tinguished, than by all those other uncommon advantages, with which
you are attended. Your great disposition, your great ability to be
beneficent to mankind, could by no means answer that end, if you were
not possessed of a judgment to direct you in the right application and
just distribution of your good offices.

You are now in a station, by which you necessarily preside over the
liberal arts, and all the practisers and professors of them. Poetry is
more particularly within your province; and with very good reason
may we hope to see it revive and flourish under your influence and
protection.

What hopes of reward may not the living deserver entertain, when
even the dead are sought out for, and their very urns and ashes made
partakers of your liberality?

As I have the honour to be known to you, my Lord, and to have been
distinguished by you by many expressions and instances of your
goodwill towards me, I take a singular pleasure to congratulate you
upon an action so entirely worthy of you. And as I had the happiness
to be very conversant, and as intimately acquainted with Mr Dryden as
the great disproportion in our years could allow me to be, I hope it
will not be thought too assuming in me, if, in love to his memory, and
in gratitude for the many friendly offices, and favourable instructions,
which, in my early youth, I received from him, I take upon me to make
this public acknowledgment to your Grace, for so public a testimony,
as you are pleased to give to the world, of that high esteem, in which
you hold the performances of that eminent man.

I can, in some degree, justify myself for so doing, by a citation of a
kind of right to it, bequeathed to me by him. And it is, indeed, upon
that pretension, that I presume even to make a dedication of these his
works to you.

In some very elegant, though very partial, verses, which he did me the
honour to write to me, he recommended it to me to _be kind to his
remains_[2].

[Footnote 2: These are the affecting lines referred to.

Already I am worn with cares and age,
And just abandoning th' ungrateful stage;
Unprofitably kept at heaven's expense,
I live a rent-charge on his providence.
But you, whom every muse and grace adorn,
Whom I foresee to better fortune born,
Be kind to my remains; and, O! defend,
Against your judgment, your departed friend:
Let not the insulting foe my fame pursue,
But shade those laurels which descend to you;
And ta