wit and pleasure about the town. The like considerations have hindered me from dealing with the lamentable companions of their prose and doggrel; I am so far from defending my poetry against them, that I will not so much as expose theirs. And for my morals, if they are not proof against their attacks, let me be thought by posterity what those authors would be thought; if any memory of them, or of their writings, could endure so long as to another age. But these dull makers of lampoons, as harmless as they have been to me, are yet of dangerous example to the public: some witty men may perhaps succeed to their designs, and, mixing sense with malice, blast the reputation of the most innocent amongst men, and the most virtuous amongst women,

Heaven be praised, our common libellers are as free from the imputation of wit as of morality; and therefore whatever mischief they have designed, they have performed but little of it. Yet these ill writers in all justice ought themselves to be exposed: as Persius has given us a fair example in his first satire; which is leveled particularly at them. And none is so fit to correct their faults, as he who is not only clear from any in his own writings, but also so just that he will never defame the good; and is armed with the power of verse, to punish and make examples of the bad. But of this I shall have occasion to speak further, when I come to give the definition and character of true satires.

In the meantime, as a counsellor, bred up in the knowledge of the municipal and statute laws, may honestly inform a just prince how far his

prerogative extends; so I may be allowed to tell your lordship, who, by an undisputed title are the king of poets, what an extent of power you have, and how lawfully you may exercise it, over the petulent scribblers of this age. As lordchamberlain, I know, you are absolute by your office, in all that belongs to the decency and good manners of the stage. You can banish from thence scurrility and profaneness, and restrain the licentious insolence of poets and their actors, in all things that shock the public quiet, or the reputation of private persons, under the notion of humour. But I mean not the authority which is annexed to your office: I speak of that only which is inborn and inherent to your person; what is produced in you by an excellent wit, a masterly and commanding genius over all writers: whereby you are empowered, when you please, to give the final decision of wit: to put your stamp on all that ought to pass for current; and set a brand of reprobation on clipped poetry and false coin. A shilling dipped in the bath may go for gold amongst the ignorant; but the sceptres on the guineas show the difference. That your lordship is formed by nature for this supremacy I could easily prove (were it not already granted by the world) from the distinguishing character of your writing; which is so visible to me, that I never could be imposed on to receive for yours what was written by any others; or to mistake your genuine poetry for their spurious productions. I can further add with truth (though not without some vanity in saying it), that in the same paper, written by

divers hands, whereof your lordship's was only part, I could separate your gold from their cop-. per: and though I could not give back to every author his own brass (for there is not the same rule for distinguishing betwixt bad and bad, as betwixt ill and excellently good), yet I never failed of knowing what was yours, and what was not: and was absolutely certain, that this or the other part was positively yours, and could not possibly be written by any other.

True it is, that some bad poems, though not all, carry their owners' marks about them. There is some peculiar awkwardness, false grammar, imperfect sense, or at the least obscurity; some brand or other on this buttock, or that ear, that it is notorious who are the owners of the cattle, though they should not sign it with their names. But your lordship, on the contrary, is distinguished not only by the excellency of your thoughts, but by your style and manner of expressing them. A painter, judging of some admirable piece, may affirm with certainty that it was of Holbein, or Vandyke: but vulgar designs, and common draughts, are easily mistaken and misapplied. Thus, by my long study of your lordship, I am arrived at the knowledge of your particular manner. In the good poems of other men, like those artists, I can only say, this is like the draught of such a one, or like the colouring of another. In short, I can only be sure that it is the hand of a good master: but in your performances it is scarcely possible for me to be deceived. If you write in your strength, you stand revealed at the first view; and should you

write under it, you cannot avoid some peculiar graces, which only cost me a second consideration to discover you: for I may say it, with all the severity of truth, that every line of yours is precious. Your lordship's only fault is, that you have not written more; unless I could add another, and that yet greater (but I fear, for the public, the accusation would not be true), that you have written, and out of vicious modesty will not publish.

Virgil has confined his works within the compass of eighteen thousand lines, and has not treated many subjects; yet he ever had, and ever will have, the reputation of the best poet. Martial says of him, that he could have excelled Varius in tragedy, and Horace in lyric poetry; but out of deference to his friends, he attempted neither.

The same prevalence of genius is in your lordship, but the world cannot pardon your concealing it, on the same consideration; because we have neither a living Varius, nor a Horace; in whose excellences both of Poems, Odes, and Satires, you had equaled them, if our language had not yielded to the Roman in majesty, and length of time had not added a reverence to the works of Horace. For good sense is the same in all or most ages; and course of time rather improves nature than impairs her. What has been may be again: another Homer and another Virgil may possibly arise from those very causes which produced the first: though it would be impudence to affirm that any such have appeared.

It is manifest, that some particular ages have

been more happy than others in the production of great men, in all sorts of arts and sciences: as that of Euripides, Sophocles, Aristophanes, and the rest, for stage poetry amongst the Greeks: that of Augustus for heroic, lyric, dramatic, elegiac, and indeed all sorts of poetry, in the persons of Virgil, Horace, Varius, Ovid, and many others; especially if we take into that century the latter end of the commonwealth; wherein we find Varro, Lucretius, and Catullus: and at the same time lived Cicero, and Sallust, and Cæsar. A famous age in modern times, for learning in every kind, was that of Lorenzo de Medici, and his son Leo X. wherein painting was revived, and poetry flourished, and the Greek language was restored.

Examples in all these are obvious. But what I would infer is this: that in such an age, it is possible some great genius may arise, to equal any of the ancients; abating only for the language. For great contemporaries whet and cultivate each other: and mutual borrowing and commerce makes the common riches of learning, as it does of the civil government.

But suppose that Homer and Virgil were the only of their species, and that nature was so much worn out in producing them, that she is never able to bear the like again; yet the example only holds in heroic poetry: in tragedy and satire, I offer myself to maintain against some of our modern critics, that this age and the last, particularly in England, have excelled the ancients in both those kinds: and I would instance