In thy felonious heart though venom lies,
  It does but touch thy Irish pen, and dies. 
  Thy genius calls thee not to purchase fame
  In keen Iambics, but mild Anagram. 
  Leave writing plays, and choose for thy command
  Some peaceful province in acrostic land,
  There thou may’st wings display and altars raise,
  And torture one poor word ten thousand ways. 
  Or if thou would’st thy different talents suit,
  Set thy own songs, and sing them to thy lute.” 
    He said:  But his last words were scarcely heard: 
  For Bruce and Longvil had a trap prepar’d,
  And down they sent the yet declaiming bard. 
  Sinking he left his drugget robe behind,
  Borne upwards by a subterranean wind. 
  The mantle fell to the young prophet’s part,
  With double portion of his father’s art.

XX.  EPISTLE TO THE WHIGS.

This excellent specimen of Dryden’s prose satire was prefixed to his satiric poem “The Medal”, published in March, 1682.  It was inspired by the striking of a medal to commemorate the rejection by the London Grand Jury, on November 24, 1681, of a Bill of High Treason presented against Lord Shaftesbury.  This event had been a great victory for the Whigs and a discomfiture for the Court.

For to whom can I dedicate this poem, with so much justice, as to you?  ’Tis the representation of your own hero:  ’Tis the picture drawn at length, which you admire and prize so much in little.  None of your ornaments are wanting; neither the landscape of the tower, nor the rising sun; nor the Anno Domini of your new sovereign’s coronation.  This must needs be a grateful undertaking to your whole party; especially to those who have not been so happy as to purchase the original.  I hear the graver has made a good market of it:  all his Kings are bought up already; or the value of the remainder so enhanced, that many a poor Polander, who would be glad to worship the image, is not able to go to the cost of him; but must be content to see him here.  I must confess, I am no great artist; but sign-post-painting will serve the turn to remember a friend by, especially when better is not to be had.  Yet, for your comfort, the lineaments are true:  and though he sat not five times to me, as he did to B. yet I have consulted history; as the Italian painters do, when they would draw a Nero or a Caligula; though they have not seen the man, they can help their imagination by a statue of him, and find out the colouring from Suetonius and Tacitus.  Truth is, you might have spared one side of your medal:  the head would be seen to more advantage, if it were placed on a spike of the tower; a little nearer to the sun; which would then break out to better purpose.  You tell us, in your preface to the No-Protestant Plot, that you shall be forced hereafter to leave off your modesty.  I suppose you mean that little, which is left you: