LORD CHAMBERLAIN OF HIS MAJESTY'S HOUSEHOLD, KNIGHT OF THE MOST NOBLE ORDER OF THE GARTER, ETC.

MY LORD,

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THE wishes and desires of all good men, which have attended your lordship from your first pearance in the world, are at length accomplished in your obtaining those honours and dignities which you have so long deserved. There are no factions, though irreconcileable to one another, that are not united in their affection to you, and the respect they pay you. They are equally pleased in your prosperity, and would be equally concerned in your affliction. Titus Vespasian was not more the delight of humankind. universal empire made him only more known and more powerful, but could not make him more beloved. He had greater ability of doing good, but your inclination to it is not less: and though you could not extend your beneficence to so many persons, yet you have lost as few days as that excellent emperor, and never had his complaint to make when you went to bed, that the sun had

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TO THE RIGHT HON.

CHARLES,

EARL OF DORSET AND MIDDLESEX;

LORD CHAMBERLAIN OF HIS MAJESTY'S HOUSEHOLD, KNIGHT OF THE MOST NOBLE ORDER OF THE GARTER, ETC.

MY LORD,

THE wishes and desires of all good men, which have attended your lordship from your first appearance in the world, are at length accomplished in your obtaining those honours and dignities which you have so long deserved. There are no factions, though irreconcileable to one another, that are not united in their affection to you, and the respect they pay you. They are equally pleased in your prosperity, and would be equally concerned in your affliction. Titus Vespasian was not more the delight of humankind. universal empire made him only more known and more powerful, but could not make him more beloved. He had greater ability of doing good, but your inclination to it is not less: and though you could not extend your beneficence to so many persons, yet you have lost as few days as that excellent emperor, and never had his complaint to make when you went to bed, that the sun had

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shone upon you in vain, when you had the opportunity of relieving some unhappy man. This, my lord, has justly acquired you as many friends as there are persons who have the honour to be known to you: mere acquaintance you have none; you have drawn them all into a nearer line: and they who have conversed with you are for ever after inviolably yours. This is a truth so generally acknowledged that it needs no proof. It is of the nature of a first principle, which is received as soon as it is proposed; and needs not the reformation which Descartes used to his. For we doubt not, neither can we properly say, we think we admire and love you above all other men : there is a certainty in the proposition, and we know it. With the same assurance can I say, you neither have enemies, nor can scarce have any; for they who have never heard of you can neither love or hate you; and they who have can have no other notion of you than that which they receive from the public, that you are the best of men. After this, my testimony can be of no further use than to declare it to be daylight at high noon and all who have the benefit of sight can look up as well and see the sun.

It is true, I have one privilege which is almost particular to myself, that I saw you in the east at your first arising above the hemisphere. I was as soon sensible as any man of that light, when it was but just shooting out, and beginning to travel upward to the meridian. I made my early addresses to your lordship, in my Essay of Dramatic Poetry;' and therein bespoke you to the world: wherein I have the right of a first dis

coverer.

When I was myself in the rudiments of my poetry, without name or reputation in the world, having rather the ambition of a writer than the skill; when I was drawing the outlines of an art, without any living master to instruct me in it; an art which had been better praised than studied here in England, wherein Shakspeare, who created the stage among us, had rather written happily than knowingly and justly; and Jonson, who by studying Horace had been acquainted with the rules, yet seemed to envy posterity that knowledge; and like an inventor of some useful art, to make a monopoly of his learning. When thus, as I may say, before the use of the loadstone, or knowledge of the compass, I was sailing in a vast ocean, without other help than the polestar of the ancients, and the rules of the French stage amongst the moderns; which are extremely different from ours, by reason of their opposite taste; yet even then I had the presumption to dedicate to your lordship a very unfinished piece, I must confess, and which only can be excused by the little experience of the author, and the modesty of the title, An Essay.' Yet I was stronger in prophecy than I was in criticism: I was inspired to foretell you to mankind, as the restorer of poetry, the greatest genius, the truest judge, and the best patron.

Good sense and goodnature are never separated, though the ignorant world has thought otherwise. Goodnature (by which I mean beneficence and candour) is the product of right reason; which of necessity will give allowance to the failings of others, by considering that there