[Footnote 28: Derrick erroneously states this young gentleman to have been Hampden, son of the famous parliamentary leader, who was deeply engaged in the Rye-house Plot, and some years afterwards killed himself. Dryden was not likely, in the very hottest of his political controversy, to be on very intimate habits with a leader of the Whigs, much less to inscribe to him a poem, the preface of which, at least, is levelled against the most zealous of that party. Besides, the translation of Pere Simon's Critical History, which was published in 1682, bears to have been made by H. D. which initials can hardly stand for John Hampden. Mr Malone conjectures he may have been of the Digby family, or perhaps Mr Dodswell, who translated one of Plutarch's Lives, But it appears, from a poem addressed to the Translator by Duke, that his name was Henry Dickinson, probably a son of Edmund Dickinson, a physician, and author of the _Delphi Phenecizantes_, and other learned pieces. _Athenæ Oxon._ Vol. II. p. 946. There is another copy of verses, addressed to the Translator of the "Critical History" in Dryden's "Miscellanies." So that Dickinson's work seems to have attracted much notice at the time of its publication.] RECOMMENDATORY VERSES. ON MR DRYDEN'S RELIGIO LAICI. Begone, you slaves, you idle vermin, go, Fly from the scourges, and your master know; Let free, impartial men from Dryden learn Mysterious secrets of high concern, And weighty truths, solid convincing sense, Explained by unaffected eloquence. What can you, Reverend Levi, here take ill? Men still had faults, and men will have them still; He that hath none, and lives as angels do, Must be an angel;--but what's that to you? While mighty Lewis finds the Pope too great, And dreads the yoke of his imposing seat, Our sects a more tyrannic power assume, And would for scorpions change the rods of Rome. That church detained the legacy divine; Fanatics cast the pearls of heaven to swine: What, then, have honest thinking men to do, But chuse a mean between the usurping two? Nor can the Egyptian patriarch blame a muse, Which for his firmness does his heat excuse; Whatever counsels have approved his creed, The preface, sure, was his own act and deed. Our church will have the preface read, you'll say:} 'Tis true, but so she will the Apocrypha; } And such as can believe them freely may. } But did that God, so little understood, Whose darling attribute is being good, From the dark womb of the rude chaos bring Such various creatures, and make man their king, Yet leave his favourite, man, his chiefest care, More wretched than the vilest insects are? O! how much happier and more safe are they, If helpless millions must be doom'd a prey To yelling furies, and for ever burn In that sad place, from whence is no return,