“After this loss, to relish discontent,
    Some one must be accused by Parliament. 
    All our miscarriages on Pett must fall,
    His name alone seems fit to answer all. 
    Whose counsel first did this mad war beget? 
    Who all commands sold through the navy?  Pett. 
    Who would not follow when the Dutch were beat? 
    Who treated out the time at Bergen?  Pett. 
    Who the Dutch fleet with storms disabled met? 
    And, rifling prizes, them neglect?  Pett. 
    Who with false news prevented the Gazette? 
    The fleet divided? writ for Rupert?  Pett. 
    Who all our seamen cheated of their debt,
    And all our prizes who did swallow?  Pett. 
    Who did advise no navy out to set? 
    And who the forts left unprepared?  Pett. 
    Who to supply with powder did forget
    Languard, Sheerness, Gravesend, and Upnor?  Pett. 
    Who all our ships exposed in Chatham net? 
    Who should it be but the fanatic Pett?”

This outburst can hardly fail to remind the reader of a famous outburst of Mr. Micawber’s on the subject of Uriah Heep.

The satire concludes with the picture of the king in the dead shades of night, alone in his room, startled by loud noises of cannons, trumpets, and drums, and then visited by the ghost of his father.

    “And ghastly Charles, turning his collar low,
    The purple thread about his neck does show.”

The pensive king resolves on Clarendon’s disgrace, and on rising next morning seeks out Lady Castlemaine, Bennet, and Coventry, who give him the same advice.  He knows them all three to be false to one another and to him, but is for the moment content to do what they wish.

I have omitted, in this review of a long poem, the earlier lines which deal with the composition of the House of Commons.  All its parties are described, one after another—­the old courtiers, the pension-hunters, the king’s procurers, then almost a department of State.

    “Then the Procurers under Prodgers filed
    Gentlest of men, and his lieutenant mild
    Bronkard, love’s squire; through all the field arrayed,
    No troop was better clad, nor so well paid.”

Clarendon had his friends, soon sorely to be needed, and after them,

    “Next to the lawyers, sordid band, appear,
    Finch in the front and Thurland in the rear.”

Some thirty-three members are mentioned by their names and habits.  The Speaker, Sir Edward Turner, is somewhat unkindly described.  Honest men are usually to be found everywhere, and they existed even in Charles the Second’s pensionary Parliament:—­

    “Nor could all these the field have long maintained
    But for the unknown reserve that still remained;
    A gross of English gentry, nobly born,
    Of clear estates, and to no faction sworn,
    Dear lovers of their king, and death to meet