ected' at the Restoration from an English cure, he went
to Surinam (1662-67), to Barbadoes (1667), and to New England
(1669), where he was made pastor of 'the First Church of Boston'
(1670), and where he died in 1674. These details are from Mr.
Grosart's _Marvell_ (1875), i. 82-85, and ii. 5-8.

XXIII

Dryden's second Ode for Saint Cecilia's Day, _Alexander's Feast,
or the Power of Sound_, as it is called, was written and printed
in 1697. As it was designed for music (it was set by Jeremiah
Clarke), the closing lines of every strophe are repeated by way
of chorus. I have removed these repetitions as impertinent to
the effect of the poem in print, and as interrupting the rushing
vehemency of the narrative. The incident described is the burning
of Persepolis.

XXIV

Written early in 1782, in memory of Robert Levett: 'an old and
faithful friend,' says Johnson, and withal 'a very useful and
very blameless man.' Excepting for the perfect odes of Cowper
(_post_, pp. 85, 86), in these excellent and affecting verses the
'classic' note is audible for the last time in this book until
we reach the _Iphigeneia_ of Walter Savage Landor, who was a
lad of seven at the date of their composition. They were written
seventeen years after the publication of the _Reliques_ (1765),
and a full quarter century after the appearance of _The Bard_
(1757); but in style they proceed from the age of Pope. For the
rest, the Augustan Muse was an utter stranger to the fighting
inspiration. Her gait was pedestrian, her purpose didactic, her
practice neat and formal: and she prosed of England's greatest
captain, the victor of Blenheim, as tamely as himself had been
'a parson in a tye-wig'--himself, and not the amiable man of
letters who acted as her amanuensis for the nonce.

XXV

_Chevy Chase_ is here preferred to _Otterbourne_ as appealing more
directly to Englishmen. The text is Percy's, and the movement like
that of all the English ballads, is jog-trot enough. Sidney's
confession--that he never heard it, even from a blind fiddler,
but it stirred him like the sound of a trumpet--refers, no doubt,
to an earlier version than the present, which appears to date from
the first quarter of the seventeenth century. Compare _The Brave
Lord Willoughby_ and _The Honour of Bristol_ (_post_, pp. 60, 73).

XXVI

First printed by Percy. The text I give is, with some few
variants, that of the vastly better version in _The Minstrelsy
of the Scott