As for the City Bard, or Knight Phyfician, I hear his quarrel to me is, that I was the author of Abfalom and Achitophel, which he thinks is a little hard on his fanatic patrons in London. But I will deal the more civilly with his two poems, because nothing ill is to be fpoken of the dead: and therefore peace be to the Manes of his Arthurs. I will only fay, that it was not for this noble knight that I drew the plan of an Epic poem on king Arthur, in my preface to the translation of Juvenal. The guardian angels of kingdoms were machines too ponderous for him to manage; and therefore he rejected them, as Dares did the whirlbats of Eryx, when they were thrown before him by Entellus. Yet from that preface he plainly took his hint: for he began immediately upon the story; though he had the baseness not to acknowledge his benefactor; but instead of it, to traduce me in a libel. I fhall fay the lefs of Mr Collier, because in many things he has taxed me justly; and I have pleaded guilty to all thoughts and expreffions of mine, which can be truly argued of obscenity, profaneness, or immorality; and retract them. If he be my enemy, let him triumph; if he be my friend, as I have given him no perfonal occafion to be otherwise, he will be glad of my repentance. It becomes me not to draw my pen in the defence of a bad cause, when I have so often drawn it for a good one. Yet it were not difficult to prove, that in many places he has perverted my meaning by his gloffes; and interpreted my words into blafphemy and baudry, baudry, of which they were not guilty; befides that he is too much given to horfe-play in his raillery; and comes to battle like a dictator from the plough. I will not fay, The zeal of God's houfe has eaten him up; but I am fure it has devoured some part of his goodmanners and civility. It might also be doubted whether it were altogether zeal, which prompted him to this rough manner of proceeding; perhaps it became not one of his function to rake into the rubbish of ancient and modern plays; a divine might have employed his pains to better purpose, than in the naftiness of Plautus and Ariftophanes; whofe examples, as they excufe not me, fo it might be poffibly fuppofed, that he read them not without fome pleasure. They who have written commentaries on those poets, or on Horace, Juvenal, and Martial, have explained fome vices, which without their interpretation had been unknown to modern times. Neither has he judged impartially betwixt the former age and us. There is more baudry in one Play of Fletcher's, called The Custom of the Country, than in all ours together. Yet this has been often acted on the ftage in my remembrance. Are the times fo much more reformed now, than they were five and twenty years ago? If they are, I congratulate the amendment of our morals. But I am not to prejudice the caufe of my fellow-poets, though I abandon my own defence: they have some of them answered for themfelves, and neither they nor I can think Mr. Collier fo formidable an enemy, that we should shun him. He has loft ground at the latter end of of the day, by pursuing his point too far, like the prince of Conde at the battle of Senneph: from immoral plays, to no plays; "ab abufu ad ufum, non valet "confequentia." But being a party, I am not to erect myself into a judge. As for the rest of those who have written against me, they are fuch fcoundrels, that they deferve not the leaft notice to be taken of them. Blackmore and Milbourn are only distinguished from the crowd, by being remembered to their infamy. "Demetri, Teque Tigelli Difcipulorum inter jubeo plorare cathedras." TALES |