rigues that led
to the restoration of Charles II. In his own day he had a great
reputation as a poet. His tragedy, _The Sophy_, and his translation
of the Psalms are now forgotten, but he is still remembered for one
piece, _Cooper's Hill_, in which occur the well-known lines addressed
to the River Thames:

O could I flow like thee, and make thy stream
My great example, as it is my theme!
Though deep, yet clear; though gentle, yet not dull;
Strong, without rage; without o'erflowing, full.

Another Dublin-born man was Wentworth Dillon, Earl of Roscommon
(1633-1684). He had the good fortune to win encomiums both from
Dryden and from Pope. One of his merits, as pointed out by the
latter, is that

In all Charles's days
Roscommon only boasts unspotted bays.

He translated from Virgil, Lucan, Horace, and Guarini; wrote
prologues, epilogues, and other occasional verses; but is now
principally remembered for his poetical _Essay on Translated Verse_
(1681), in which he develops principles previously laid down by
Cowley and Denham. To his credit be it said, he condemns indecency,
both as want of sense and bad taste. He was honored with a funeral in
Westminster Abbey. Johnson records that, at the moment of his death,
Roscommon uttered with great energy and devotion the following two
lines from his own translation of the _Dies Irae_:

My God, my Father, and my Friend,
Do not forsake me in my end!

Robert Boyle (1627-1691), one of the founders of the Royal Society
(1662), was son of the "great" Earl of Cork and was born at Lismore,
Co. Waterford. He takes rank among the principal experimental
philosophers of his age, and he certainly rendered valuable services
to the advancement of science. Most of his writings, which are very
voluminous, are naturally of a technical character and therefore do
not properly belong to literature; but his _Occasional Reflections on
Several Subjects_ (1665), a strange mixture of triviality and
seriousness, was germinal in this sense that it led to two celebrated
_jeux d'esprit_, namely, Butler's _Occasional Reflection on Dr.
Charlton's feeling a Dog's Pulse at Gresham College_ and Swift's
_Pious Meditation upon a Broomstick, in the Style of the Honourable
Mr. Boyle_. Indeed, one of Boyle's _Reflections_, that "Upon the
Eating of Oysters", is reputed to have rendered a still more signal
service to literature, for in its two concludi