it. The First Part, consisting most in general characters and narration, I have endeavoured to raise, and give it the majestick turn of heroick poesy. The Second, being matter of dispute, and chiefly concerning church authority, I was obliged to make as plain and perspicuous as possibly I could; yet not wholly neglecting the numbers, though I had not frequent occasions for the magnificence of verse. The Third, which has more of the nature of domestick conversation, is, or ought to be, more free and familiar than the two former.

There are in it two episodes, or fables, which are interwoven with the main design; so that they are properly parts of it, though they are also distinct stories of themselves. In both of these I have made use of the commonplaces of satire, whether true or false, which are urged by the members of the one church against the other: at which I hope no reader of either party will be scandalized; because they are not of my invention, but as old, to my knowledge, as the times of Boccace and Chaucer on the one side, and as those of the Reformation on the other. "

6

7 The incongruity in the structure of THE HIND AND THE PANTHER is thus censured by Prior and Montague: "Fables were first began and raised to the highest perfection in the eastern countries, where they wrote in signs and spoke in parables, and delivered the most useful precepts in delightful stories, which for their aptness were entertaining to the most judicious, and led the vulgar into

understanding, by surprizing them with their novelty, and fixing their attention. All their fables carry a double meaning; the story is one and entire; the characters the same throughout, not broken, nor changed, and always conformable to the nature of the creatures they introduce. They never tell you, that the dog which snapped at a shadow, lost his troop of horse; that would be unintelligible; a piece of flesh is proper for him to drop, and the reader will apply it to mankind. They would not say that the daw, who was so proud of her borrowed plumes, looked very ridiculous, when Rodrigues came and took away all the book but the 17th, 24th, and 25th chapters, which she stole from him: but this is his new way of telling a story, and confounding the moral and fable together.

Before the word was written, said the Hind, "Our Saviour preach'd the faith to all mankind.” What relation has the Hind to our Saviour? or what notion have we of a Panther's Bible? If you say he means the church, how does the church feed on lawns, or range in the forest? Let it be always a church, or always the cloven-footed beast, for we cannot bear his shifting the scene every line. If it is absurd in comedies to make a peasant talk in the strain of a hero, or a country wench use the language of a court, how monstrous is it to make a priest of a hind, and a parson of a panther? to bring them in disputing with all the formalities of the school? Though as to the arguments themselves, those, we confess, are suited to the capacity of the beasts; and if we would suppose a Hind expressing herself about these matters, she would talk at that rate.”

DEDICATION

OF THE

LIFE OF ST. FRANCIS XAVIER.'

MADAM,

TO THE QUEEN.

THE reverend author of this Life, in his Dedication to his most Christian Majesty, affirms, that France was owing for him to the intercession

7 "The Life of St. Francis Xavier, of the Society of Jesus, Apostle to the Indies and Japan," was translated by our author from the French of the Jesuit, Dominic Bohurs, and published in 8vo. early in the year 1688. Our author doubtless undertook this task, in consequence of the Queen, when she solicited a son, having recommended herself to Xavier as her patron saint.

In the STATE POEMS, (vol. i. part 2, p. 184,) we find a ballad, which in my copy is attributed in a MS. note to Thomas, Lord Wharton, and probably at that time was very popular. It is entitled "The Miracle: how the Duchess of Modena, being in heaven, prayed the B. Virgin that the Queen might have a son; and how our lady sent the Angel Gabriel with her smock; upon which the Queen was with child."-The son, of whom she was delivered, June 10, 1688, who was christened James Francis Edward, but was better known by the title of THE PRETENDER, died at Rome in 1766.

8 Of Mary of Este, the second wife of James the Second, (who was born Sept, 25, 1658,) some account has already been given. See vol.i. p. 385, n. 3.

of St. Francis Xavier: that Anne of Austria, his mother, after twenty years of barrenness, had recourse to heaven by her fervent prayers to draw down that blessing, and addressed her devotions in a particular manner to this holy apostle of the Indies. I know not, Madam, whether I may presume to tell the world, that your Majesty has chosen this great saint for one of your celestial patrons, though I am sure you will never be ashamed of owning so glorious an intercessor; not even in a country where the doctrine of the holy church is questioned, and those religious addresses ridiculed. Your Majesty, I doubt not, has the inward satisfaction of knowing that such pious prayers have not been unprofitable to you, and the nation may one day come to understand how happy

Since that note was written, I have observed that Fenton, in his Remarks on Waller, has furnished us with a more particular description of this lady, as it should seem from a manuscript Journal of Henry, the second Earl of Peterborough, who conducted her from Modena to England; who, he observes, as she is described by that nobleman, in the bloom of her youth rivalled the fancied charms of Tasso's Armida. "" She was tall and admirably shaped; her complexion was of the last fairness; her hair as black as jet; so were her eyebrows and her eyes; but the latter so full of light and sweetness, as that they did dazzle and charm too: there seemed given to them from nature sovereign power; power to kill, and power to save; and in the whole turn of her face, which was the most graceful that could be framed, there was all the features, all the beauty, and all that could be great and charming, in any human creature."

She died at St. Germains, April 26, 1718.