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
all together, 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 would be more malicious if you used it not so well and with so
much generosity.
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.
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