which he calls The Power of Love, has put me to sufficient pains to make my own not inferior to his; as my Lord Roscommon's Silenus had formerly given me the same trouble. The most ingenious Mr. Addison of Oxford has also been as troublesome to me as the other two, and on the same account. After his Bees, my latter swarm is scarcely worth the living. Mr. Cowley's Praise of a Country Life is excellent, but 't is rather an imitation of Virgil than a version. That I have recover'd, in some measure, the health which I had lost by too much application to this work, is owing, next to God's mercy, to the skill and care of Dr. Gibbons and Dr. Hobbs, the two ornaments of their profession, whom I can only pay by this acknowledgment. The whole faculty has always been ready to oblige me, and the only one of them who endeavor'd to defame me had it not in his power. I desire pardon from my readers for saying so much in relation to myself, which concerns not them; and, with my acknowledgments to all my subscribers, have only to add, that the few Notes which follow are par manière d'acquit, because I had oblig'd myself by articles to do somewhat of that kind. These scattering observations are rather guesses at my author's meaning in some passages than proofs that so he meant. The unlearn'd may have recourse to any poetical dictionary in English, for the names of persons, places, or fables, which the learned need not; but that little which I say is either new or necessary. And the first of these qualifications never fails to invite a reader, if not to please him. |