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This is admirably pathetical, and fhews very well the viciffitude of fublunary things. The reft goes on to a prodigious height; and a man in Greenland could hardly have made a more pathetick and terrible complaint. Is it not furprifing that the fubject should be fo mean, and the verse so pompous? that the leaft things in his poetry, as in a microfcope, fhould grow great and formidable to the eye? efpecially confidering that, not understanding French, he had no model for his ftile; that he fhould have no writer to imitate, and himself be inimitable? that he should do all this before he was twenty? at an age, which is ufually pleased with a glare of falfe thoughts, little turns,

and

and unnatural fuftian; at an age, at which Cowley, Dryden, and I had almost faid Virgil, were inconfiderable. So foon was his imagination at its full ftrength, his judgement ripe, and his humour complete.

This poem was written for his own diverfion, without any defign of publication. It was communicated but to me; but foon fpread, and fell into the hands of pirates. It was put out, vilely mangled, by Ben. Bragge; and impudently faid to be corrected by the author. This grievance is now grown more epidemical; and no man now has a right to his own thoughts, or a title to his own writings. Xenophon anfwered the Perfian, who demanded his arms, "We ❝ have

d

have nothing now left but our arms "and our valour; if we furrender the

"one, how fhall we make use of the other?" Poets have nothing but

their wits and their writings; and if they are plundered of the latter, I don't fee what good the former can do them. To pirate, and publickly own it, to prefix their names to the works they steal, to own and avow the theft, I believe, was never yet heard of but in England. It will found oddly to pofterity, that, in a polite nation, in an enlightened age, under the direction of the most wise, most learned, and moft generous encouragers of knowledge in the world, the property of a mechanick fhould be better secured than that of a fcholar; that the pooreft

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poorest manual operations fhould be more valued than the nobleft products of the brain; that it fhould be felony to rob a cobler of a pair of fhoes, and no crime to deprive the best author of his whole fubfiftence; that nothing fhould make a man a fure title to his own writings but the ftupidity of them: that the works of Dryden fhould meet with lefs encouragement than those of his own Flecnoe, or Blackmore; that Tillotfon and St. George, Tom Thumb and Temple, fhould be fet on an equal foot. This is the reason why this very paper has been fo long delayed and while the most impudent and fcandalous libels are publickly vended by the pi

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rates, this innocent work is forced to fteal abroad as if it were a libel.

Our present writers are, by thefe wretches, reduced to the fame condition Virgil was, when the centurion feized on his eftate. But I don't doubt but I can fix upon the Mæcenas of the pre

fent

age, that will retrieve them from it. But, whatever effect this piracy may have upon us, it contributed very much to the advantage of Mr. Philips; it helped him to a reputation, which he neither defired nor expected, and to the honour of being put upon a work of which he did not think himself capable; but the event fhewed his modefty. And it was reasonable to hope, that he, who

could

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