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EARL of ABINGDON,

MY LORD,

THE

&c.

HE commands, with which you honored me fome months ago, are now performed: they had been sooner; but betwixt ill health, some business, and many troubles, I was forced to defer them till this time. Ovid, going to his banishment, and writing from on shipboard to his friends, excufed the faults of his poetry by his misfortunes; and told them, that good verfes never flow, but from a ferene and compofed fpirit. Wit, which is a kind of Mercury, with wings fastened to his head and heels, can fly but flowly in a damp air. I therefore chofe rather to obey you late than ill if at leaft I am capable of writing any thing, at any time, which is worthy your perufal and your patronage. I cannot fay that I have escaped from a fhipwreck; but have only gained a rock by hard fwimming; where I may pant a while and gather breath for the doctors give me a fad affurance, that my disease never took its leave of any man, but with a purpose to return. However, my lord, I have laid hold on

the interval, and managed the fmall ftock, which age has left me, to the best advantage, in performing this inconfiderable service to my lady's memory. We, who are priests of Apollo, have not the inspiration when we pleafe; but must wait till the God comes rufhing on us, and invades us with a fury, which we are not able to refift: which gives us double ftrength while the fit continues, and leaves us languishing and spent, at its departure. Let me not feem to boast, my lord, for I have really felt it on this occafion, and prophefied beyond my natural power. Let me add, and hope to be believed, that the excellency of the fubject contributed much to the happiness of the execution; and that the weight of thirty years was taken off me, while I was writing. I fwam with the tide, and the water under me was buoyant. The reader will eafily obferve, that I was tranfported by the multitude and variety of my fimilitudes; which are generally the product of a luxuriant fancy, and the wantonness of wit. Had I called in my judgment to my affistance, I had certainly retrenched many of them. But I defend them not; let them pass for beautiful faults amongst the better fort of critics for the

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whole poem, tho written in that which they call Heroic verfe, is of the Pindaric nature, as well in the thought as the expreffion; and, as such, requires the fame grains of allowance for it. It was intended, as your lordfhip fees in the title, not for an elegy, but a panegyric: a kind of hypothefis, indeed, if a heathen word may be ap plied to a christian use. And on all occafions of praise, if we take the ancients for our patterns, we are bound by prefcription to employ the mag nificence of words, and the force of figures, to adorn the fublimity of thoughts. Ifocrates amongst the Grecian orators, and Cicero, and the younger Pliny, amongst the Romans, have left us their precedents for our fecurity: for I think I need not mention the inimitable Pindar, who ftretches on thefe pinions out of fight, and is carried upward, as it were, into another world.

This, at leaft, my lord, I may justly plead, that, if I have not perform'd fo well as I think I have, yet I have used my best endeavors to excel myself. One disadvantage I have had; which is, never to have known or feen my lady: and to draw the lineaments of her mind, from the defcription, which I have received from others, is VOL. II. Q

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for a painter to fet himself at work without the living original before him which, the more beautiful it is, will be fo much the more difficult for him to conceive, when he has only a relation given him of fuch and fuch features by an acquaintance or a friend, without the nice touches, which give the best resemblance, and make the graces of the picture. Every artist is apt enough to flatter himself (and I amongst the rest) that their own ocular obfervations would have difcovered more perfections, at least others, than have been delivered to them: tho I have received mine from the best hands, that is, from perfons who neither want a just understanding of my lady's worth, nor a due veneration for her memory.*

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Doctor Donne, the greatest wit, tho not the greatest poet of our nation, acknowleges, that he had never feen Mrs. Drury, whom he has made immortal in his admirable Anniversaries. I have had the fame fortune, tho I have not fucceeded to the fame genius. However, I have followed his footsteps in the

defign of his panegyric; which was to raise an emulation in the living, to copy out the example of the dead. And therefore it was, that I once intended to have called

this poem, The Pattern: and tho, on a fecond confideration, I changed the title into the name of the illuftrious perfon, yet the defign continues, and Eleonora is ftill the pattern of charity, devotion, and humility; of the best wife, the beft mother, and the best of friends.

And now, my lord, tho I have endeavored to answer your commands, yet I could not answer it to the world, nor to my conscience, if I gave not your lordship my teftimony of being the best hufband now living: I say my teftimony only; for the praise of it is given you by yourself. They, who despise the rules of virtue both in their practice and their morals, will think this a very trivial commendation. But I think it the peculiar happiness of the Countess of Abingdon, to have been fo truly loved by you, while she was living, and fo gratefully honored, after she was dead, Few there are who have either had, or could have, fuch a lofs; and yet fewer who carried their love and conftancy beyond the grave. The exteriors of mourning, a decent funeral, and black habits, are the usual stints of common hufbands and perhaps their wives deserve no better than to be mourned with hypocrify, and forgot

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