DEDICATION TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE SUSANNA COUNTESS OF EGLINTOUN. MADAM, THE love of approbation, and a defire to please the best, have ever encouraged the poets to finish their defigns with cheerfulness. But, confcious of their own inability to oppose a ftorm of fpleen and haughty ill-nature, it is generally an ingenious cuftom among them to chufe fome honourable fhade. Wherefore I beg leave to put my Paftoral under your Lady. fhip's protection. If my Patronefs fays the fhepherds speak as they ought, and that there are feveral natural flowers that beautify the rural wild, I fhall have good reason to think myfelf fafe from the awkward cenfure of fome pretending judges that condemn before examination. I am fure of vaft numbers that will crowd into your Lady. ship's opinion, and think it their honour to agree in their fentiments with the Countefs of Eglintoun, whofe penetration, fuperior wit, and found judgment, fhine with an uncommon luftre, VOL. II. E luftre, while accompanied with the diviner charms of goodness and equality of mind. If it were not for offending only your Ladyfhip, here, Madam, I might give the fullest liberty to my muse to delineate the finest of women, by drawing your Ladyfhip's character, and be in no hazard of being deemed a flatterer, fince flattery lies not in paying what is due to merit, but in praises mifplaced. Were I to begin with your Ladyfhip's honourable birth and alliance, the field is ample, and presents us with numberless great and good patriots, that have dignified the names of Kennedy and Montgomery: be that the care of the herald and hiftorian: it is perfonal merit, and the heavenly fweetness of the fair, that infpire the tuneful lays. Here every Lesbia must be excepted, whofe tongues give liberty to the flaves, which their eyes had made captives; fuch may be flattered; but your Ladyfhip justly claims our admiration and profoundest respect; for whilft you are poffeffed of every outward charm in the most perfect degree, the never-fading beauties of wisdom and piety, which adorn your Ladyfhip's mind, command devotion. "All this is very true," cries one of better sense than goodnature, but what occafion have you to tell us the fun fhines, "when we have the use of our eyes, and feel his influence ?”. Very true; but I have the liberty to use the poet's privilege, which is," to speak what every body thinks." Indeed there might be fome ftrength in the reflection, if the Idalian registers were of as fhort duration as life; but the bard who fondly hopes for immortality, has a certain praife-worthy pleasure in communicating to pofterity the fame of distinguished characters. -I write this laft fentence with a hand, that trembles between hope |