your Lyric Poems, though they are the delight and wonder of this age, and will be the envy of the next.[3] The subject of this book confines me to satire; and in that, an author of your own quality, (whose ashes I will not disturb,) has given you all the commendation which his self-sufficiency could afford to any man: "The best good man, with the worst-natured muse."[4] In that character, methinks, I am reading Jonson's verses to the memory of Shakespeare; an insolent, sparing, and invidious panegyric: where good nature, the most godlike commendation of a man, is only attributed to your person, and denied to your writings; for they are every where so full of candour, that, like Horace, you only expose the follies of men, without arraigning their vices; and in this excel him, that you add [Pg 8]that pointedness of thought, which is visibly wanting in our great Roman. There is more of salt in all your verses, than I have seen in any of the moderns, or even of the ancients; but you have been sparing of the gall, by which means you have pleased all readers, and offended none. Donne alone, of all our countrymen, had your talent; but was not happy enough to arrive at your versification; and were he translated into numbers, and English, he would yet be wanting in the dignity of expression. That which is the prime virtue, and chief ornament, of Virgil, which distinguishes him from the rest of writers, is so conspicuous in your verses, that it casts a shadow on all your contemporaries; we cannot be seen, or but obscurely, while you are present. You equal Donne in the variety, multiplicity, and choice of thoughts; you excel him in the manner and the words. I read you both with the same admiration, but not with the same delight. He affects the metaphysics, not only in his satires, but in his amorous verses, where nature only should reign; and perplexes the minds of the fair sex with nice speculations of philosophy, when he should engage their hearts, and entertain them with the softnesses of love. In this (if I may be pardoned for so bold a truth) Mr Cowley has copied him to a fault; so great a one, in my opinion, that it throws his Mistress infinitely below his Pindarics, and his latter compositions, which are undoubtedly the best of his poems, and the most correct. For my own part, I must avow it freely to the world, that I never attempted any thing in satire, wherein I have not studied your writings as the most perfect model. I have continually laid them before me; and the greatest commendation, which my own partiality can give to my productions, is, that they are copies, and no farther to be allowed, than as they[Pg 9] have something more or less of the original. Some few touches of your lordship, some secret graces which I have endeavoured to express after 

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