Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 17.djvu/119

Rh and here you have a gentleman who sinks beside the chair: a plain allusion to a noble lord, who lost his chair of president of the council.

I come next to the bodkin, so dreadful in the hand of Belinda; by which he intimates the British sceptre, so revered in the hand of our late august princess. His own note upon this place tells us, he alludes to a sceptre; and the verses are so plain, they need no remark:

The same (his ancient personage to deck) Her great great grandsire wore about his neck In three seal rings, which, after melted down, Form'd a vast buckle for his widow's gown; Her infant grandame's whistle next it grew, The bells she gingled, and the whistle blew; Then in a bodkin grac'd her mother's hairs, Which long she wore, and now Belinda wears.

An open satire upon hereditary right! The three seal rings plainly allude to the three kingdoms.

These are the chief passages in the battle, by which, as hath before been said, he means the squabble of parties. Upon this occasion he could not end the description without testifying his malignant joy at those dissensions, from which he forms the prospect that both should be disappointed, and cries out with triumph, as if it were already accomplished,

Behold how oft ambitious aims are crost, And chiefs contend till all the prize is lost.

The lock at length is turned into a star, or the old barrier treaty into a new and glorious peace. This, no doubt, is what the author, at the time he printed this poem, would have been thought to mean; in hopes by that compliment to escape the punishment . XVII.