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 ambitions 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, lieutenant, and company. The world will easily
conclude whether such unattended generals can ever be capable of
making a revolution in Parnassus.
I will not attempt in this place to say anything particular of your
lyric poems, though they are the delight and wonder of the 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 self-
sufficiency could afford to any man--"The best good man, with the
worst-natured muse.
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