oportion, let my accusers speak:
this was meant mischievously, to set us two at variance. Who is the
old serpent and Satan now? When my friends help my barren fancy, I am
thankful for it: I do not use to receive assistance, and afterwards
ungratefully disown it.

Not long after, "exemplary punishment" is due to me for this most
"devilish parallel." It is a devilish one indeed; but who can help it?
If I draw devils like one another, the fault is in themselves for
being so: I neither made their horns nor claws, nor cloven feet. I
know not what I should have done, unless I had drawn the devil a
handsome proper gentleman, like the painter in the fable, to have made
a friend of him[39]; but I ought to be exemplarily punished for it:
when the devil gets uppermost, I shall expect it. "In the mean time,
let magistrates (that respect their oaths and office)"--which words,
you see, are put into a parenthesis, as if (God help us) we had none
such now,--let them put the law in execution against lewd scribblers;
the mark will be too fair upon a pillory, for a turnip or a rotten egg
to miss it. But, for my part, I have not malice enough to wish him so
much harm,--not so much as to have a hair of his head perish, much
less that one whole side of it should be dismantled. I am no informer,
who writ such a song, or such a libel; if the dulness betrays him not,
he is safe for me. And may the same dulness preserve him ever from
public justice; it is a sufficient thick mud-wall betwixt him and law;
it is his guardian angel, that protects him from punishment, because,
in spite of him, he cannot deserve it. It is that which preserves him
innocent when he means most mischief, and makes him a saint when he
intends to be a devil. He can never offend enough, to need the mercy
of government, for it is beholden to him, that he writes against it;
and he never offers at a satire, but he converts his readers to a
contrary opinion.

Some of the succeeding paragraphs are intended for very Ciceronian:
there the lawyer flourishes in the pulpit, and the poet stands in
socks among the crowd to hear him. Now for narration, resolution,
calumniation, aggravation, and the whole artillery of tropes and
figures, to defend the proceedings at Guild-hall. The most minute
circumstances of the elections are described so lively, that a man,
who had not heard he was there in a livery-gown, might suspect there
was a _quorum pars magna fui_ in the case; and multitudes o