This alludes to the treaty of Ryfwick, concluded the latter end of Sept. 1697, between the allies and France, whereby the latter was obliged to give up Barcelona, Luxemburgh, Charleroy, Mons, Dinant, and, in fhort, all the places fhe had feized upon during a long and expenfive war.

EPISTLE XIV.

To Sir Godfrey Kneller.

This epiftle is not the least admired of Dryden's works: it is a fort of brief history of painting, from its birth and progrefs in Greece to the time of Sir Godfrey. This great painter received the first rudiments of his art at Lubeck in Germany, where he was born. He removed to the Low Countries, where he studied under the best masters; and compleated himself in Italy, upon the designs of Titian and Carachi, whom he endeavoured to copy. Not finding his account in hiftory-painting, for he was of an avaritious turn, he applied himself to portraits. He came over to England in 1676. On the death of Sir Peter Lilly he was appointed principal painter to the king. He maintained this poft, after the decease of Charles II. under James II. and William III. who fent him to paint the plenipotentiaries at Ryfwick, and knighted him at his return. Queen Anne, at her acceffion, retained him in her fervice, and he has painted several pictures of her. The emperor Jofeph, and his brother the archduke Charles, did him the honor to fit to him; and he acquitted himself fo well, that he was prefented with a gold chain and medal, created an hereditary knight of the Empire, and foon after received the patent of a baronet, under the broad feal of Great Britain. He confined himself solely to the drawing hands and faces; the lefs nice parts of pictures, fuch as drapery and other ornaments, he left to people who performed under his immediate direction. His pictures are not very scarce, nor yet at this time in any great esteem. He died in 1723. There is a monument to his memory in Weftminster-abbey, with an infcription on it by Pope.

A coal or chalk first imitated man.

It is agreed on all hands, that the hint of painting, as well as of fculpture, was first taken from the fhadow.

-yet perspective was lame.

The art of perfpective was not entirely known to the antients: herein the moderns excel them very much. The most perfect piece of antient painting, that has efcaped the ravages of time

and barbarity, in which the figures want perfecting, is the wedding of Aldobrandini; and if we form our opinion of the merits of the paintings of antiquity upon this and fome few fragments, we shall be apt to pronounce them almost strangers to perspective and the clara obfcura. The paintings found among the ruins of Herculaneum have not, by accounts of fuch people of taste as have feen them, any excellence that may induce us to change this opinion. They derive their value only from their antiquity, and can fcarcely be juftly ranked with modern pieces that are really quite indifferent.

Hence rofe the Roman and the Lombard line,

One color'd beft, and one did beft defign.

It is faid of Raphael, that he excelled all his predeceffors, and none of his followers equalled him. He was born at Urbino. His pieces are the most valuable in the world. He died in 1520, univerfally lamented, in his thirty-feventh year, of a diforder arifing from a debauch with the fair fex, which he kept concealed from his phyficians. Raphael was well made, mild, affable, and oftentatious, but univerfally beloved.

Titian was bred at Venice under a famous painter named Bellin, and fhewed, from the beginning, a prodigious genius. In a little time it was thought he exceeded his master, and his friends and admirers increased with his reputation. There was soon a vaft demand for his works, which were judged to be finished with the highest elegance, and his colouring was particularly beautiful. He was made a knight, and a count Palatine, by Charles V. and died of the plague in 1576.

"En trouva (fays Morerri) dans fes pieces cette douceur char"mante, cette beauté exquife, & cette grande netteté, qui les "rendent des chefs oeuvres de l'art."

Shakespeare, thy gift, &c.

Sir Godfrey Kneller made a prefent of a good piece of Shakefpear, which he drew, to our author.

And Raphael did with Leo's gold.

Pope Leo X. employed Raphael at Rome, and gave him large fums of money. The Vatican was painted by Raphael and Michael Angelo.

Who Mr. Julian was, I have not been able to find out, or why he is called fecretary to the Mufes: perhaps the Apollo-club ftill

fubfifted, and this Julian was their fecretary. The poem is to be found in the fixth and laft volume of Mifcellanies published by Tonfon, with Mr. Dryden's name to it; therefore I have here reprinted it, though I am not of opinion that it was his: it breathes but little of his genius; and besides there is a farcasm upon him, to which he would never have subscribed, in these two lines:

"Lefs art thou help'd by Dryden's bed-rid age;
"That drone has loft his fting upon the stage."

