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A DISCOURSE

ON

THE ORIGINAL AND PROGRESS OF

SATIR E:

ADDRESSED TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE

CHARLES, EARL OF DORSET AND MIDDLESEX, › LORD CHAMBERLAIN OF HIS MAJESTY'S HOUSEHOLD, KNIGHT OF the most NOBLE ORDER OF THE GARTER, &c.

MY LORD,

THE wishes and desires of all good men, which have attended your lordship from your first appearance in the world, are at length accomplished, from your obtaining those honours and

5 This Discourse was prefixed to a poetical translation of the Satires of Juvenal, by our author and others, published in 1693. Of the nobleman to whom it is addressed, some account has already been given in vol. i. p. 25. He was created Earl of Middlesex, in 1675. After the Revolution he was appointed Lord Chamberlain of the Household, and was made a Knight of the Garter.

"Villiers, Duke of Buckingham (says Prior, in his "Heads of an Essay on Learning," MSS.) was too much inclined to burlesque; Sir Fleetwood Shephard ran too much into romance and improbability, and the late Earl of Ranelagh into quibble and banter: yet each of these had a good deal of wit; and if they had had more study

dignities which you have so long deserved. There are no factions, though irreconcileable to one another, that are not united in their affection to you, and the respect they pay you. They are equally pleased in your prosperity, and would be equally concerned in your afflictions. Titus Vespasian was not more the delight of human kind, The universal empire made him only more known, and more powerful, but could not make him more beloved. He had greater ability of doing good, but your inclination to it is not less: and though you could not extend your beneficence to so many persons, yet you have lost as few days as that excellent emperor; and never had his complaint to make when you went to bed, that the sun had shone in vain, when had the opportunity of relieving some unhappy man. This, my lord, has justly acquired you as many friends as there are persons who have the honour to be known to you. Mere acquaintance you have none; you have drawn them all into a nearer line: and they

upon you

you

than generally a court life allows, as their ideas would have been more numerous, their wit would have been more perfect. The late Earl of Dorset was indeed a great exception to this rule; for he had thoughts which no book could lend him, and a way of expressing them, which no man ever knew how to prescribe.'

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Macky observes in his CHARACTERS, (published in 8vo. 1733, but written in 1708,) that Lord Dorset was "very fat, and troubled with the spleen; he is still one of the pleasantest companions in the world, when he likes

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his company." "Not of late years, but a very dull one," says Swift, in a manuscript note on that work.

who have conversed with you, are for ever after inviolably yours. This is a truth so generally acknowledged, that it needs no proof: it is of the nature of a first principle, which is received as soon as it is proposed; and needs not the reformation which Descartes used to his; for we doubt not, neither can we properly say,—we think we admire and love you above all other men: there is a certainty in the proposition, and we know it. With the same assurance I can say, you neither have enemies, nor can scarce have any; for they who have never heard of you, can neither love or hate you; and they who have, can have no other notion of you than that which they receive from the publick, that you are the best of men. After this, my testimony can be of no farther use, than to declare it to be daylight at high noon: and all who have the benefit of sight, can look up as well, and see the sun.

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It is true, I have one privilege which is almost particular to myself, that I saw you in the East, at your first arising above the hemisphere: I was as soon sensible as any man of that light, when it was but just shooting out, and beginning to travel upwards to the meridian. I made my early addresses to your lordship, in my ESSAY OF DRAMATICK POETRY, and therein bespoke you to the world; wherein, I have the right of a first discoverer. When I was myself in the rudiments of my poetry, without name or reputation in the world, having rather the ambition of a writer, than

the skill; when I was drawing the outlines of an art, without any living master to instruct me in it; an art which had been better praised than studied here in England; wherein Shakspeare, who created the stage among us, had rather written happily, than knowingly and justly, and Jonson, who by studying Horace had been acquainted with the rules, yet seemed to envy to posterity that knowledge, and like an inventor of some useful art, to make a monopoly of his learning; when thus, as I may say, before the use of the loadstone, or knowledge of the compass, I was sailing in a vast ocean, without other help than the pole-star of the ancients, and the rules of the French stage amongst the moderns, which are extremely different from ours, by reason of their opposite taste; yet even then, I had the presumption to dedicate to your lordship-a very unfinished piece, I must confess, and which only can be excused by the little experience of the author, and the modesty of the title, AN ESSAY. Yet I was stronger in prophecy than I was in criticism: I was inspired to foretell you to mankind, as the restorer of poetry, the greatest genius, the truest judge, and the best patron.

Good sense and good nature are never separated, though the ignorant world has thought otherwise. Good nature, by which I mean beneficence and candour, is the product of right reason; which of necessity will give allowance to the failings of others, by considering that there is nothing

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

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