Then dares the poring critic snarl?  And dare The[21a] puny brats of Momus threaten war?  And can’t the proud perverse Arachne’s fate Deter the[21a] mongrels e’er it prove too late?  In vain, alas! we warn the[21a] hardened brood; In vain expect they’ll ever come to good.  No:  they’d conceive more venom if they could.  But let each[21a] viper at his peril bite, While you defy the most ingenious spite.  So Parian columns, raised with costly care, [21a] Vile snails and worms may daub, yet not impair, While the tough titles, and obdurate rhyme, Fatigue the busy grinders of old Time.  Not but your Maro justly may complain, Since your translation ends his ancient reign, And but by your officious muse outvied, That vast immortal name had never died.

“[21a] I desire these appellations may not seem to affect the parties concerned, any otherwise than as to their character of critics.”

[22] Preface to the Fables, vol. xi.

[23] See several extracts from these poems in the Appendix, vol. xviii., which I have thrown together to show how much Dryden was considered as sovereign among the poets of the time.

[24] This I learn from Honori Sacellum, a Funeral Poem, to the Memory of William, Duke of Devonshire, 1707: 

  “’Twas so, when the destroyer’s dreadful dart
  Once pierced through ours, to fair Maria’s heart. 
  From his state-helm then some short hours he stole,
  T’indulge his melting eyes, and bleeding soul: 
  Whilst his bent knees, to those remains divine,
  Paid their last offering to that royal shrine.”

On which lines occurs this explanatory note:—­“An Ode, composed by His Grace, on the death of the late Queen Mary, justly adjudged by the ingenious Mr. Dryden to have exceeded all that had been written on that occasion.”

[25] Dr. Birch refers to the authority of Richard Graham, junior; but no such letter has been recovered.

[26] The authority, however respectable, has a very long chain of links.  Warton heard it from A, who heard it from B, who heard it from Pope, who heard it from Bolingbroke.—­Ed.

[27] This discovery was made by the researches of Mr. Malone.  Dr. Burney describes Clarke as excelling in the tender and plaintive, to which he was prompted by a temperament of natural melancholy.  In the agonies which arose from an unfortunate attachment, he committed suicide in July 1707.  See a full account of the catastrophe in Malone’s “Life of Dryden,” p. 299.

[28] It was first performed on February 19, 1735-6, at opera prices.  “The public expectations and the effects of this representation (says Dr. Burney) seem to have been correspondent, for the next day we are told in the public papers [London Daily Post, and General Advertiser, Feb. 20,] that ’there never was, upon the like occasion, so numerous and splendid an audience at any theatre in London, there being at least thirteen hundred persons present; and it is judged that the receipts of the house could not amount to less than L450.  It met with general applause, though attended with the inconvenience of having the performers placed at too great a distance from the audience, which we hear will be rectified the next time of performance.”—­Hist. of Music, iv. 391.