and you.  In all our farms severe distraction reigns, No ancient owner there in peace remains.  Sick, I, with much ado, my goats can drive, This Tityrus, I scarce can lead alive; On the bare stones, among yon hazels past, Just now, alas! her hopeful twins she cast.  Yet had not all on’s dull and senseless been, We’d long agon this coming stroke foreseen.  Oft did the blasted oaks our fate unfold, And boding choughs from hollow trees foretold.  But say, good Tityrus! tell me who’s the God, Who peace, so lost to us, on you bestow’d?”

Some critics there were, though but few, who joined Milbourne in his abortive attempt to degrade our poet’s translation.  Oldmixon, celebrated for his share in the games of the Dunciad,[20] and Samuel Parker,[21] a yet more obscure name, have informed us of this, by volunteering in Dryden’s defence.  But Dryden needed not their assistance.  The real excellencies of his version were before the public, and it was rather to clear himself from the malignant charges against his moral principles, which Melbourne had mingled with his criticism, than for any other purpose, that the poet deemed his antagonist worthy of the following animadversion:—­“Milbourne, who is in orders, pretends amongst the rest this quarrel to me, that I have fallen foul on priesthood:  if I have, I am only to ask pardon of good priests, and am afraid his part of the reparation will come to little.  Let him be satisfied, that he shall not he able to force himself upon me for an adversary.  I contemn him too much to enter into competition with him.  His own translations of Virgil have answered his criticisms on mine.  If (as they say he has declared in print) he prefers the version of Ogilby to mine, the world has made him the same compliment; for it is agreed on all hands, that he writes even below Ogilby.  That, you will say, is not easily to be done; but what cannot Milbourne bring about?  I am satisfied, however, that while he and I live together, I shall not be thought the worst poet of the age.  It looks as if I had desired him underhand to write so ill against me; but upon my honest word, I have not bribed him to do me this service, and am wholly guiltless of his pamphlet.  It is true, I should be glad if I could persuade him to continue his good offices, and write such another critique on anything of mine; for I find, by experience, he has a great stroke with the reader, when he condemns any of my poems, to make the world have a better opinion of them.  He has taken some pains with my poetry; but nobody will be persuaded to take the same with his.  If I had taken to the Church (as he affirms, but which was never in my thoughts), I should have had more sense, if not more grace, than to have turned myself out of my benefice by writing libels on my parishioners.  But his account of my manners, and my principles, are of a piece with his cavils and his poetry; and so I have done with him for ever."[22]