were the globe of earth and water; but a globe is no sphere neither, by his leave,' &c. So sphere must not be sense, unless it relate to a circular motion about a globe, in which sense the astronomers use it. I would desire him to expound those lines in Granada:

"I'll to the turrets of the palace go,

And add new fire to those that fight below.
Thence, hero-like, with torches by my side,
(Far be the omen though) my love I'll guide.
No, like his better fortune I'll appear,
With open arms, loose veil, and flowing hair,
Just flying forward from my rowling sphere.

"I wonder, if he be so strict, how he dares make so bold with sphere himself, and be so critical in other men's writings. Fortune is fancied standing on a globe, not on a sphere, as he told us in the first act.

"Because 'Elkanah's similes are the most unlike things to what they are compared in the world,' I'll venture to start a simile in his Annus Mirabilis: he gives this poetical description of the ship called the London:

"The goodly London in her gallant trim,
The phoenix-daughter of the vanquisht old,
Like a rich bride does on the ocean swim,
And on her shadow rides in floating gold.
Her flag aloft spread ruffling in the wind,
And sanguine streamers seem'd the flood to fire:
The weaver, charm'd with what his loom design'd,
Goes on to sea, and knows not to retire.
With roomy decks, her guns of mighty strength,
Whose low-laid mouths each mounting billow laves,
Deep in her draught, and warlike in her length,
She seems a sea-wasp flying on the waves.

"What a wonderful pother is here, to make all these poetical beautifications of a ship! that is a phoenix

in the first stanza, and but a wasp in the last: nay, to make his humble comparison of a wasp more ridiculous, he does not say it flies upon the waves as nimbly as a wasp, or the like, but it seemed a wasp. But our author at the writing of this was not in his altitudes, to compare ships to floating palaces: a comparison to the purpose, was a perfection he did not arrive to till his Indian Emperor's days. But, perhaps, his similitude has more in it than we imagine; this ship had a great many guns in her, and they, put all together, made the sting in the wasp's tail; for this is all the reason I can guess, why it seem'd a wasp. But, because we will allow him all we can to help out, let it be a phoenix sea-wasp, and the rarity of such an animal may do much towards heightening the fancy.

"It had been much more to his purpose, if he had designed to render the senseless play little, to have searched for some such pedantry as this:

"Two ifs scarce make one possibility.
If justice will take all and nothing give,
Justice, methinks, is not distributive.
To die or kill you, is the alternative.
Rather than take your life, I will not live.

"Observe how prettily our author chops logick in heroick verse. Three such fustian canting words as distributive, alternative, and two ifs, no man but himself would have come within the noise of. But he's a man of general learning, and all comes into his play.

"Twould have done well too if he could have

met with a rant or two, worth the observation;

such as,

66

'Move swiftly, sun, and fly a lover's pace,

Leave months and weeks behind thee in thy race.

"But surely the sun, whether he flies a lover's or not a lover's pace, leaves weeks and months, nay, years too, behind him in his race.

"Poor Robin, or any other of the philo-mathematicks, would have given him satisfaction in the point:

"If I could kill thee now, thy fate's so low,
That I must stoop, ere I can give the blow.
But mine is fixt so far above thy crown,
That all thy men,

Piled on thy back, can never pull it down.

"Now where that is, Almanzor's fate is fixt, I cannot guess; but, wherever it is, I believe Almanzor, and think that all Abdalla's subjects, piled upon one another, might not pull down his fate so well as without piling: besides, I think Abdalla so wise a man, that, if Almanzor had told him piling his men upon his back might do the feat, he would scarce bear such a weight, for the pleasure of the exploit; but it is a huff, and let Abdalla do it if he dare.

"The people like a headlong torrent go,
And ev'ry dam they break or overflow.
But, unoppos'd, they either lose their force,
Or wind in volumes to their former course.

"A very pretty allusion, contrary to all sense or reason. Torrents, I take it, let them wind never so much, can never return to their former course, unless he can suppose that fountains can go upwards,

which is impossible; nay, more, in the foregoing page he tells us so too; a trick of a very unfaithful memory:

"But can no more than fountains upward flow;

"which of a torrent, which signifies a rapid stream, is much more impossible. Besides, if he goes to quibble, and say that it is possible by art water may be made return, and the same water run twice in one and the same channel: then he quite confutes what he says; for it is by being opposed, that it runs into its former course; for all engines that make water so return, do it by compulsion and opposition. Or, if he means a headlong torrent for a tide, which would be ridiculous, yet they do not wind in volumes, but come foreright back, (if their upright lie straight to their former course,) and that by opposition of the sea-water, that drives them back again.

"And for fancy, when he lights of any thing like it, 'tis a wonder if it be not borrowed. As here, for example of, I find this fanciful thought in his Ann. Mirab.

“Old father Thames rais'd up his rev'rend head;

But fear'd the fate of Simoeis would return:

Deep in his ooze he sought his sedgy bed;

And shrunk his waters back into his urn.

"This is stolen from Cowley's Davideis, p. 9.

"Swift Jordan started, and strait backward fled,
Hiding amongst thick reeds his aged head.
And when the Spaniards their assault begin,
At once beat those without and those within.

"This Almanzor speaks of himself; and, sure, for one man to conquer an army within the city, and another without the city, at once, is something difficult; but this flight is pardonable to some we meet with in Granada: Osmin, speaking of Almanzor,

"Who, like a tempest that outrides the wind,
Made a just battle, ere the bodies join'd.

"Pray, what does this honorable person mean by a "tempest that outrides the wind?' a tempest that outrides itself. To suppose a tempest without wind, is as bad as supposing a man to walk without feet; for if he supposes the tempest to be something distinct from the wind, yet, as being the effect of wind only, to come before the cause is a little preposterous; so that, if he takes it one way, or if he takes it the other, those two ifs will scarce make one possibility." Enough of Settle.

Marriage à-la-mode, 1673, is a comedy dedicated to the earl of Rochester; whom he acknowledges not only as the defender of his poetry, but the promoter of his fortune. Langbaine places this play in 1673. The earl of Rochester, therefore, was the famous Wilmot, whom yet tradition always represents as an enemy to Dryden, and who is mentioned by him with some disrespect in the preface to Juvenal.

The Assignation, or Love in a Nunnery, a comedy, 1673, was driven off the stage, "against the opinion," as the author says, "of the best judges." It is dedicated, in a very elegant address, to sir

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