When the Gauls came, one sole dictator swayed. Patriots, in peace, assert the people's right, With noble stubbornness resisting might; No lawless mandates from the court receive, Nor lend by force, but in a body give. Such was your generous grandsire; free to grant In parliaments, that weighed their prince's want: But so tenacious of the common cause, As not to lend the king against his laws; And, in a loathsome dungeon doomed to lie, } In bonds retained his birthright liberty, } And shamed oppression, till it set him free.[72] } O true descendant of a patriot line, Who, while thou shar'st their lustre, lend'st them thine. Vouchsafe this picture of thy soul to see; 'Tis so far good, as it resembles thee; The beauties to the original I owe, Which when I miss, my own defects I show: Nor think the kindred muses thy disgrace; A poet is not born in every race. Two of a house few ages can afford, One to perform, another to record.[73] Praise-worthy actions are by thee embraced, And 'tis my praise to make thy praises last. For even when death dissolves our human frame, } The soul returns to heaven from whence it came; } Earth keeps the body, verse preserves the fame. } FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 65: Sir Robert Driden inherited the paternal estate of Canon-Ashby, while that of Chesterton descended to John, his second brother, to whom the epistle is addressed, through his mother, daughter of Sir Robert Bevile.] [Footnote 66: William Guibbons, M.D.--Dryden mentions this gentleman in terms of grateful acknowledgment in the Postscript to Virgil:--"That I have recovered, in some measure, the health which I had lost by application to this work, is owing, next to God's mercy, to the skill and care of Dr Guibbons and Dr Hobbs, the two ornaments of their profession, which I can only pay by this acknowledgment." As Dr Guibbons was an enemy to the Dispensary, he is ridiculed by Garth in his poem so entitled, under the character of "Mirmillo the famed _Opifer_."] [Footnote 67: Sir Richard Blackmore, poet and physician, whose offences towards our author have been enumerated in a note on the prologue to "The Pilgrim," where his character is discussed at length under the same name of Maurus. See Vol. VIII. p. 442, and also the Postscript to Virgil, where Dryden acknowledges his obligations to the Faculty, and adds, in allusion to Blackmore, that "the only one of them, who endeavoured to defame him, had it not in his power."]