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 you need not write, you will not. 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.

you came

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 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.

र्प

This, I think, my lord, is a sufficient réproach to you; and should I carry it as far as mankind would authorise me, would be little less than satire. And indeed a provocation is almost necessary, in behalf of the world, that you might be induced sometimes to write; and in relation to a multitude of scribblers, who daily pester the world with their insufferable stuff, that they might be discouraged from writing any more. I complain not of their lampoons and libels, though I have been the publick 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 shot at rovers, and therefore missed, or their powder was so weak, that I might safely stand them, at the nearest distance. I answered not the REHEARSAL, because I knew the author sat to himself when he drew the picture, and was the very Bayes of his own farce: because also I knew, that my betters were more concerned than I was in that satire and, lastly, because Mr. Smith, and Mr. Johnson, the main pillars of it, were two such languishing gentlemen in their conversation,* that

9 In archery, shooting at rovers is shooting without any determinate butt or object.

"Dryden allowed THE REHEARSAL to have a great many good things in it, though so severe (added he) upon myfelf; but I cannot help saying that Smith and Johnson are two of the coolest most insignificant fellows I ever met with on the stage. This, if it was not spoke out of resentment, betrayed a great want of judgment; for Smith and

1

I could liken them to nothing but to their own relations, those noble characters of men of wit and pleasure about the town. The like considerations have hindered me from dealing with the lamentable companions of their prose and doggrel. I am so far from defending my poetry against them, that I will not so much as expose theirs. And for my morals, if they are not proof against their attacks, let me be thought by posterity, what those authors would be thought, if any memory of them or of their writings could endure so long as to another age. But these dull makers of lampoons, as harmless as they have been to me, are yet of dangerous example to the publick. Some witty men may perhaps succeed to their designs; and mixing sense with malice, blast 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 de signed, they have performed but little of it. Yet these ill writers, in all justice, ought themselves to be exposed; as Persius has given us a fair example in his first Satire, which is levelled particularly at them and none is so fit to correct their faults, as he who is not only clear from any in his own wri

Johnson are men of sense, and should certainly say little to such stuff,-only enough to make Bayes show on." Spence's ANECDOTES. Dr. Lockier, Dean of Peter-. borough, is the speaker.

tings, but is also so just, that he will never defame the good; and is armed with the power of verse, to punish and make examples of the bad. But of this, I shall have occasion to speak further, when I come to give the definition and character of true satires.

In the mean time, as a counsellor bred up in the knowledge of the municipal and statute laws, may honestly inform a just prince how far his prerogative extends; so I may be allowed to tell your lordship, who by an undisputed title are the king of poets, what an extent of power you have, and how lawfully you may exercise it, over the petulant scribblers of this age. As Lord Chamberlain, I know, you are absolute by your office, in all that belongs to the decency and good manners of the stage. You can banish from thence scurrility and profaneness, and restrain the licentious insolence of poets and their actors, in all things that shock the publick quiet, or the reputation of private persons, under the notion of humour. But I mean not the authority, which is annexed to your office; I speak of that only which is inborn and inherent to your person; what is produced in you by an excellent wit, a masterly and commanding genius over all writers whereby you are empowered, when you please, to give the final decision of wit; to put your stamp on all that ought to pass for current; and set a brand of reprobation on clipped poetry, and false coin. A shilling dipped in the Bath may go for gold amongst the ignorant, but the sceptres