Feed on thyself for spight, and shew thy kind :
To virtue and true worth be ever blind.
Dream thou couldst hurt it, but before thou wake
To effect it, feel thou'st made thine own heart

ache.

XCIII.

TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE HIEROME, LORD

WESTON,

5

AN ODE GRATULATORY,

FOR HIS RETURN FROM HIS EMBASSY,

MDCXXXII.

Such pleasure as the teeming earth
Doth take in easy nature's birth,
When she puts forth the life of every thing;
And in a dew of sweetest rain,
She lies deliver'd without pain,

Of the prime beauty of the year, the Spring.

The rivers in their shores do run,
The clouds rack clear before the sun,
The rudest winds obey the calmest air;
Rare plants from every bank do rise,
And every plant the sense surprise,
Because the order of the whole is fair!

The very verdure of her nest,
Wherein she sits so richly drest,

As all the wealth of season there was spread,

to love him, and severely censured by those who expected most from him and deserved best of him."

The eldest son of the earl of Portland; a young man of amiable manners, and of talents and worth.

Doth shew the Graces and the Hours
Have multiplied their arts and powers,
In making soft her aromatic bed.

Such joys, such sweets, doth your return
Bring all your friends, fair lord, that burn

With love, to hear your modesty relate,
The business of your blooming wit,
With all the fruit shall follow it,
Both to the honour of the king and state.

O how will then our court be pleas'd,
To see great Charles of travail eas'd,
When he beholds a graft of his own hand,
Shoot up an olive, fruitful, fair,
To be a shadow to his heir,

And both a strength and beauty to his land!

• Doth shew the Graces and the Hours.) The Hours are the poetical goddesses, which in common language mean only the seasons; but our poet has the authority of his Greek and Roman predecessors. WHAL.

I do not quite understand what was meant to be said in this note; but I will venture to add to it, that there is a great deal of grace and beauty in this little compliment.

:

EPITHALAMION.

OR A

SONG,

Celebrating the NUPTIALS of that noble Gentleman, Mr. HIEROME WESTON, son and heir of the lord WESTON, Lord High Treasurer of England, with the lady FRANCES STEWART, daughter of ESME duke of Lenox, deceased, and sister of the surviving duke of the same

EPITHALAMION. &c.] Jerome returned from his embassy in 1632, and became earl of Portland in 1634, so that this poem was probably written in the intermediate year. This marriage was much forwarded by Charles, in compliment (lord Clarendon says) to the treasurer; the bride, who was distantly related to the king, was the youngest daughter of Esme, third duke of Lenox, the friend and patron of Jonson; she is celebrated for her beauty and amiable qualities, and was happy in a husband, altogether worthy of her. In her issue she was less fortunate; her only son, whom lord Clarendon mentions (in his "Life") as a young man of excellent parts, being killed in the action with the Dutch fleet under Opdam in 1665. "He died fighting very bravely." The title fell to his uncle, who died without issue, when it became extinct: and thus was verified the pious and prophetic hope of that rancorous puritan sir Antony Weldon, that "God would reward Weston, and that he and his posterity, which, like a Jonas's gourd, sprang up suddenly from a beggarly estate to much honour and great fortunes, would shortly wither!" Court of King Charles, p. 43.