The works of John Dryden Illustrated with notes, historical, critical, and explanatory, and a life of the author, by Sir Walter Scott |
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PROLOGUE TO THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD, 1681. |
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 | The works of John Dryden |  |
356
PROLOGUE TO THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD, 1681.
The famed Italian muse, whose rhymes advanceOrlando, and the Paladins of France,
Records that, when our wit and sense is flown,
'Tis lodged within the circle of the moon,
In earthen jars, which one, who thither soared,
Set to his nose, snuffed up, and was restored.
Whate'er the story be, the moral's true;
The wit we lost in town, we find in you.
Our poets their fled parts may draw from hence,
And fill their windy heads with sober sense.
357
Here may they find their long-lost loyalty.
Here busy senates, to the old cause inclined,
May snuff the votes their fellows left behind;
Your country neighbours, when their grain grows dear,
May come, and find their last provision here;
Whereas we cannot much lament our loss,
Who neither carried back, nor brought one cross.
We looked what representatives would bring,
But they helped us—just as they did the king.
Yet we despair not; for we now lay forth
The Sibyl's books to those who know their worth;
And though the first was sacrificed before,
These volumes doubly will the price restore.
Our poet bade us hope this grace to find,
To whom by long prescription you are kind.
He, whose undaunted Muse, with loyal rage,
Has never spared the vices of the age,
Here finding nothing that his spleen can raise,
Is forced to turn his satire into praise.
| The works of John Dryden | |