But not a traitor could be found,
To sell him for six hundred pound. 
  “Had he but spared his tongue and pen
He might have rose like other men: 
But power was never in his thought,
And wealth he valued not a groat: 
Ingratitude he often found,
And pitied those who meant the wound: 
But kept the tenor of his mind,
To merit well of human kind: 
Nor made a sacrifice of those
Who still were true, to please his foes. 
He labour’d many a fruitless hour,
To reconcile his friends in power;
Saw mischief by a faction brewing,
While they pursued each other’s ruin. 
But finding vain was all his care,
He left the court in mere despair.[27]
  “And, oh! how short are human schemes! 
Here ended all our golden dreams. 
What St. John’s skill in state affairs,
What Ormond’s valour, Oxford’s cares,
To save their sinking country lent,
Was all destroy’d by one event. 
Too soon that precious life was ended,
On which alone our weal depended.[28]
When up a dangerous faction starts,[29]
With wrath and vengeance in their hearts;
By solemn League and Cov’nant bound,
To ruin, slaughter, and confound;
To turn religion to a fable,
And make the government a Babel;
Pervert the laws, disgrace the gown,
Corrupt the senate, rob the crown;
To sacrifice old England’s glory,
And make her infamous in story: 
When such a tempest shook the land,
How could unguarded Virtue stand! 
With horror, grief, despair, the Dean
Beheld the dire destructive scene: 
His friends in exile, or the tower,
Himself[30] within the frown of power,
Pursued by base envenom’d pens,
Far to the land of slaves and fens;[31]
A servile race in folly nursed,
Who truckle most, when treated worst. 
“By innocence and resolution,
He bore continual persecution;
While numbers to preferment rose,
Whose merits were, to be his foes;
When ev’n his own familiar friends,
Intent upon their private ends,
Like renegadoes now he feels,
Against him lifting up their heels.
  “The Dean did, by his pen, defeat
An infamous destructive cheat;[32]
Taught fools their int’rest how to know,
And gave them arms to ward the blow. 
Envy has own’d it was his doing,
To save that hapless land from ruin;
While they who at the steerage stood,
And reap’d the profit, sought his blood. 
  “To save them from their evil fate,
In him was held a crime of state,
A wicked monster on the bench,[33]
Whose fury blood could never quench;
As vile and profligate a villain,
As modern Scroggs, or old Tresilian:[34]
Who long all justice had discarded,
Nor fear’d he God, nor man regarded;
Vow’d on the Dean his rage to vent,
And make him of his zeal repent: 
But Heaven his innocence defends,
The grateful people stand his friends;
Not strains of law, nor judge’s frown,