RIGHT HONOURABLE LORD RADCLIFFE. My LORD, TH HESE Mifcellany Poems are by many titles yours. The first they claim from your acceptance of my promise to present them to you, before fome of them were yet in being. The reft are derived from your own merit, the exactness of your judgment in poetry, and the candour of your nature; eafy to forgive fome trivial faults when they come accompanied with countervailing beauties. But, after all, though thefe are your equitable claims to a dedication from other Poets, yet I must acknowledge a bribe in the cafe, which is your particular liking of my verses. It is a vanity common to all writers, to over-value their own productions; and it is better for me to own this failing in myself, than the world to do it for me. For what other reason have I spent my life in fo unprofitable a ftudy? why am I grown old, in feeking fo barren a reward as fame? The fame parts and application, which have made me a poet, might have raised me to any honours of the gown, which are often given to men of as little learning and lefs honefty than myself. No government has ever been, or ever can be, wherein time-fervers and blockheads will not be uppermoft. The perfons are only changed, but the fame jugglings in ftate, the fame hypocrify in religion, the fame felf-intereft, and mifmanagement, will remain for ever. Blood and money * Prefixed to the Third Volume of Dryden's Miscellany Poems, printed in 1693. will be lavished in all ages, only for the preferment of new faces, with old confciences. There is too often a jaundice in the eyes of great men; they fee not those whom they raise in the fame colours with other men. All whom they affect, look golden to them; when the gilding is only in their own diftempered fight. Thefe confiderations have given me a kind of contempt for those who have rifen by unworthy ways. I am not afhamed to be little, when I see them fo infamously great; neither do I know why the name of poet fhould be difhonourable to me if I am truly one, as I hope I am; for I will never do any thing that fhall dishonour it. The notions of morarality are known to all men: none can pretend ignorance of thofe ideas which are in-born in mankind: and if I fee one thing, and practife the contrary, I must be difingenuous, not to acknowledge a clear truth, and bafe to act against the light of my own confcience. For the reputation of my honefty, no man can queftion it, who has any of his own: for that of my poetry, it fhall either ftand by its own merit; or fall for want of it. Ill writers are ufually the fharpeft cenfors: for they (as the best poet and the beft patron faid) when in the full perfection of decay, turn vinegar, and come again in play. Thus the corruption of a poet is the generation of a critick: I mean of a critick in the general acceptation of this age: for formerly they were quite another fpecies of men. They were defenders of poets, and commentators on their works; to illuftrate obfcure beauties; to place fome paffages in a better light; to redeem others from malicious interpretations; to help out an author's modefty, who is not oftentatious of his wit; and, in fhort, to fhield him from the ill-nature of thofe fellows, who were then called Zoili and Momi, and now take upon themselves the venerable name of cenfors. But neither Zoilus, nor he who endeavoured to defame Virgil, were ever adopted into the name of criticks by the ancients: what their reputation was then, we know; and their fucceffors in this age de ferve no better. Are our auxiliary forces turned our enemies? are they, who at best, are but wits of the fecond order, and whofe only credit amongst readers, is what they obtained by being fubfervient to the fame of writers, are thefe become rebels of flaves, and ufurpers of fubjects; or, to fpeak in the most honourable terms of them, are they from our feconds become principals againft us? does the ivy undermine the oak, which fupports its weakness? what labour would it coft them to put in a better line, than the worst of those which they expunge in a true poet? Petronius, the greatest wit perhaps of all the Romans, yet when his envy prevailed upon his judgment to fall on Lucan, he fell himself in his attempt: he performed worse in his Effay of the Civil War, than the author of the Pharfalia: and avoiding his errors, has made greater of his own. Julius Scaliger would needs turn down Homer, and abdicate him after the poffeffion of three thousand years: has he fucceeded in his attempt? he has indeed fhown us fome of thofe imperfections in him, which are incident to human kind: but who had not rather be that Homer than this Scaliger? You fee the fame hypercritick, when he endeavours to mend the beginning of Claudian (a faulty poet and living in a barbarous age) yet how fhort he comes of him, and fubftitutes fuch verses of his own as deferve the ferula. What a cenfure has he made of Lucan, that he rather feems to bark than fing? would any but a dog, have made fo fnarling a comparison? one would have thought he had learned Latin, as late as they tell us he did Greek. Yet he came off, with a pace tud, by your good leave, Lucan; he called him not by thofe outrageous names, of fool, booby, and blockhead: he had fomewhat more of good manners, than his fucceffors, as he had much more knowledge. We have two forts of thofe gentlemen, in our nation: fome of them proceeding with a feeming moderation and pretence of respect, to the dramatick writers of the laft age, only fcorn and vilify the prefent poets, to fet up their prede 3 ceffors. ceffors. But this is only in appearance; for their real defign is nothing less than to do honour to any man, befides themselves. Horace took notice of fach men in his age: Non ingeniis favet ille, fepultis; noftra fed impugnat; nos noftraque lividus odit. It is not with an ultimate intention to pay reverence to the manes of Shakespear, Fletcher, and Ben Johnson, that they commend their writings, but to throw dirt on the writers of this age: their declaration is one thing, and their practice is another. By a feeming veneration to our fathers, they would thruft out us their lawful iffue, and govern us themselves, under a fpecious pretence of reformation. If they could compass their intent, what would wit and learning get by fuch a change? if we are bad poets, they are worse; and when any of their woeful pieces come abroad, the difference is fo great betwixt them and good writers, that there need no criticisms on our part to decide it. When they defcribe the writers of this age, they draw fuch monftrous figures of them, as refemble none of us: our pretended pictures are so unlike, that it is evident we never fat to them: they are all grotefque; the products of their wild imaginations, things out of nature, fo far from being copied from us, that they refemble nothing that ever was, or ever can be. But there is another fort of infects, more venomous than the former. Those who manifeftly aim at the deftruction of our poetical church and ftate; who allow nothing to their country-men, either of this or of the former age. These attack the living by raking up the afhes of the dead; well knowing that if they can fubvert their original title to the ftage, we who claim under them muft fall of courfe. Peace be to the venerable fhades of Shakespear, and Ben Johnson: none of the living will prefume to have any competition with them: as they were our predeceffors, fo they were our mafters. We trail our plays under them, but (as at the funerals of a Turkish emperor) our enfigns are furled or dragged upon the ground, in honour to the dead; fo we may lawfully advance our own, |