Him with her love propitious SATIRE blest, 445 And show'r her bounties o'er her favour'd Isle : 450 Each Roman's force adorns his various page, 460 Here Vice, dragg'd forth by Truth's supreme decree, 465 Who paint a God, unless the God inspire? 475 With taste superior scorn'd the venal tribe, 485 491 495 And, like a Meteor, while we gaze, expires: Error like this ev'n Truth can scarce reprove; "Tis almost Virtue when it flows from Love. 506 510 515 Ye deathless Names, ye Sons of endless praise, To court no Friend, nor own a Foe but thine. Thy sacred paths, to run the maze of wit; 520 525 Urge, urge thy pow'r, the black attempt confound, And dash the smoking Censer to the ground. Thus aw'd to fear instructed Bards may see, That Guilt is doom'd to sink in Infamy. 530 A LETTER' то A NOBLE LORD, ON OCCASION OF SOME LIBELS WRITTEN AND PROPAGATED AT COURT, IN THE YEAR 1732-3. MY LORD, Nov. 30, 1733. YOUR Lordship's epistle has been published some days, but I had not the pleasure and pain of seeing it till yesterday: Pain to think your Lordship should attack me at all; Pleasure, to find that you can attack me so weakly. As I want not the humility, to think myself in every way but one your inferior, it 1 This Letter (which was first printed in the Year 1733) bears the same place in our Author's prose that the Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot does in his poetry. They are both Apologetical, repelling the libellous slanders on his Reputation: with this difference, that the Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot, his friend, was chiefly directed against Grub-street Writers, and this letter to the Noble Lord, his enemy, against Court Scribblers. For the rest, they are both Masterpieces in their kinds; That in verse, more grave, moral, and sublime; This in prose, more lively, critical, and pointed; but equally conducive to what he had most at heart, the vindication of his moral Character: the only thing he thought worth his care in literary altercations; and the first thing he would expect from the good offices of a surviving Friend. W. 2 Intitled, An Epistle to a Doctor of Divinity from a Nobleman at Hampton-Court, Aug. 28, 1733, and printed the November following for J. Roberts. Fol. W. seems but reasonable that I should take the only method either of self-defence or retaliation, that is left me against a person of your quality and power And as by your choice of this weapon, your pen, you generously (and modestly too, no doubt) meant to put yourself upon a level with me; I will as soon believe that your Lordship would give a wound to a man unarmed, as that you would deny me the use of it in my own defence. you I presume you will allow me to take the same liberty in my answer to so candid, polite, and ingenious, a Nobleman, which your Lordship took in yours, to so grave, religious, and respectable, a clergyman3: As answered his Latin in English, permit me to answer your Verse in Prose. And though your Lordship's reasons for not writing in Latin might be stronger than mine for not writing in Verse, yet I may plead Two good ones, for this conduct: the one that I want the talent of spinning a thousand lines in a Day (which, I think, is as much Time as this subject deserves), and the other, that I take your Lordship's Verse to be as much Prose as this letter. But no doubt it was your choice, in writing to a friend, to renounce all the pomp of Poetry, and give us this excellent model of the familiar. When I consider the great difference betwixt the rank your Lordship holds in the World, and the rank which your writings are like to hold in the learned world, I presume that distinction of style is but ne 3 Dr. S. And Pope with justice of such lines may say, His Lordship spins a thousand in a day.-Epist. p. 6. |