inisters then in power: for I know not if
all the political transactions of Burleigh, are sufficient to
counterballance the infamy affixed on his name, by prosecuting
resentment against distressed merit, and keeping him who was the
ornament of the times, as much distant as possible from the approach
of competence. These discouragements greatly sunk our author's spirit,
and accordingly we find him pouring out his heart, in complaints of so
injurious and undeserved a treatment; which probably, would have been
less unfortunate to him, if his noble patron Sir Philip Sidney had not
been so much absent from court, as by his employments abroad, and the
share he had in the Low-Country wars, he was obliged to be. In a poem
called, The Ruins of Time, which was written some time after Sidney's
death, the author seems to allude to the discouragement I have
mentioned in the following stanza.

O grief of griefs, O gall of all good hearts!
To see that virtue should despised be,
Of such as first were raised for virtue's parts,
And now broad-spreading like an aged tree,
Let none shoot up that nigh them planted be;
O let not these, of whom the muse is scorned,
Alive or dead be by the muse adorned.

These lines are certainly meant to reflect on Burleigh for neglecting
him, and the Lord Treasurer afterwards conceived a hatred towards him
for the satire he apprehended was levelled at him in Mother Hubbard's
Tale. In this poem, the author has in the most lively manner, painted
out the misfortune of depending on court favours. The lines which
follow are among others very remarkable.

Full little knowest thou, that hast not try'd,
What Hell it is in suing long to bide,
To dole good days, that nights be better spent,
To waste long nights in pensive discontent;
To speed to day, to be put back to-morrow,
To feed on hope, to pine with fear and sorrow
To have thy prince's grace, yet want her peers,
To have thy asking, yet wait many years.
To fret thy soul with crosses, and with care.
To eat thy heart, thro' comfortless despair;
To fawn, to crouch, to wait, to ride, to run
To spend, to give, to want, to be undone.

As this was very much the author's case, it probably was the
particular passage in that poem which gave offence; for as Hughes very
elegantly observes, even the sighs of a miserable man, are sometimes
resented as an affront, by him who is the occasion of them. There is a
little story, which