fines and forfeitures, not already granted away by his majesty, may go towards the carrying on the royal fishing.

It is humbly desired, that these proposals may be examined and debated, and, if all or any of them may be found useful for carrying on this great and profitable work, further means shall be humbly offered for promoting the same.

THE CLOUD OPENED*:

OR,

THE ENGLISH HERO.

BY A LOYAL AND IMPARTIAL PEN.

Quam facile fit cæcus dux vitæ, et obscura lux temporum Historia? Si non amentiæ, rarus est qui non ineptiæ litavit, Unicus sit qui Deo et veritati obtulit.

London, printed, A. D. 1670. Quarto, containing forty-eight Pages.

ONOGYROS is an herb worthy of asses, a lactuce like their lips, rough and prickly; yet, if herbalists are to be credited, a counter-poison. Adulation, though smooth as oil, is no alexipharmick. The tame beast, a flatterer, is more spotted, nor less cruel than the leopard or a tyger. And with the gayety of a serpent, the rich inamelling of an adder's skin hath no unequal poison.

In the late tyranny, when reason seemed the most extravagant freak, and religion and loyalty had the repute of such grand malignants, as a plague might be supposed to harbour less of contagion, a mercenary trifler would have the usurper Oliver, an Olive; sure after an happy revolution, no one can be master of more sense than the clenching panegyrist, or voluminous, nothing wanted; as much a stranger to wit, as to our nation; his appetite only sharpened invention, and the hungry gut vented oracles. Where the scripture on the rack was only taught to patronise impiety, by making bloody and blasphemous confessions; it can be no won der, if Gotham's parable was forgot by an exotick whiffler, where the olive could yield no fatness to usurp, and out of a bramble only could come the fire to destroy the cedars of Lebanon; such an unhappy land, as made a forest, was inhabited by wild beasts.

In an age of lying wonders, where a more than ordinary antichrist brought fire down from heaven, it could be none of the least of the miracles, that a fisher could, by Pagan worship, trans. late the brazen image of a tyrant into gold, and make it equal an hundred Jacobusses or more pure Carolines in value.

This is the 212th number in the catalogue of pamphlets in the Harleian Library,

409

A doubly blind bard first in his own, and, as some fancy, since by God's judgment, would have him equalled by a kingfisher. But to have had such a king for his subject, in whose cause, christianity might seem engaged, sure could not need the temptation of a bribe, to him who had not renounced the christian profession, though pedantically florid, and less significant pens, served but as foils to his portraiture and sufferings; which were only to be taken from his own writings.

Virtue, which is content with her own reward, and loyalty, which expects no recompence below heaven, know not how to descend to that truckling and servile assentation, which has no better hieroglyphick, than the most impure of creatures, the sometimes fawning, and at others, snarling and biting cur.

The deceased general may merit some grateful epicediums, above such dismal ditties as attend upon executions, which seem more merciless than the extremities of the law; while the executioner in me. tre is more barbarous than the hangman. The muses have little to do with Mars; yet they must not permit a praise-worthy person to die, if they have any faith for their arch-priest the prince of Lyricks. It is a tribute due to allegiance, to commend him whom a king would honour. Commands, strong as mustard, may seem unnecessary to make the nation's eyes water into elegies for his loss, who was the supposed restorer of their sight; the blessed instrument of returning a king, who may be truly called, The light of our eyes. Who would not melt by a compassion, if obdurate for lesser losses, for the muses Helicon, what the poets might call, showers of tears, might seem expedient when it is grown so muddy, as it cannot furnish out so much clear wit as can sprinkle an hearse. Foolish versifiers, like to schismatical pulpiteers, by racked hyperbole's and tentered allegories, make the most sober truths discredited; folly dispraises those she would commend, and diminishes glory, by seeking to multiply it.

Who would not believe that a fable, which must have all the heathen Gods brought into the scene for the delivery? He who ariseth early, and praiseth his friend aloud, it shall be reputed to him for a curse, if the wisest of men is to be believed. That a too early and inconsiderate commendation can irritate envy and contradiction, which might have slept, if not awaked by rash and untimely bauling, may be easily now demonstrated from the discour ses of folly.

