In dreams they fearful precipices tread; Or, shipwrecked, labour to some distant shore; Or in dark churches walk among the dead; They wake with horror, and dare sleep no more. The verses, in which Prince Rupert and his enemy are compared to a greyhound and hare, after a course so desperate as totally to exhaust both, have been always considered as exquisitely beautiful.[86] The description of the Loyal London partakes of the beauties and faults which are dispersed through the poem. Nothing can be more majestic than her description, "firing the air with her sanguine streamers," and "riding upon her shadow in floating gold." We lament, that the weaver should have been so fascinated with his labours as to commence seaman; and still more, that, after describing her "roomy decks," and "depth of draught," she should furnish no grander simile than that of ----a sea-wasp floating on the waves. More unqualified approbation may be justly afforded to the whole description of the Dutch homeward-bound fleet, captured in sight of their desired haven; and the fine moral lessons which the poet takes the opportunity to inculcate, from so unexpected an incident. The 34th stanza has a tenderness and simplicity, which every lover of true poetry must admire: This careful husband had been long away, Whom his chaste wife and little children mourn; Who on their fingers learned to tell the day On which their father promised to return. I will only point out to attention the beautiful and happily expressed simile of the eagle in stanzas 107 and 108, and then, in imitation of honest John Bunyan, No more detain the readers in the porch, Or keep them from the day-light with a torch. The title of _Annus Mirabilis_ did not, according to Mr Malone, originate with Dryden; a prose tract, so intitled, being published in 1662.[87] Neither was he the last that used it; for, the learned editor of "Predictions and Observations, collected from Mr J. Partridge's Almanacks for 1687 and 1688," has so entitled his astrological lucubrations. The _Annus Mirabilis_ was first printed in octavo, in 1667, the year succeeding that which was the subject of the poem. The quarto edition of 1688, which seems very correct, has been employed in correcting that of Derrick in a few trifling instances. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 83: Essay by Dr Aikin on the Heroic Poem of "Gondibert."] [Footnote 84: See stanza 146, and those which follow.] [Footnote 85: Stanzas 213, 214.] [Footnote 86: See stanzas 131, 132. I wish, however, our author had spared avouching himself to have been eye-witness to so marvellous a chase. The "so have I seen" should be confined to things which are not only possible, but, in a certain degree, of ordinary occurrence. Dryden's ocular testimony is not, however, so incredible as that of the bard, who averred, _So have I seen_, in Araby the blest, A Phœnix couched upon her funeral nest.