For all cannot invent who can translate,
No more than those who clothe us, can create.

Here your Lordship feems in labour for a meaningIs it that you would have Translations, Originals? for 'tis the common opinion, that the business of a Tranflator is to translate, and not to invent, and of a Taylor to Clothe, and not to create. But why should you, my Lord, of all mankind, abuse a Taylor? not to fay blafpheme him; if he can (as fome think) at least go halves with God Almighty in the formation of a Beau Might not Doctor Sherwin rebuke you for this, and bid you Remember your Creator in the days of your Touth?

From a Taylor, your Lordship proceeds (by a beautiful gradation) to a Silkman.

Thus P-pe we find
The Gaudy Hinchcliff of a beauteous mind.

Here too is fome ambiguity. Does your Lordship ufe Hinchcliff as a proper name? or, as the Ladies fay, a Hinchcliff or a Colmar, for a Silk or a Fan? I will venture to affirm, no Critic can have a perfect taste of your Lordship's works who does not understand both your Male Phrafe and your Female Phrafe.

Your Lordship, to finish your Climax, advances up to a Hatter; a Mechanic, whofe Employment, you inform us, is not (as was generally imagined) to cover

people's heads, but to dress their brains*. A most useful Mechanic indeed! I can't help wifhing to have been one, for fome people's fake. But this too may be only another Lady-Phrafe: Your Lordship and the Ladies may take a Head-drefs for a Head, and underftand, that to adorn the Head is the fame thing as to drefs the Brains.

Upon the whole, I may thank your Lordship for this high Panegyric: For if I have but dress'd up Hamer, as your Taylor, Silkman, and Hatter have equipp'd your Lordship, I must be own'd to have drefs'd him marvelously indeed, and no wonder if he is admir'd by the Ladies +

After all, my Lord, I really wish you would learn your Grammar. What if you put yourself a while under the Tuition of your Friend W- -m? May not I with all respect say to you, what was said to another Noble Poet by Mr Cowley, Pray Mr Howard ‡, if you did read your Grammar, what harm would it do you? You yourself wish all Lords would learn to write || ; tho' I don't fee of what use it could be, if their whole business is to give their Votes *: It could only be ferviceable in figning their Protefts. Yet furely this fmall

For this Mechanic's, like the Hatter's pains,

Are but for dreffing other people's brains.

by Girls admir'd, p. 6.

The Honourable Mr Edward Howard, celebrated for his poe

try.

And when you fee me fairly write my name;

For England's fake with all Lords did the fame.

* All our bus'nefs is to drefs and vote. p. 4.

1

portion of learning might be indulged to your Lordship, without any Breach of that Privilege *you fo generoufly affert to all those of your rank, or too great an Infringement of that Right + which you claim as Hereditary, and for which, no doubt, your noble Father will thank you. Surely, my Lord, no man was ever fo bent upon depreciating himself!

All your Readers have observed the following Lines:

How oft we hear fome Witling pert and dull,
By fashion Coxcomb, and by nature Fool,
With hackney Maxims, in dogmatic strain,
Scoffing Religion and the Marriage chain?
Then from his Common place-book he repeats,
The Lawyers all are rogues, and Parfons cheats,
That Vice and Virtue's nothing but a jest,
And all Morality Deceit well dreft:
That Life itself is like a wrangling game, &c.

The whole Town and Court (my good Lord) have heard this Witling; who is fo much every body's acquaintance but his own, that I'll engage they all name the fame Parfon. But to hear you fay, that this is only of whipt Cream a frothy Store, is a fufficient proof, that never mortal was endued with so humble an opinion both of himself and his own Wit, as your Lordship: For, I do affure you, thefe are by much the best Verses in your whole Poem.

The want of brains.

ibid.

To be fools. ibid.

How unhappy is it for me, that a Person of your Lordhip's Modefty and Virtue, who manifefts fo tender a regard to Religion, Matrimony, and Morality; who, tho' an Ornament to the Court, cultivate an exemplary Correspondence with the Clergy; nay, who disdain not charitably to converfe with, and even affift, fome of the very worst of Writers (so far as to cast a few Conceits, or drop a few Antithefes even among the Dear Joys of the Courant) that you, I fay, fhould look upon Me alone as reprobate and unamendable! Reflect what I was, and what I am. I am even Annihilated by your Anger: For in these Verses you have robbed me of all power to think*, and, in your others, of the very name of a Man! Nay, to fhew that this is wholly your own doing, you have told us that before I wrote my last Epistles (that is, before I unluckily mention'd Fanny and Adonis, whom, I proteft, I knew not to be your Lordship's Relations) I might have lived and died in glory †

What would I not do to be well with your Lordfhip? Tho', you obferve, I am a mere Imitator of Homer, Horace, Boileau, Garth, &c. (which I have the less cause to be asham'd of, fince they were Imitators of one another) yet what if I should folemnly engage never to imitate your Lordship? May it not be one step towards an accommodation, that while you remark my Ignorance in Greek, you are fo good as to fay, you have forgot your own? What if I fhould confess I

P-e, who ne'er cou'd think. p. 7.

In glory then he might have liv'd and dy'd. ibid.

tranflated from D'Acier? That furely could not but oblige your Lordship, who are known to prefer French to all the learned Languages. But allowing that in the space of twelve years acquaintance with Homer, I might unhappily contract as much Greek, as your Lordship did in Two at the University, why may I not forget it again, as happily?

Till fuch a reconciliation take effect, I have but one thing to intreat of your Lordship. It is, that you will not decide of my Principles on the same grounds as you have done of my Learning: Nor give the fame account of my Want of Grace, after you have lost all acquaintance with my Person, as you do of my Want of Greek, after you have confeffedly lost all acquaintance with the Language. You are too generous, my Lord, to follow the Gentlemen of the Dunciad quite fo far, as to feek my utter Perdition; as Nero once did Lucan's, merely for prefuming to be a Poet, while one of so much greater quality was a Writer. I therefore make this humble request to your Lordship, that the next time you please to write of me, Speak of me, or even whisper of me*, you will recollect it is full eight Years, fince I had the honour of any converfation or correspondence with your Lordship, except just half an hour in a Lady's Lodgings at Court, and then I had the happiness of her being prefent all the time. It would therefore be difficult even for your Lordship's

*The whisper, that, to greatness still too near, Perhaps yet vibrates on his Sov'reign's ear,

Epift. to Dr Arbuthnot.