Whether design or chance renders more famous, is uncertain. History can furnish us with a coward, who by the loss of his head, grew victorious; by a virtue inherent in the spurs of honour, the more generous beast, which is intitled to want of brains, transporting to noble atchievements. A defect in the noddle hath rendered not few strangely supereminent, whose excelling disposition, like that of an inraged horse, hath qualified for the rushing into a battle. The Psalmist will have an horse a vain thing to save a man; to raise one to a fair mount of honour, some can instance II. B.

VOL. VII.

who for a knighthood and lordship would cry God-a-mercy to his beast.

Thomas Anello, is not the only example of a brutish valour attaining to a mushroom grandeur: Nor was the puny thief Du Val the first robber who lay in state, by pompous folly to be made more inglorious.

The Aerian stalking nag (on whom the subtle fowlers of phanaticism set their aim to shoot at game royal) had his image ordered to be made by the grand bogglers at ceremonies, and decry. ers of superstition; which intended for an honour, made him to suffer in effigy for a traitor; while a freak-inspired sectary cut off an head equally stupid, with that which he had devoted to the vain idol of a foolish reformation.

The protector of flies, carried in state like to a Pagan deity, might seem worshipped by an heathenish idolatry; while our Gen. tiles, schism's fly-blows, having gained wings by the warmth of his bounty, with buzzing acclamations attended on their Beelzebub.

Zisca would have a drum made of his skin; and our glorious Edward would have his victorious corpse carried for a terror to his enemies; but nothing can be more vain than to take a pleasure in the hovering of those dire vapours above ground, who might seem to have cleft it for contagion.

Vainly the dead are embalmed with spices, whose lives can contribute no odours in good works to perfume their memories.

The survivors worship of the dead was the wild superstition of heathen. A commemoration of saints and benefactors deceased, has been neither the irreligious nor impolitick custom of sober christians. The honour given to good men is a tribute rendered to God, who will be honoured in his saints; the praises of the bad are so many acknowledgments to Satan, who is thus worshipped in his images.

The mysterious riddle of loyal grandeur, whom some will have a parent to his mother, and his father's father, a prince the father of his country, the supererogating Monk, G. Duke of Albemarle, may worthily challenge that surviving honour, by which he seems triumphant over fate; if not a principal, an adjuvant, or such a cause without which our felicity could not be effected; if to vast piles of living honours were superadded mountains of wealth, and after death he is placed among kings, who seemed the restorer of kingdoms, no wise or good man can repine, but rather congratulate the felicity of that age, in which a servant, esteemed faithful, found a master truly royal. Honour was not made dishonourable in our general's superadditional titles; the atchievements of his ancestors, if not superior to most, inferior to few coats of arms borne by our English nobility; what might give a supereminence, and fools will be always the most apt to blazon, the only blot in the escutcheon. Honour must be fair written; even the fountain of it, a prince, cannot wash away the blemishes of his own making.

The generous heroe, who disdained to bring in a king fettered like a royal slave, or such a beast as must not be allowed the use

of reason, whose crowning is in relation to the making of him a sacrifice, by not attending to that rigid zeal, which, inseparable from envy of any greatness, which might exceed her own, would have kings bound in chains, and their nobles in fetters of iron; the intolerable gives of a Scottish league, by making princes parties, can dethrone, not only level with a peasant, but equal to a brute; if giddy fame was only constant to this report, none could think honour or riches misplaced with our general, except such who can believe cruelties exceeding these of the Goths, Huns, and Vandals, conferred on the preserver of his country, a recompence worthy of a Bellizarius. The devouring of a serpent would be thus thought to produce a dragon. Our George might not have seemed to conquer a monster, but to have introduced one, in ingratitude equalling that most monstrous piece of barbarism, the mischief-brooding part, which venting nothing but noise and stench, in the opinion of buffoons, could be esteemed more honourable than the head.

