a Lucretius, before Virgil and Horace; even after Chaucer there was a Spenser, a Harrington, a Fairfax, before Waller and Denham were in being:  and our numbers were in their nonage till these last appear’d.  I need say little of his parentage, life, and fortunes;[17] they are to be found at large in all the editions of his works.  He was employ’d abroad and favor’d by Edward the Third, Richard the Second, and Henry the Fourth, and was poet, as I suppose, to all three of them.  In Richard’s time, I doubt, he was a little dipp’d in the rebellion of the commons, and being brother-in-law to John of Ghant, it was no wonder if he follow’d the fortunes of that family, and was well with Henry the Fourth when he had depos’d his predecessor.  Neither is it to be admir’d,[18] that Henry, who was a wise as well as a valiant prince, who claim’d by succession, and was sensible that his title was not sound, but was rightfully in Mortimer, who had married the heir of York; it was not to be admir’d, I say, if that great politician should be pleas’d to have the greatest wit of those times in his interests, and to be the trumpet of his praises.  Augustus had given him the example, by the advice of Maecenas, who recommended Virgil and Horace to him; whose praises help’d to make him popular while he was alive, and after his death have made him precious to posterity.  As for the religion of our poet, he seems to have some little bias towards the opinions of Wycliffe, after John of Ghant his patron; somewhat of which appears in the tale of Piers Plowman.[19] Yet I cannot blame him for inveighing so sharply against the vices of the clergy in his age; their pride, their ambition, their pomp, their avarice, their worldly interest, deserv’d the lashes which he gave them, both in that and in most of his Canterbury Tales:  neither has his contemporary Boccace spar’d them.  Yet both those poets liv’d in much esteem with good and holy men in orders; for the scandal which is given by particular priests reflects not on the sacred function.  Chaucer’s Monk, his Canon, and his Friar, took not from the character of his Good Parson.  A satirical poet is the check of the laymen on bad priests.  We are only to take care that we involve not the innocent with the guilty in the same condemnation.  The good cannot be too much honor’d, nor the bad too coarsely us’d:  for the corruption of the best becomes the worst.  When a clergyman is whipp’d, his gown is first taken off, by which the dignity of his order is secur’d:  if he be wrongfully accus’d, he has his action of slander; and ’tis at the poet’s peril if he transgress the law.  But they will tell us that all kind of satire, tho’ never so well deserv’d by particular priests, yet brings the whole order into contempt.  Is then the peerage of England anything dishonored, when a peer suffers for his treason?  If he be libel’d or any way defam’d, he has his scandalum magnatum[20] to punish the offender.  They who use this kind