то HIS GRACE The DUKE of NEWCASTLE. MY LORD, IF I to addrefs to your Grace F I prefume to addrefs to your Grace these Miscellanies of one of our greatest English poets, now firft collected and illustrated with Notes; perhaps the acknowledged eminence of the author may apologise for the inconfiderablenefs of the editor. To whom can these poems be more properly infcribed than to fuch a patron as Dryden himself would have chofen; a nobleman of the firft distinction, known to love polite learning, because he understands and tastes it; and eminent for his candour, no lefs than his difcernment? A 2 Had the writer I here introduce to your Grace been, for the honour of Great Britain, ftill alive, what a noble field would have been now open to his genius, for exerting all its powers, in celebrating your long and unwearied application to public business, that zeal and fidelity with which you have acquitted yourself in the service of one of the best of kings! Then, my lord, the just praises of our countrymen under your Grace's administration, had been touched by a pen adequate to their worth. The memorable year feventeen hundred and fifty-nine, would have fhone with distinguished luftre to latest pofterity, in his profe and verfe equally, for he was equally a master of both. The defeat of a numerous French army by a handful of Britons on the plains of Minden! All the plans our enemies had formed for attacking and diftreffing our fettlements in the Eaft-Indies, baffled and disappointed! Senegal and Goree torn from them in Africa! Guadaloupe in the Weft-Indies become a British colony! Louisbourg taken! And by the important reduction of Quebec, all North America laid open to our arms! The fleets of France twice beaten in the Mediterranean! and the ruin of her Marine compleated upon the Ocean! Almost all these are the events of one year, under a ministry in which your Grace acts fo illuftrious a part. Had we then a Dryden among us, to what heights must the subject have raised such a writer? With what fublimity of thought and expreffion, with what happy elegance and variety of harmony would fuch a writer have adorned his fubject? Inferior authors can only look up to this fummit of Par naffus, without even the vain hope of being able to reach it; but my utmost ambition will be gratified, if this public dedication to your Grace of fo noble a poet's remains may be, if not approved, at least forgiven, and admitted as a mark of the inviolable respect and attachment with which I have the honour to fubscribe myself, MY LORD, Your GRACE's moft humble London, Feb. and obedient Servant, Samuel Derrick. |