Page:The Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets, Volume 1.djvu/369

 to observe that this falling church has got a trick of rising again."

He took notice to his friends of the King's conduct; and said, that, "he would be left like a whale upon the strand." Whether he was privy to any of the transactions which ended in the Revolution, is not known. His heir joined the prince of Orange.

Having now attained an age beyond which the laws of nature seldom suffer life to be extended, otherwise than by a future state, he seems to have turned his mind upon preparation for the decisive hour, and therefore consecrated his poetry to devotion. It is pleasing to discover that his piety was without weakness; that his intellectual powers continued vigorous; and that the lines which he composed when he, for age, could neither read nor write, are not inferior to the effusions of his youth.

Towards the decline of life, he bought a small house, with a little land at Colshill; and said, "he should be glad to die like the stag, where he was roused." This, however, did not happen. When he was at Beaconsfield, he found his legs grow tumid: he went to Windsor, where Rh