man was ambitious of that grinning honour; for if he heard the malicious trumpeter proclaiming his name before his betters, he knew there was but one way with him.  Mecaenas took another course, and we know he was more than a great man, for he was witty too:  But finding himself far gone in poetry, which Seneca assures us was not his talent, he thought it his best way to be well with Virgil and with Horace; that at least he might be a poet at the second hand; and we see how happily it has succeeded with him; for his own bad poetry is forgotten, and their panegyricks of him still remain.  But they who should be our patrons, are for no such expensive ways to fame; they have much of the poetry of Mecaenas, but little of his liberality.  They are for persecuting Horace and Virgil, in the persons of their successors; for such is every man, who has any part of their soul and fire, though in a less degree.  Some of their little zanies yet go farther; for they are persecutors even of Horace himself; as far as they are able, by their ignorant and vile imitations of him; by making an unjust use of his authority and turning his artillery against his friends.  But how would he disdain to be copied by such hands!  I dare answer for him, he would be more uneasy in their company, than he was with Crispinus, their forefather, in the Holy Way; and would no more have allowed them a place amongst the critics, than he would Demetrius the mimic, and Tigellius the buffoon;

  —­Demetri, teque, Tigelli,
  Discipulorum inter jubeo plorare cathedras.

With what scorn would he look down on such miserable translators, who make doggrel of his Latin, mistake his meaning, mis-apply his censures, and often contradict their own?  He is fixed as a landmark to set out the bounds of poetry: 

  —­Saxum antiquum, ingens,—­
  Limes agro positus, litem ut discerneret arvis.

But other arms than theirs, and other sinews are required, to raise the weight of such an author; and when they would toss him against their enemies,

  Genua labant, gelidus concrevit frigore sanguis. 
  Tum lapis ipse, viri vacuum per inane volutus,
  Nec spatium evasit totum, nec pertulit ictum[5].

For my part, I would wish no other revenge, either for myself, or the rest of the poets, from this rhyming judge of the twelve-penny gallery, this legitimate son of Sternhold, than that he would subscribe his name to his censure, or (not to tax him beyond his learning) set his mark:  For, should he own himself publicly, and come from behind the lion’s skin, they, whom he condemns, would be thankful to him, they, whom he praises, would chuse to be condemned; and the magistrates, whom he has elected, would modestly withdraw from their employment, to avoid the scandal of his nomination[6].  The sharpness of his satire, next to himself, falls most heavily on his friends, and they ought never to forgive him for commending them perpetually the wrong way, and sometimes by contraries.  If he have a friend, whose hastiness in writing is his greatest fault, Horace would have taught him to have minced the matter, and to have called it readiness of thought, and a flowing fancy; for friendship will allow a man to christen an imperfection by the name of some neighbour virtue;