[16] “I confess to have been somewhat liberal in the business of titles, having observed the humour of multiplying them, to bear great vogue among certain writers, whom I exceedingly reverence.  And indeed it seems not unreasonable that books, the children of the brain, should have the honour to be christened with variety of names, as well as other infants of quality.  Our famous Dryden has ventured to proceed a point farther, endeavouring to introduce also a multiplicity of godfathers; which is an improvement of much more advantage, upon a very obvious account.  It is a pity this admirable invention has not been better cultivated, so as to grow by this time into general imitation, when such an authority serves it for a precedent.  Nor have my endeavours been wanting to second so useful an example:  but, it seems, there is an unhappy expense usually annexed to the calling of a godfather, which was clearly out of my head, as it is very reasonable to believe.  Where the pinch lay, I cannot certainly affirm; but, having employed a world of thoughts and pains to split my treatise into forty sections, and having entreated forty lords of my acquaintance, that they would do me the honour to stand, they all made it a matter of conscience, and sent me their excuses.”

[17] Besides the notes on Virgil, he wrote many single sermons, and a metrical version of the psalms, and died in 1720.

[18] He is described as a rake in “The Pacificator,” a poem bought by Mr. Luttrell, 15th Feb. 1699-1700, which gives an account of a supposed battle between the men of wit and men of sense, as the poet calls them: 

  “M——­n, a renegade from wit, came on,
  And made a false attack, and next to none;
  The hypocrite, in sense, could not conceal
  What pride, and want of brains, obliged him to reveal. 
  In him, the critic’s ruined by the poet,
  And Virgil gives his testimony to it. 
  The troops of wit were so enraged to see
  This priest invade his own fraternity,
  They sent a party out, by silence led,
  And, without answer, shot the turn-coat dead. 
  The priest, the rake, the wit, strove all in vain,
  For there, alas! he lies among the slain.
  Memento mori; see the consequence,
  When rakes and wits set up for men of sense.”

[19] This, Mr. Malone has proved by the following extract from Motteux’s “Gentleman’s Journal.”  “That best of poets (says Motteux) having so long continued a stranger to tolerable English, Mr. Milbourne pitied his hard fate; and seeing that several great men had undertaken some episodes of his Aeneis, without any design of Englishing the whole, he gave us the first book of it some years ago, with a design to go through the poem.  It was the misfortune of that first attempt to appear just about the time of the late Revolution, when few had leisure to mind such books; yet, though by reason of his absence, it was printed with a world of faults, those that are sufficient judges have done it the justice to esteem it a very successful attempt, and cannot but wish that he would complete the entire translation.”—­Gent.  Journ. for August 1692.