R. John Oldham, celebrated chiefly for the severity of his

Malires, was fan of a nonconformift minifter, who educated

him at Oxford, where he took a batchelor's degree. Some verfes of his, that were known in the world before the person of him who wrote them, brought him acquainted with the Earl of Rochefter, the Earl of Dorfet, and Sir Charles Sedley, through whose means he was introduced to the most shining men of the age, particularly to Dryden. He had to no purpose engaged in the study of phyfic; and the Earl of Kingston would have made him his chaplain; but he declined that offer. He died of the fmall-pox in his 30th year, 1683, at the house of that nobleman, who treated him with all the goodness of a friend.

On the Death of the Earl of Dundee.

The Earl of Dundee was a man of great valour and many virtues. Being firmly attached, though a Protestant, to the interest of his royal mafter James II. who had abdicated, and was now in Ireland, he affembled a large body of Highlanders, with whom he engaged the army of king William, commanded by general Mackay, at Gillicranky near Dunkeld, and intirely routed them. This victory might have been of very fatal confequences to the affair of the Prince of Orange at that time, if the gallant Earl had not been killed by a random fhot; in confequence of which his friends and adherents loft all their firmness, and retiring before Mackay, who had rallied, could never again be formed into any formidable body. This action happened in 1689, and compleated the ruin of that misguided monarch's affairs in the North.

This poem is inferted in the third volumes

the State Poems,

P. 337; not as an original, but a translation from the following Latin piece.

Epitaphium in Vice-Comitem Dundee.

"Ultime Scotorum, potuit, quo fofpite folo,
"Libertas patriæ falva fuiffe tuæ.

"Te moriente, novos accepit Scotia cives
Accepitq; novos, te moriente Deos:

"Illa nequit fupereffe tibi, tu non potes illi,
Ergo Caledoniæ nomen inane vale.

"Tuq; vale noftræ gentis fortiffimæ ductor,
Optime Scotorum, atq; Grahame vale."

To the Memory of Mrs. Anne Killigrew, &c.

1685.

This lady was daughter to Dr. Henry Killigrew, master of the Savoy, and a prebendary of Westminster. She died of the small-pox in her twenty-fifth year, on the 16th of June, 1685, being then one of the Dutchess of York's maids of honor. She was a great proficient both in painting and poetry. She drew the pictures of feveral people of the first quality, with fome history-pieces and landscapes. Her poems were collected and printed, after her death, in a thin quarto, with this poem prefixed.

And was that Sapho last, &c.

Our author here compliments Mrs. Killigrew, with admitting the doctrine of metempfychofis, and fuppofing the foul that informs her body to be the fame with that of Sapho's, who lived fix hundred years before the birth of Chrift, and was equally renowned for poetry and love. She was called the tenth Mufe. Phaon, whom he loved, treating her with indifference, fhe jumped into the sea, and was drowned.

Though Epictetus with his lamp were there.

Lucian tells us, that a pragmatical fool gave 3000 drachma's for Epictetus's lamp, vainly imagining that studying by its light would indue him with fome of its former master's wifdom. Epictetus was a ftoick philofopher.

Her wit was more than man, her innocence a child.

Pope has nearly borrowed this line for his epitaph on Gay: "In wit a man, fimplicity a child.”

Her happy pencil drew, &c.

Her excellence in painting landscapes and portraits is célebrated in this and the enfuing ftanza, as is her drawing King Charles and his Queen.

But thus Orinda died.

The matchlefs Orinda, Mrs. Katherine Philips, was author of a book of poems published in folio, and wrote several other things. She died alfo of the fmall-pox in 1664, being only thirty-two years of age. She was a woman of an indifferent appearance ; but of great virtue, tafte, and erudition, which endeared her to the first people of the age. The Duke of Ormond, the Earls of Orrery and Roscommon, Lady Corke, &c. Mr. Dryden, Mr. Cowley, &c. &c. were all her friends.

To the Memory of Eleonora Countess of Abingdon.

It appears, from the dedication to the Earl of Abingdon, that this poem was written at his Lordship's own defire. The lady whom the poem affects to praife, was one of the coheireffes of Sir Henry Lee of Chichely in Oxfordfhire, and fifter to the celebrated Mrs. Anne Wharton, a lady eminent for her poetical genius, whom Mr. Waller has celebrated in an elegant copy of verses.

Anchifes look'd not with fo pleas'd a face.

When Æneas descended to the Elyfian fhades, he found his venerable father thus engaged;

"At pater Anchifes." See the fixth book of the Æneid, v. 679.

But when dilated organs let in day.

Children are born blind, and enjoy but little advantage from light till they are five or fix days old.

On a Lady who died at Bath.

This Lady is interred in the Abbey-church. The epitaph is on a white marble stone fixed in the wall, together with this infcription: "Here lies the body of Mary, third daughter of “Richard Frampton of Moreton in Dorfetfhire, Efq; and of