The many and great obligations which you have been pleased to lay on me, give me the greatest confusion imaginable at present, when I consider that I am suing for a greater favour than all, in having the liberty to prefix your name to these lines; which though I am sensible they will be condemned by the great, yet the shame of that can no way affect you, when I do you the justice to assure the town, that it is contrary to your knowledge that you are become my patron: so your nicer sense cannot be accountable in the least; for you had no hand in it, and you may plead _----Quæ non fecimus ipsi Vix ea nostra voco._ Nay, you were not guilty of so much as of the knowledge of this my _wicked intentions_; wicked. I mean, if it should offend you and my other friends, who need not blush for me, since I have already such a terror upon my conscience for this aggression, as is, I think, a punishment in some measure equal to any crime; and all that I can urge in my defence is, that it was pure respect to the dear memory of this great man, to whom I had the honour to be known, that provoked, or, let me rather say, obliged me to expose myself on this occasion. I never attempted any thing in this measure for the public before; and I doubt not that I shall do yet severer penance for it, in the censures of our _awful wits_, which I already fear; but your judgment is still more dreadful than all, by Worthy Sir, Your most obliged obedient and humble servant, ALEXANDER OLDYS. AN ODE ON THE DEATH OF MR DRYDEN. I. On a soft bank of camomel I sate, O’ershaded by two mournful yews; (Doubtless it was the will of fate I this retreat should chuse.) Where on delicious poetry I fed, Amazing thoughts chilled all my blood, And almost stopt the vital flood, As Dryden’s sacred verse I read. Whilst killing raptures seized my head, I shook, as if I had foreknown What all-commanding fate had done; What for our sovereign Dryden had designed, Till sleep o’erwhelmed my brain, as sorrow had my mind; To think that all the great, even he, must die, And here, in fame alone, have immortality. When in my dream the fatal muse, With hair dishevell’d, and in tears, Melpomene appears; Upon my throbbing heart her hand she laid, Her hand as cold as death, and thus she said,-- “Least of my care, be calmed! No more just heaven accuse! II.