he pauses and sharps,
And let time be careful to beat the measure.

2. See a sketch of his plan in Johnson's Life of Milton, and in the
authorities above quoted.

TO

HER ROYAL HIGHNESS,

THE

DUCHESS[1].

MADAM,

Ambition is so far from being a vice in poets, that it is almost
impossible for them to succeed without it. Imagination must be raised,
by a desire of fame, to a desire of pleasing; and they whom, in all
ages, poets have endeavoured most to please, have been the beautiful
and the great. Beauty is their deity, to which they sacrifice, and
greatness is their guardian angel, which protects them. Both these,
are so eminently joined in the person of your royal highness, that it
were not easy for any but a poet to determine which of them outshines
the other. But I confess, madam, I am already biassed in my choice. I
can easily resign to others the praise of your illustrious family, and
that glory which you derive from a long-continued race of princes,
famous for their actions both in peace and war: I can give up, to the
historians of your country, the names of so many generals and heroes
which crowd their annals, and to our own the hopes of those which you
are to produce for the British chronicle. I can yield, without envy,
to the nation of poets, the family of Este, to which Ariosto and Tasso
have owed their patronage, and to which the world has owed their
poems. But I could not, without extreme reluctance, resign the theme
of your beauty to another hand. Give me leave, madam, to acquaint the
world, that I am jealous of this subject; and let it be no dishonour
to you, that, after having raised the admiration of mankind, you have
inspired one man to give it voice. But, with whatsoever vanity this
new honour of being your poet has filled my mind, I confess myself too
weak for the inspiration: the priest was always unequal to the oracle:
the god within him was too mighty for his breast: he laboured with the
sacred revelation, and there was more of the mystery left behind, than
the divinity itself could enable him to express. I can but discover a
part of your excellencies to the world; and that, too, according to
the measure of my own weakness. Like those who have surveyed the moon
by glasses, I can only tell of a new and shining world above us, but
not relate the riches and