and courtier’s parts,
    And all the statesman’s magazine of arts;
    His, each expedient, each all-powerful wile,
    To thwart a foe, or win a monarch’s smile: 
    The nicely-plann’d and well-pursued intrigue;
    The smooth evasion of the hollow league;
    The specious argument, that subtly strays
    Thro’ winding sophistry’s protracted maze: 
    The complicated, deep, immense design,
    That works in darkness like a labouring mine,
    Unknown to all, ’till, bursting into birth,
    Its wide explosion shakes th’ astonish’d earth. 
    His was the prompt invention, fruitful still
    In means subservient to the varying will: 
    The flexible expertness, smooth and mean,
    That glides thro’ obstacles, and wins unseen: 
    The quick discernment, that with eagle eyes
    Sees distant storms in ether darkly rise,
    And active vigour, that arrests their course,
    Or to a different aim diverts their force. 
    He, in a happier land, by freedom bless’d,
    Had hallow’d virtue dawn’d upon his breast,
    Had done some glorious deed, to stamp his name
    High on the roll of ever-during fame;
    Snatch’d from Oppression’s jaws some victim realm,
    Or fix’d in stable peace his country’s wavering helm. 
    But baleful Guilt usurp’d with fatal care
    A heart which Virtue had been proud to share;
    And turn’d to hateful dross the radiant ore,
    Whose lustre might have gilded Sweden’s shore. 
    As the red dog star, Autumn’s fiery eye,
    Shines eminent o’er all the spangled sky,
    While thro’ th’ afflicted earth his torrid breath
    Darts glowing fevers and a cloud of death: 
    So Trollio shone, in whose corrupted mind
    Transcendent genius and deep guilt combined;
    Placed all his arduous aims within his reach,
    Yet fix’d the stamp of infamy on each. 
    But Providence, whose undiscover’d plan
    Lies deeper than the wiliest schemes of man,
    Can bare the sty designer’s latent guilt,
    And crush to dust the structures he has built;
    Can disappoint the subtle tyrant’s spite,
    And stem the billows of his stormy might;
    Confound a Trollio’s skill, a Christiern’s power,
    And blast presumption in its haughtiest hour. 
    So Christiern found—­and Trollio found it true,
    (Unwelcome truth, to his experience new!)
    That he, who trusts in guilty friendship, binds
    His fortune to a cloud, that shifts with veering winds. 
    Throned in Religion’s seat, he scorn’d her laws,
    And with a cool indifference view’d her cause: 
    Yet, might her earthly treasures feed the fire
    Of wild ambition, or base gain’s desire,
    He could assume, at will, her fairest dress—­
    Could plunge in Superstition’s dark recess—­
    Or the red mask of Bigotry put on;
    The fiercest champion, where