of the day:' Phaeton.]

[Footnote 73: The second part was written by Mr Nahum Tate, and is by no
means equal to the first, though Dryden corrected it throughout. The
poem is here printed complete.]

[Footnote 74: 'Next:' from this to the line, 'To talk like Doeg, and to
write like thee,' is Dryden's own.]

[Footnote 75: 'Who makes,' &c.: a line quoted from Settle.]

* * * * *

THE MEDAL.[76]

A SATIRE AGAINST SEDITION.

EPISTLE TO THE WHIGS.

For to whom can I dedicate this poem with so much justice as to you? It
is the representation of your own hero: it is the picture drawn at
length, which you admire and prize so much in little. None of your
ornaments are wanting; neither the landscape of your Tower, nor the
rising sun; nor the Anno Domini of your new sovereign's coronation. This
must needs be a grateful undertaking to your whole party; especially to
those who have not been so happy as to purchase the original. I hear the
graver has made a good market of it: all his kings are bought up
already; or the value of the remainder so enhanced, that many a poor
Polander, who would be glad to worship the image, is not able to go to
the cost of him, but must be content to see him here. I must confess I
am no great artist; but sign-post painting will serve the turn to
remember a friend by, especially when better is not to be had. Yet, for
your comfort, the lineaments are true; and though he sat not five times
to me, as he did to B., yet I have consulted history, as the Italian
painters do when they would draw a Nero or a Caligula: though they have
not seen the man, they can help their imagination by a statue of him,
and find out the colouring from Suetonius and Tacitus. Truth is, you
might have spared one side of your Medal: the head would be seen to more
advantage if it were placed on a spike of the Tower, a little nearer to
the sun, which would then break out to better purpose.

You tell us in your preface to the "No-Protestant Plot",[77] that you
shall be forced hereafter to leave off your modesty: I suppose you mean
that little which is left you; for it was worn to rags when you put out
this Medal. Never was there practised such a piece of notorious
impudence in the face of an established government. I believe when he is
dead you will wear him in thumb rings, as the Turks did Scanderbeg; as
if there were virtue in his bones to preserve you against monarchy. Yet
all this w