Him, who restored the fountain of honour untainted, none can justly envy a liberal benefit of the streams; or, who would deny some larger clusters of grapes to him, by whose beneficence they seem to have the uninterrupted enjoyments of their vines?

Necessity renders the proudest titles contemptible. When an Emperor became a soldier to our Eighth Henry, it might seem a timely magnificence, which made a prince's bounties shine in a tent made with cloth of gold. The prince who undervalues himself, or benefactors, by becoming cheap, his kingdoms and armies rarely want purchasers.

The drums must beat, trumpets sound, and images of gold be reared to make the people fall down and worship; yet, where worldly pelf is the only motive, wise men can rather suffer the fiery furnace of affliction, than pay a devotion to such foolish idols.

Speede's chronicle hath a remark, That he who thought himself a match for princes, the Low-country prince, or truer king of gypsies, the arch-canter and chief idol of the Aerians, who patronised holy hypocrites as sure friends to religion, as he was to the most bosom-friend, whose neck they could, well contented, break, to make way for the espousing of a whimsey, the great Earl of Leicester, that so much celebrated favourite living, unmasked by death, could want a commendation.

Death only makes true confessions. A little loss of air (or as much breath as can furnish out a bubble vanished) leaves the most wind-imposthumed bladder shrivelled. What equals all men, leuds an impartial view, and unlearns the mannerly distinctions betwixt a prince and peasant. Homer, though the father of fictions, may gain a sober belief, while he will have hares to insult over dead lions; but envy cannot blast just actions, which (as a minor poet) in the dust, can smell sweet and blossom.

Who undervalued life in his country's cause, lillies and roses be said to spring from the tomb of a no less renowned hero,

may

who dared to do as much in the sea, as Curtius in the land, for his country.

Some will have the first degree of revived loyalty commenced at the Three-tuns, and can dare publickly to aver, That there is a knight, who, being inspired by the same spirit of loyal sack, will swear himself the author of our so happy restoration, and that loyalty or ruin were the only choice left to the general.

The serpent, which gave us the sting, must afford us the cure. Some will not be persuaded, that the Juncto, which made him a cypher in commission, contributed no vote to their own ruin, by putting a period to his, gave a date to their own supereminent power; and thus the cunning were catched in their own snare: Yet he, who infatuates the counsel of the worldly wise, hath the least returns of honour or praise, where those, forgetting God, can suppose a sacrifice due to every foolish net.

The Lord F. (anagrammed by Hei! fax fato Mars) if not the greatest, no slender persuasion will allow, none of the meanest instruments, by rising on the back of Lambert, and thus to have nobly expiated that brutish folly (not to give it a worse name) which suffered us to be deprived of the best of princes.

I have been no infrequent, though, for the most part, an incredulous auditor of a baronet, who would have the general, at his enlargement from the Tower, crave a benediction from Bishop Wren, and assured him, when opportunity was propitious, he should not be averse to the royal service. Neither was this a single tradition which he had received from his loyal father, but another must be attendant on it equally irrefragable, a promise to his loyal com rades, viz. never to bear arms in England against his prince. This not a few will have most exactly to be performed, and, hence, by no action of his loyalty to be impeached. What he acted in the first Dutch engagement, and what was performed in the Caledonian war, must, by a milder gloss, be interpreted a zeal for his country, and no disaffection to his king; but the more rigid censors will not allow him, who wounds in hands and feet, no enemy, though not equally mortal with him who transpierces the heart.

A superintendent lord would be a privado to those proceedings, which might call the wisest brains into question to imagine; but, coming from so supereminently knowing a statist, and told in par liament, he may seem wanting to all reason, who could be deficient in the belief of our general's intention for a restoration. I have heard a kinsman and retainer to his lordship aver the sight of the letter.

Whether O. C. L. &c. have not complimented with vain hopes such as they never intended should reap any benefit above that of a deluded imagination, is the discourse of no unwary, if none of the wisest heads.

The supplement of a chronicle (which, some can think, might want a stout Peter Heylin, who, blind, might best guess at dark intrigues) must be incontroulable to evince the truth of those intents. A chronicle's name passes, with some graver noddles, for