DEDICATION

OF THE THIRD PART OF

POETICAL MISCELLANIES."

TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE
MY LORD RADCLIFFE."

MY LORD,

THESE Miscellany Poems are by many titles yours. The first they claim, from your acceptance of my promise to present them to you, before some of them were yet in being. The rest are derived from your own merit, the exactness of your judgment in poetry, and the candour of your nature, easy to forgive some trivial faults, when they come accompanied with countervailing beauties. But after all, though these are your equi

5 This collection was published in octavo in 1693,
under the title of EXAMEN POETICUM; being the Third

arvestered
popul. Part of Miscellany Poems, &c.

July
James /

"Weassen.
6 Francis, Lord Radcliffe, was the eldest son of Franeis, James
inden Earl of Derwentwater, by Catharine, daughter of Sir Wil-
Garelle.
liam Fenwick, of Meldon, in the county of Northum-
2889 berland, and widow of —— Lawson, of Grove, in the
July 20, county of York, Esq. He married in August 1687, in
1693. the life-time of his father, Mary Tudor, a natural daughter
of Charles the Second, who was born in October 1673.

the father

the

March 1687-d (in consequence of
in arreage in the preced's August.

1

table claims to a dedication from other poets, yet I must acknowledge a bribe in the case, which is your particular liking of my verses. It is a vanity common to all writers, to overvalue their own productions; and it is better for me to own this failing in myself, than the world to do it for me. For what other reason have I spent my life in so unprofitable a study? Why am I grown old in seeking so barren a reward as fame? The same parts and application which have made me a poet, might have raised me to any honours of the gown; which are often given to men of as little learning and less honesty than myself. No government has ever been, or ever can be, wherein timeservers and blockheads will not be uppermost. The persons are only changed, but the same jugglings in state, the same hypocrisy in religion, the same self-interest and mismanagement will remain for ever. Blood and money will be lavished in all ages, only for the preferment of new faces with old consciences. There is too

Her mother was Mary Davies, who was an actress in the Duke of York's Company in 1664, and according to Downes, the prompter, had been bred up in Lady D'Avenant's house. She is said to have gained the King's heart by singing several wild mad songs, in D'Avenant's RIVALS, 1668, altered from Fletcher's Two NOBLE KINSMEN, particularly that beginning with the wordsMy lodging is on the cold ground," &c. Lord Radcliffe, on the death of his father in 1696-7, became Earl of Derwentwater, and died April 29th, 1705.

X

often a jaundice in the eyes of great men; they
see not those whom they raise in the same co-
lours with other men: all whom they affect
look golden to them, when the gilding is only
in their own distempered sight.' These con-
siderations have given me a kind of contempt
for those who have risen by unworthy ways. I
am not ashamed to be little, when I see them so
infamously great. Neither do I know why the
name of Poet should be dishonourable to me, if I
am truly one, as I hope I am; for I will never do
any thing that shall dishonour it. The notions of
morality are known to all men.
None can pre-

my

tend ignorance of those ideas which are inborn in
mankind; and if I see one thing, and practise the
contrary, I must be disingenuous not to acknow-
ledge a clear truth, and base to act against the light
of my own conscience. For the reputation of
honesty, no man can question it, who has any of
his own; for that of my poetry, it shall either
stand by its own merit, or fall for want of it. Ill
writers are usually the sharpest censors; for they
(as the best poet and the best patron said,)

When in the full perfection of decay,
Turn vinegar, and come again in play. 8

So Pope, in his ESSAY ON CRITICISM :

"All seems infected, that the infected spy,
"As all looks yellow to the jaundiced eye."

These lines are quoted from Lord Dorset's Verses addressed" to Mr. Edward Howard, on his incomparable incomprehensible Poem, called THE BRITISH PRINCES;"

Thus the corruption of a poet is the generation of a critick, I mean of a critick in the general ac

formerly they were quite They were defenders of

ceptation of this age; for another species of men. poets, and commentators on their works ;-to illustrate obscure beauties; to place some passages in a better light; to redeem others from malicious interpretations; to help out an author's modesty, who is not ostentatious of his wit; and, in short, to shield him from the ill-nature of those fellows, who were then called Zoili and Momi, and now take upon themselves the venerable name of censors. But neither Zoilus, nor he who endeavoured to defame Virgil, were ever adopted into the name of criticks by the ancients. What their reputation was then, we know; and their successors in this age deserve no better. Are our auxiliary forces turned our enemies? Are they, who at best are but wits of the second order, and whose only credit amongst readers is what they obtained by being subservient to the fame of writers, are these become rebels, of slaves; and usurpers, of subjects? Or, to speak in the most honourable terms of them, are they, from our seconds, become principals against us? Does the ivy undermine the oak, which supports its weakness? What labour would it cost them to put in a better line than the worst

46

66

66

Wit, like tierce-claret, when it begins to pall,
Neglected lies, and 's of no use at all;

But, in its full perfection of decay,

"Turns vinegar, and comes again in play."

of those which they expunge in a true poet? Petronius, the greatest wit perhaps of all the Romans, yet when his envy prevailed upon his judgment to fall on Lucan, he fell himself in his attempt. He performed worse in his Essay of the Civil War, than the author of PHARSALIA; and avoiding his errours, has made greater of his own. Julius Scaliger would needs turn down Homer, and abdicate him, after the possession of three thousand years: has he succeeded in his attempt? He has indeed shewn us some of those imperfections in him, which are incident to human kind; but who had not rather be that Homer, than this Scaliger? You see the same hypercritick, when he endeavours to mend the beginning of Claudian, (a faulty poet, and living in a barbarous age,) yet how short he comes of him, and substitutes such verses of his own, as deserve the ferula. What a censure has he made of Lucan, that "he rather seems to bark than sing?" Would any but a dog have made so snarling a comparison? One would have thought he had learned Latin as late as they tell us he did Greek." Yet he came off with a pace tua,-by your good leave, Lucan; he called him not by those outrageous names of fool, booby, and blockhead: he

9 Julius Scaliger was above thirty years old before he learned Greek, and he never attained any considerable knowledge of that language. He was forty-seven years old, when his first work was published.