Page:The Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets, Volume 1.djvu/362

352 poems of the same nature, ascribing the highest degree of power and piety to Charles the First, then transferring the same power and piety to Oliver Cromwell, now inviting Oliver to take the Crown, and then congratulating Charles the Second on his recovered right. Neither Cromwell nor Charles could value his testimony as the effect of conviction, or receive his praises as effusions of reverence: they could consider them but as the labour of invention, and the tribute of dependence.

Poets, indeed, profess fiction; but the legitimate end of fiction is the conveyance of truth; and he that has flattery ready for all whom the vicissitudes of the world happen to exalt, must be scorned as a prostituted mind, that may retain the glitter of wit, but has lost the dignity of virtue.

The Congratulation was considered as inferior in poetical merit to the Panegyrick; and it is reported, that, when the king told Waller of the disparity, he answered, "Poets, Sir, succeed better in fiction than in truth."

The Congratulation is indeed not inferior to the Panegyrick, either by decay of Rh