Big with the beams which from her mother flow,
And reigning o'er the rising tides below :*
Now, mixing with a savage crowd, she goes,
And meanly flatters her inveterate foes;
Ruled while she rules, and losing every hour
Her wretched remnants of precarious power.

One evening, while the cooler shade she sought,
Revolving many a melancholy thought,
Alone she walk'd, and look'd around in vain,
With rueful visage, for her vanish'd train:
None of her sylvan subjects made their court;
Levées and couchées pass'd without resort.
So hardly can usurpers manage well
Those, whom they first instructed to rebel :
More liberty begets desire of more ;)
The hunger still increases with the store.
Without respect, they brush'd along the wood,
Each in his clan, and, fill'd with loathsome food,
Ask'd no permission to the neighbouring flood.
The Panther, full of inward discontent,

Since they would go, before them wisely went;
Supplying want of power by drinking first,
As if she gave them leave to quench their thirst.
Among the rest, the Hind, with fearful face,
Beheld from far the common watering place,
Nor durst approach; till with an awful roar
The sovereign Lion bade her fear no more.†
Encouraged thus, she brought her younglings nigh,
Watching the motions of her patron's eye,

* That is, if the Church of England would be reconciled to Rome, she should be gratified with a delegated portion of innate authority over the rival sectaries; instead of being obliged to depend upon the civil power for protection.

+ Alluding to the exercise of the dispensing power, and the Declaration of Indulgence.

And drank a sober draught; the rest, amazed,
Stood mutely still, and on the stranger gazed;
Survey'd her part by part, and sought to find
The ten-horn'd monster in the harmless Hind,
Such as the Wolf and Panther had design'd.*
They thought at first they dream'd; for 'twas offence
With them, to question certitude of sense,
Their guide in faith: but nearer when they drew,
And had the faultless object full in view,
Lord, how they all admired her heavenly hue!
Some, who, before, her fellowship disdain'd,
Scarce, and but scarce, from in-born rage restrain'd,
Now frisk'd about her, and old kindred feign'd.
Whether for love or interest, every sect
Of all the savage nation shew'd respect.
The viceroy Panther could not awe the herd;
The more the company, the less they fear'd.
The surly Wolf with secret envy burst,
Yet could not howl; (the Hind had seen him first ;)†
But what he durst not speak, the Panther durst.
For when the herd, sufficed, did late repair
To ferny heaths, and to their forest lair,
She made a mannerly excuse to stay,
Proffering the Hind to wait her half the way;

* The ten-horned monster, in the Revelations, was usually explained by the reformers as typical of the Church of Rome.

+ There was a classical superstition, that, if a wolf saw a man before he saw the wolf, the person lost his voice:

-voxque Mærin

Jam fugit ipsa: lupi Mærin videre priores.

Dryden has adopted, in the text, the converse of this superstitious belief.

That, since the sky was clear, an hour of talk
Might help her to beguile the tedious walk.
With much good-will the motion was embraced,
To chat a while on their adventures pass'd;
Nor had the grateful Hind so soon forgot
Her friend and fellow-sufferer in the plot.
Yet wondering how of late she grew estranged,
Her forehead cloudy, and her countenance changed,
She thought this hour the occasion would present,
To learn her secret cause of discontent;

Which well she hoped, might be with ease redress'd,

Considering her a well-bred civil beast,
And more a gentlewoman than the rest.
After some common talk what rumours ran,
The lady of the spotted muff began.

*Although the Roman Catholic plot was made the pretence of persecuting the Papists in the first instance, yet the high-flying party of the Church of England were also levelled at, and accused of being Tantivies, Papists in masquerade, &c. &c.

NOTES

ON

THE HIND AND THE PANTHER.

PART I.

Note I.

And doom'd to death though fated not to die.-P. 119.

The critics fastened on this line with great exultation, concluding, that doomed and fated meant precisely the same thing. Faith, Mr Bayes," says one of these gentlemen, "if you were doomed to be hanged, whatever you were fated to 'twould give you but small comfort.”* This criticism is quite erroneous; doom, in its general acceptation, meaning merely a sentence of any kind; the pronouncing which by no means necessarily implies its execution. In the criminal courts of Scotland, the sentence is always concluded with this formula, " and this I pronounce for doom." Till of late years, a special officer recited the sentence after the judge, and was thence called the doomster,t an office now performed by the clerk of court. The criticism is founded on the word doom having been often, and even generally, used as synonimous to the sentence of heaven, and therefore inevitable. But in the text, it is obvious that the doom, or

* Hind and Panther Transversed.

+ This office was usually held by the executioner, who, to this extent, was a pluralist; and the change was chiefly made, to prevent the necessity of producing that person in court, to the aggravation of the criminal's terrors.

sentence, of an earthly tribunal is placed in opposition to the decree of Providence.

Note II.

The bloody Bear, an independent beast,
Unlick'd to forms, &c.-P. 120.

The sect of Independents arose to great eminence in the Civil Wars, when the enthusiastic spirits were deemed entitled to preferment upon earth, in proportion to the extravagance of their religious zeal. Hume has admirably described their leading tenets, or rather the scorn with which they discarded the principles of other religious sects; for their peculiarities consisted much more in their neglect and contempt of all forms, than in any rules or dogmata of their own.

"The Independents rejected all ecclesiastical establishments, and would admit of no spiritual courts-no government among pastors-no interposition of the magistrate in religious concerns -no fixed encouragement annexed to any system of doctrines or opinions. According to their principles, each congregation, united voluntarily and by spiritual ties, composed, within itself, a separate church, and exercised a jurisdiction, but one destitute of temporal sanctions, over its own pastor and its own members. The election alone of the congregation was sufficient to bestow the sacerdotal character; and, as all essential distinction was denied between the laity and the clergy, no ceremony, no institution, no vocation, no imposition of hands, was, as in all other churches, supposed requisite to convey a right to holy orders. The enthusiasm of the Presbyterians led them to reject the au thority of prelates to throw off the restraint of liturgies to retrench ceremonies to limit the riches and authority of the priest ly office. The fanaticism of the Independents, exalted to a higher pitch, abolished ecclesiastical government disdained creeds and systems neglected every ceremony and confounded all ranks and orders. The soldier, the merchant, the mechanic, indulging the fervours of zeal, and guided by the illapses of the spirit, resigned himself to an inward and superior direction, and was consecrated, in a manner, by an immediate intercourse and communication with heaven."

Butler thus describes the Independents:

The Independents, whose first station
Was in the rear of reformation:

A mongrel kind of church dragoons,
That served for horse and foot at once,

And in the saddle of one steed,

The Saracen and Christian rid,