I submit my opinion to your judgment, who are better
qualified than any man I know to decide this controversy. You come,
my lord, instructed in the cause, and needed not that I should open
it. Your "Essay of Poetry," which was published without a name, and
of which I was not honoured with the confidence, I read over and
over with much delight and as much instruction, and without
flattering you, or making myself more moral than I am, not without
some envy. I was loth to be informed how an epic poem should be
written, or how a tragedy should be contrived and managed, in better
verse and with more judgment than I could teach others. A native of
Parnassus, and bred up in the studies of its fundamental laws, may
receive new lights from his contemporaries, but it is a grudging
kind of praise which he gives his benefactors. He is more obliged
than he is willing to acknowledge; there is a tincture of malice in
his commendations: for where I own I am taught, I confess my want
of knowledge. A judge upon the bench may, out of good nature, or,
at least, interest, encourage the pleadings of a puny counsellor,
but he does not willingly commend his brother-serjeant at the bar,
especially when he controls his law, and exposes that ignorance
which is made sacred by his place.
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