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A LETTER

ΤΟ

A NOBLE LORD,

ON OCCASION OF SOME LIBELS WRITTEN AND PROPAGATED AT COURT, IN THE YEAR 1732-3.

MY LORD,

b

Nov. 30, 1733.

YOUR Lordship's epistle has been published some

days, but I had not the pleasure and pain of feeing it till yesterday: Pain, to think your Lordfhip fhould attack me at all; Pleasure, to find that

:

you

a This Letter (which was first printed in the Year 1733) bears the fame place in our Author's prose that the Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot does in his poetry. They are both Apologetical, repelling the libellous flanders on his Reputation with this difference, that the Epiftle to Dr. Arbuthnot, his friend, was chiefly directed against Grub-ftreet Writers, and this letter to the Noble. Lord, his enemy, against Court Scriblers. For the reft, they are both Mafter-pieces in their kinds; That in verse, more grave, moral, and fublime; This in profe, more lively, critical, and pointed; but equally conducive to what he had most at heart, the vindication of his moral Character: the only thing he thought worth his care in literary altercations; and the first thing he would expect from the good offices of a surviving Friend.

W.

b Intitled, An Epiftle to a Doctor of Divinity from a Nobleman at Hampton Court, Aug. 28, 1733, and printed the November following for J. Roberts Fol.

W.

you can attack me fo weakly. As I want not the humility, to think myself in every way but one your inferior, it seems but reasonable that I should take the only method either of self-defence or retaliation, that is left me against a person of your quality and power. And as by your choice of this weapon, your pen, you generously (and modeftly too, no doubt) meant to put yourself upon a level with me; I will as foon believe that your Lordship would give a wound to a man unarmed, as that you would deny me the use of it in my own defence.

in

I prefume you will allow me to take the fame liberty

my anfwer to fo candid, polite, and ingenious a Nobleman, which your Lordship took in yours, to fo grave, religious, and refpectable a clergyman: As you answered his Latin in English, permit me to anfwer your Verse in Profe. And though your Lordship's reasons for not writing in Latin might be ftronger than mine for not writing in Verfe, yet I may plead Two good ones, for this conduct: the one that I want the talent of fpinning a thousand lines in a Day, (which, I think, is as much Time as this fubject deferves,) and the other, that I take your Lordfhip's Verse to be as much Profe as this letter. But no doubt it was your choice, in writing to a friend, to renounce all the pomp of Poetry, and give us this excellent model of the familiar.

Dr. S.

d And Pope with juftice of fuch lines may fay,

His Lordship fpins a thousand in a day.

When

Epift. p. 6.

When I confider the great difference betwixt the rank your Lordship holds in the World, and the rank which your writings are like to hold in the learned world, I prefume that distinction of ftyle is but neceffary, which you will fee obferved through this letter. When I fpeak of you, my Lord, it will be with all the deference due to the inequality which Fortune has made between you and myself: but when I speak of your writings, my Lord, I must, I can do nothing but trifle.

I fhould be obliged indeed to leffen this Respect, if all the Nobility (and efpecially the elder brothers) are but fo many hereditary fools, if the privilege of Lords be to want brains, if noblemen can hardly write or read, if all their bufinefs is but to drefs and vote, and all their employment in court, to tell lies, flatter in public, flander in private, be falfe to each other, and follow nothing but felf-intereft. Blefs

That to good blood by old prefcriptive rules,
Gives right hereditary to be Fools.

f Nor wonder that my Brain no more affords,
But recollect the privilege of Lords.

And when you see me fairly write my name;
For England's fake wish all could do the fame.
Whilft all our bufinefs is to drefs and vote.

me,

Epift. p. 6.

i Courts are only larger families,
The growth of each, few truths, and many lies:
in private fatyrize, in public flatter.

Few to each other, all to one point true;
Which one I shan't, nor need explain. Adieu.

P. ult.

me, my Lord, what an account is this you give of them? and what would have been faid of me, had I immolated, in this manner, the whole body of the Nobility, at the ftall of a well-fed Prebendary?

Were it the mere Excefs of your Lordship's Wit, that carried you thus triumphantly over all the bounds of decency, I might confider your Lordship on your Pegafus, as a fprightly hunter on a mettled horfe; and while you were trampling down all our works, patiently fuffer the injury, in pure admiration of the Noble Sport. But should the cafe be quite otherwise, fhould your Lordship be only like a Boy that is run away with; and run away with by a Very Foal; really common charity, as well as refpect for a noble family, would oblige me to stop your career, and to help you down from this Pegafus.

Surely the little praise of a Writer should be a thing below your ambition: You, who are no fooner born, but in the lap of the Graces; no fooner at fchool, but in the arms of the Mufes; no fooner in the World, but you practifed all the fkill of it; no fooner in the Court, but you poffeffed all the art of it! Unrival'd as you are, in making a figure, and in making a fpeech, methinks, my Lord, you may well give up the poor talent of turning a Diftich. And why this fondness for Poetry? Profe admits of the two excellencies you most admire, Diction and Fiction: It admits of the talents you chiefly possess, a most fertile invention, and most florid expreffion; it is with prose,

nay

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