104
DENHAM.
"But whither am I stray'd? I need not raise
"Trophies to thee from other men's dispraise;
"Nor is thy fame on lesser ruins built,
"Nor need thy juster title the foul guilt
"Of eastern kings, who, to secure their reign,
"Must have their brothers, sons, and kindred slain."
"Trophies to thee from other men's dispraise;
"Nor is thy fame on lesser ruins built,
"Nor need thy juster title the foul guilt
"Of eastern kings, who, to secure their reign,
"Must have their brothers, sons, and kindred slain."
After Denham, Orrery, in one of his prologues,
"Poets are sultans, if they had their will;
"For every author would his brother kill."
"For every author would his brother kill."
And Pope,
"Should such a man, too fond to rule alone,
"Bear like the Turk no brother near the throne."
"Bear like the Turk no brother near the throne."
But this is not the best of his little pieces: it is excelled by his poem to Fanshaw, and his elegy on Cowley.
His praise of Fanshaw's version of Guarini contains a very spritely and judicious character of a good translator:
"That servile path thou nobly dost decline,
"Of tracing word by word, and line by line.
"Those are the labour'd births of slavish brains,
"Not the effect of poetry, but pains;
"Cheap vulgar arts, whose narrowness affords
"No flight for thoughts, but poorly stick at words.
"Of tracing word by word, and line by line.
"Those are the labour'd births of slavish brains,
"Not the effect of poetry, but pains;
"Cheap vulgar arts, whose narrowness affords
"No flight for thoughts, but poorly stick at words.
"A new
