guishes him from the rest of writers, is fo confpicuous in your verses, that it cafts a fhadow on all your contemporaries; we cannot be feen, or but obfcurely, while you are prefent. You equal Donne in the variety, multiplicity, and choice of thoughts; you excel him in the manner and the words. I read you both with the fame admiration, but not with the fame delight. He affects the metaphyfics, not only in his fatires, but in his amorous verfes, where nature only fhould reign; and perplexes the minds of the fair fex with nice speculations of philofophy, when he should engage their hearts, and entertain them with the foftneffes of love. In this (if I may be pardoned for fo bold a truth) Mr. Cowley has copied him to a fault; fo great a one, in my opinion, that it throws his Miftrefs infinitely below his Pindarics, and his latter compofitions, which are undoubtedly the beft of his poems, and the most correct. For my own part, I muft avow it freely to the world, that I never attempted any thing in fatire, wherein I have not studied your writings as the most perfect model. I have continually laid them before me; and the greatest commendation, which my own partiality can give to my productions, is, that they are copies, and no farther to be allowed, than as they have fomething more or lefs of the original. Some few touches of your lordship, fome fecret graces which I have endeavoured to exprefs after your manner, have made whole poems of mine to pafs with approbation; but take your verses altogether, and they are inimitable. If therefore I have not written better, it is because you have not written more. You have not fet me

fufficient copy to transcribe; and I cannot add one letter of my own invention, of which I have not the example there.

It is a general complaint against your lordship, and I must have leave to upbraid you with it, that, because you need not write, you will not. Mankind, that wishes you fo well in all things that relate to your profperity, have their intervals of wishing for themselves, and are within a little of grudging you the fulness of your fortune they would be more

malicious if you used it not so well, and with so much generofity.

Fame is in itself a real good, if we may believe Cicero, who was perhaps too fond of it; but even fame, as Virgil tells us, acquires ftrength by going forward. Let Epicurus give indolency as an attribute to his gods, and place in it the happiness of the bleft; the divinity which we worship has given us not only a precept against it, but his own example to the contrary. The world, my lord, would be content to allow you a feventh day for reft; or if you thought that hard upon you, we would not refuse you half your time if : you came out, like fome great monarch, to take a town but once a year, as it were for your diverfion, though you had no need to extend your territories. In fhort, if you were a bad, or, which is worse, an indifferent poet, we would thank you for our own quiet, and not expofe you to the want of yours. But when you are fo great and fo fuccefsful, and when we have that neceffity of your writing, that we cannot fubfift entirely without it, any more (I may almoft fay) than the world without

the daily course of ordinary providence, methinks this argument might prevail with you, my lord, to forego a little of your repofe for the public benefit. It is not that you are under any force of working daily miracles, to prove your being; but now and then fomewhat of extraordinary, that is, any thing of your production, is requifite to refresh your character.

This, I think, my lord, is a fufficient reproach to you; and should I carry it as far as mankind would authorise me, would be little lefs than fatire. And, indeed, a provocation is almost neceffary, in behalf of the world, that you might be induced fometimes to write; and in relation to a multitude of fcribblers, who daily pefter the world with their infufferable ftuff, that they might be difcouraged from writing any more. I complain not of their lampoons and libels, though I have been the public mark for many years. I am vindictive enough to have repelled force by force, if I could imagine that any of them had ever reached me; but they either fhot at rovers, and therefore miffed, or their powder was fo weak, that I might fafely ftand them at the nearest diftance. I answered not the " Rehearsal," because I knew the author fat to himself when he drew the picture, and was the very Bayes of his own farce : because alfo I knew, that my betters were more concerned than I was in that fatire; and, laftly, because Mr. Smith and Mr. Johnfon, the main pillars of it, were two fuch languishing gentlemen in their converfation, that I could liken them to nothing but to their own relations, thofe noble characters of

men of wit and pleasure about the town. The like confiderations have hindered me from dealing with the lamentable companions of their profe and doggrel. I am so far from defending my poetry against them, that I will not fo much as expofe theirs. And for my morals, if they are not proof against their attacks, let me be thought by pofterity, what thofe authors would be thought, if any memory of them, or of their writings, could endure fo long as to another age. But thefe 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 fucceed to their defigns, and, mixing fense with malice, blaft 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 defigned, they have performed but little of it. Yet these ill writers, in all juftice, ought themselves to be exposed; as Perfius has given us a fair example in his first satire, which is levelled particularly at them; and none is fo fit to correct their faults, as he who is not only clear from any in his own writings, but is alfo fo juft, that he will never defame the good; and is armed with the power of verfe, to punish and make examples of the bad. But of this I fhall have occafion to speak further, when I come to give the definition and character of true fatires.

In the mean time, as a counsellor bred up in the knowledge of the municipal and ftatute laws, may

honeftly inform a juft prince how far his prerogative extends; fo I may be allowed to tell your lordfhip, who, by an undifputed title, are the king of poets, what an extent of power you have, and how lawfully you may exercise it, over the petulant fcribblers of this age. As lord chamberlain, I know, you are abfolute by your office, in all that belongs to the decency and good manners of the ftage: You can banish from thence fcurrility and profaneness, and reftrain the licentious infolence of poets, and their actors, in all things that fhock the public quiet, or the reputation of private perfons, under the notion of humour. But I mean not the authority which is annexed to your office; I fpeak of that only which is inborn and inherent to your perfon; what is produced in you by an excellent wit, a mafterly and commanding genius over all writers: whereby you are empowered, when you please, to give the final decifion of wit; to put your stamp on all that ought to pass for current; and fet a brand of reprobation on clipped poetry, and falfe coin. A fhilling dipped in the Bath may go for gold amongst the ignorant, but the fceptres on the guineas fhow the difference. That your lordship is formed by nature for this fupremacy, I could eafily prove, (were it not already granted by the world) from the diftinguifhing character of your writing; which is fo vifible to me, that I never could be impofed on to receive for yours, what was written by any others; or to mistake your genuine poetry for their spurious productions. I can farther add, with truth, (though not without fome vanity in faying it) that in the fame