Coopers-Hill/Chapter 2
TO THE
KING
Sir
After the delivery of Your Royal Father's Person into the hands of the Army, I undertaking to the Queen Mother, that I would find some means to get access to him she was pleased to send me, and by the help of Hugh Peters I got my admittance, and coming well instructed from the Queen (his Majesty having been long kept in the dark) he was pleased to discourse very freely with me of the whole state of his Affairs: But, Sir, I will not launch into a History, instead of an Epistle. One morning waiting on him at Causham, smiling upon me, he said he could tell me some News of my self, which was, that he had seen some Verses of mine the Evening before (being those to Sir Richard Fanshaw) and asking me when I made them, I told him two or three years since; he was pleased to say, that having never seen them before, He was afraid I had written them since my return into England, and though he liked them well, He would advise me to write no more, alledging, that when men are young, and have little else to do, they might vent the overflowings of their Fancy that way; but when they were thought fit for more serious Employments, if they still persisted in that course, it would look as if they minded not the way to any better.
Whereupon I stood corrected as long as I had the honour to wait upon him, and at his departure from Hampton Court, he was pleased to command me to stay privately at London, to send to him and receive from him all his Letters from and to all his Correspondents at home and abroad, and I was furnish'd with nine several Cyphers in order to it: Which trust I performed with great safety, to the persons with whom we corresponded; but about nine months after being discovered by their knowledge of Mr. Cowley's Hand I happily escaped both for my self, and those that held correspondence with me; that time was too hot and busie for such idle speculations, but after I had the good fortune to wait upon Your Majesty in Holland and France, You were pleased sometimes to give me Arguments to divert and put off the evil hours of our Banishment, which now and then fell not short of Your Majesty's expectation.
After, when Your Majesty departing from St. Germans to Jersy, was pleased freely (without my asking) to confer upon me that place wherein I Have now the honour to serve You, I then gave over Poetical Lines, and made it my business to draw such others as might be more serviceable to Your Majesty, and I hope more lasting. Since that time I never disobeyed my old Master's Commands till this Summer at the Wells, my Retirement there tempting me to divert those melancholy Thoughts, which the new Apparitions of Foreign Invasion, and Domestick Discontent gave us: But these Clouds being now happily blown over, and our Sun clearly shining out again, I have recovered the Relapse, it being suspected that it would have proved the Epidemical Disease of Age, which is apt to fall back into the Follies in Youth; yet Socrates, Aristotle and Cato did the same, and Scaliger saith that fragment of Aristotle was beyond any thing that Pindar or Homer ever wrote. I will not call this a Dedication, for those Epistles are commonly greater Absurdities than any that come after: For what Author can reasonably believe, that fixing the great Name of some eminent Patron in the Forehead of his Book can charm away Censure, and that the first Leaf should be a Curtain to draw over and hide all the deformities that stand behind it? Neither have I any need of such shifts, for most of the Parts of this Body have already had your Majesty's View: and having past the Test of so clear and sharp sighted a Judgment, which has as good a Title to give Law in Matters of this Nature as in any other, they who shall presume to dissent from Your Majesty, will do more wrong to their own Judgment, than their Judgment can do to me. And for those latter Parts which have not yet received your Majesty's favourable Aspect, if they who have seen them do not flatter me, {for I dare not trust my own Judgment) they will make it appear that it is not with me as with most of Mankind, who never forsake their Darling Vices, till their Vices forsake them; and that this Divorce was not Frigiditatis causâ, but an Act of Choice, and not of Necessity. Therefore, Sir, I shall only call it an humble Petition, That Your Majesty will please to pardon this new Amour to my old mistress, and my Disobedience to his Commands, to whose Memory I look upon with great Reverence and Devotion, and making a seriouus Reflection upon that wise Advice, it carries much greater weight with it now than when it was given, for when Age and Experience has so ripened Man's Discretion as to make it fit for use, either in private or publick Affairs, nothing blasts and corrupts the Fruit of it so much as the empty, airy Reputation of being nimis Poeta; and therefore I shall take my leave of the Muses, as two of my Predecessors did, saying,
Splendidis longum vale dico nugis,
Hic versus & cætera ludiera pono.
Your Majesty's most faithful
and loyal Subject, and most
dutiful and devoted Servant,
JO. DENHAM.