perfect in mankind; and by distinguishing that which comes nearest to excellency, though not absolutely free from faults, will certainly produce a candour in the judge. It is incident to an elevated understanding, like your lordship's, to find out the errours of other men; but it is your prerogative to pardon them to look with pleasure on those things which are somewhat congenial, and of a remote kindred to your own conceptions; and to forgive the many failings of those, who, with their wretched art, cannot arrive to those heights that you possess, from a happy, abundant, and native genius: which are as inborn to you, as they were to Shakspeare, and for aught I know, to Homer; in either of whom we find all arts and sciences, all moral and natural philosophy, without knowing that they ever studied them.

There is not an English writer this day living, who is not perfectly convinced, that your lordship excels all others in all the several parts of poetry which you have undertaken to adorn. The most vain, and the most ambitious of our age, have not dared to assume so much as the competitors of Themistocles: they have yielded the first place without dispute; and have been arrogantly content to be esteemed as second to your lordship; and even that also, with a longo, sed proximi intervallo. If there have been, or are any, who go farther in their self-conceit, they must be very singular in their opinion: they must be like the officer, in a play, who was called captain, lieute

nant, and company. The world will easily conclude, whether such unattended generals can ever be capable of making a revolution in Parnassus.

6

I will not attempt in this place, to say any thing particular of your Lyrick Poems, though they are the delight and wonder of this age, and will be the envy of the next. The subject of this book confines me to satire; and in that, an author of your own quality, whose ashes I will not disturb, has given you all the commendation, which his selfsufficiency could afford to any man: The best good man, with the worst-natured muse. In that character, methinks, I am reading Jonson's Verses to the memory of Shakspeare; an insolent, sparing, and invidious panegyrick: where good nature, the most godlike commendation of a man, is only attributed to your person, and denied to your writings; for they are every where so full of candour, that, like Horace, you only expose the follies of men, without arraigning their vices; and in this excel him, that you add that pointedness of thought, which is visibly wanting in our great Roman. There is more of salt in all your verses, than I have seen in any of the moderns, or even of the ancients but you have been sparing of the gall; by which means you have pleased all readers, and offended none. Donne alone, of all our countrymen, had your talent; but was not happy

"Lord Rochester, in his imitation of the tenth Satire of the first book of Horace.

enough to arrive at your versification; and were he translated into numbers, and English,' he would yet be wanting in the dignity of expression. That which is the prime virtue, and chief ornament of Virgil, which distinguishes him from the rest of writers, is so conspicuous in your verses, that it casts a shadow on all your contemporaries; we cannot be seen, or but obscurely, while you are present. 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 same admiration, but not with the same delight. He affects the metaphysicks, not only in his satires, but in his amorous verses, where Nature only should reign; and perplexes the minds of the fair sex with nice speculations of philosophy, when he should engage their hearts, and entertain them with the softnesses of love. In this (if I may be pardoned for so bold a truth) Mr. Cowley has copied him to a fault; so great a one, in my opinion, that it throws his MISTRESS infinitely below his PINDARICKS, and his latter compositions; which are undoubtedly the best of his poems, and the most correct. For my own part, I must avow it freely to the world, that I never attempted any thing in satire, wherein I have not studied your writings, as the most perfect model. I have con

8

7 This probably suggested to Pope the scheme of modernizing Donne's Satires.

* It should seem from this high eulogy, that several of

tinually 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 something more or less of the original. Some few touches of your lordship, some secret graces which I have endeavoured to express after your manner, have made whole poems of mine to pass 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 set me sufficient 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 need not write, you will not. you Mankind that wishes you so well, in all things that relate to your prosperity, have their intervals of wishing for themselves, and are within a little of grudging you the fulness of your fortune: they

Lord Dorset's satirical poems have not come down to us, at least with his name. Among his works, as collected with those of the MINOR POETS, I find but one of this complexion; that in ridicule of the Honourable Edward Howard. Pope told Mr. Spence (as the latter mentions in his ANECDOTES,) that several of Lord Dorset's pieces were to be met with in the STATE POEMS, particularly in the third volume.-Curl, the bookseller, has attributed to this nobleman a satirical poem, entitled "A Catalogue of our most eminent Ninnies," written in 1686; but I know not on what authority.

would be more malicious, if you used it not so well, and with so much generosity.

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 strength by going forward. Let Epicurus give indolency as an attribute to his gods, and place in it the happiness of the blest 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 seventh day for rest; or if you thought that hard upon you, we would not refuse you half your time: if you came out, like some great monarch, to take a town but once a year, as it were for your diversion, though you had no need to extend your territories. In short, if you were a bad, or, which is worse, an indifferent poet, we would thank you for our own quiet, and not expose you to the want of yours. But when you are so great, and so successful, and when we have that necessity of your writing, that we cannot subsist entirely without it, any more (I may almost say,) 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 repose for the publick benefit. It is not that you are under any force of working daily miracles, to prove your being; but now and then somewhat of extraordinary, that is, any thing of your production, is requisite to refresh your character.