Hail heaven-born muse! hail every sacred page! The glory of our isle and of our age. The inspiring sun to Albion draws more nigh, } The north at length teems with a work to vie } With Homer's flame and Virgil's majesty. } While Pindus lofty heights our poet sought, } (His ravisht mind with vast ideas fraught,) } Our language failed beneath his rising thought; } This checks not his attempt, for Maro's mines, } He drains of all their gold t'adorn his lines; } Through each of which the Mantuan Genius shines. } The rock obeyed the powerful Hebrew guide, Her flinty breast, dissolved into a tide; Thus on our stubborn language he prevails, And makes the Helicon in which he sails. The dialect, as well as sense, invents, And, with his poem, a new speech presents. Hail then thou matchless bard, thou great unknown, That give your country fame, yet shun your own! In vain--for every where your praise you find, And not to meet it, you must shun mankind. Your loyal theme each loyal reader draws, } And even the factious give your verse applause, } Whose lightning strikes to ground their idol cause. } The cause for whose dear sake they drank a flood Of civil gore, nor spared the royal-blood; The cause whose growth to crush, our prelates wrote In vain, almost in vain our Heroes fought. Yet by one stab of your keen satyr dies; Before your sacred lines their shattered Dagon lies. Oh! If unworthy we appear to know The sire, to whom this lovely birth we owe; Denyed our ready homage to express, And can at best but thankfull be by guess; This hope remains,--May David's god-like mind, (For him 'twas wrote) the unknown author find; And, having found, shower equal favours down, On wit so vast as could oblige a crown. N. T. Some scribbler of the day also, thinking Dryden's meaning not sufficiently clear, wrote "Absalon's ix worthies, or a key to a late book, or poem, entitled AB, and AC," marked by Mr Luttrell, as bought, 10 March 1682-3. It concludes with the following address. TO THE AUTHOR OF THAT INCOMPARABLE POEM ABOVE MENTIONED.