; and when that could not hear,

Held him the other; and unchanged yet,

Ask'd him for more, and pray'd him to repeat;

Till the tyrant, weary to persecute,

Left off, and tried to allure me with his lute.

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I, that perceiv'd now what his musick meant,
Ask'd civilly, if he had eat this Lent?

He answered, yes; with such, and such an one;
For he has this of gen'rous, that alone

He never feeds; save only when he trys
With gristly tongue to dart the passing flies.
I ask'd if he eat flesh. And he, that was
So hungry, that tho' ready to say mass,
Would break his fast before, said he was sick,
And th' ordnance was only politick.
Nor was I longer to invite him: scant
Happy at once to make him Protestant,
And silent. Nothing now dinner stay'd,
But still he had himself a body made:

I mean till he were dress'd; for else so thin

He stands, as if he only fed had been

With consecrated wafers; and the host

Hath sure more flesh and blood than he can boast.

This basso relièvo of a man,

Who as a camel tall, yet eas'ly can

The needle's eye thread without any stitch,

His only impossible is to be rich ;—

* Seem.

Lest his too subtle body, growing rare,
Should leave his soul to wander in the air,
He therefore circumscribes himself in rhymes;
And swaddled in 's own papers seven times,
Wears a close jacket of poetic buff,

With which he doth his third dimension stuff.

Thus armèd underneath, he over all

Does make a primitive Sotana fall;

And above that yet casts an antique cloak,
Worn at the first council of Antioch;
Which by the Jews long hid and disesteem'd,
HE HEARD OF BY TRADITION, and redeem'd.
But were he not in this black habit deck'd,
This half transparent man would soon reflect
Each color that he past by; and be seen,
As the camelion, yellow, blue, or green.

He dress'd, and ready to disfurnish now
His chamber (whose compactness did allow
No empty place for complimenting doubt,
But who came last is forc'd first to go out),
I met one on the stairs who made me stand,
Stopping the passage, and did him demand;
I answer'd, "He is here, sir; but you see
You cannot pass to him but thòrow me."
He thought himself affronted; and reply'd,
"I, whom the palace never was deny'd,

Will make the way here." I said, "Sir, you'll do
Me a great favor, for I seek to go."

1 Flecnoe, an English Priest at Rome.-Poor Flecnoe was the poetaster, after whom Dryden christened Shadwell, "MacFlecnoe." See passages from the satire thus entitled in the present volume. The verses before us, which are written in the same spirit of exaggeration as the preceding, exhibit that strange ruggedness in the versification, which was intentional in the satirists of those days when they used the heroic measure, and which they took to be the representative of the satirical numbers of Horace or his predecessors. Flecnoe luckily appears to have rendered the most good-natured poets callous, by a corresponding insensibility to the hardest attacks.

BUTLER.

BORN, 1612-DIED, 1680.

BUTLER is the wittiest of English poets, and at the same time he is one of the most learned, and what is more, one of the wisest. His Hudibras, though naturally the most popular of his works from its size, subject, and witty excess, was an accident of birth and party compared with his Miscellaneous Poems; yet both abound in thoughts as great and deep as the surface is sparkling; and his genius altogether, having the additional recommendation of verse, might have given him a fame greater than Rabelais, had his animal spirits been equal to the rest of his qualifications for a universalist. At the same time, though not abounding in poetic sensibility, he was not without it. He is author of the touching simile,

True as the dial to the sun,

Although it be not shin'd upon.

The following is as elegant as anything in Lovelace or Waller:

-What security's too strong

To guard that gentle heart from wrong,

That to its friend is glad to pass

Itself away, and all it has,

And like an anchorite, gives over

This world, for the heaven of a lover!

And this, if read with the seriousness and singleness of feeling that become it, is, I think, a comparison full of as much grandeur as cordiality,

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