cessors, must extremely
pity them.

I am to assure, that the Author has no portion of that airy happiness to
lose, by any injury or unkindness which may be done to his Verse: his
reputation is better built in the sentiment of several judicious
persons, who know him very well able to give himself a lasting monument,
by undertaking any argument of note in the whole circle of learning.

But even these his Diversions have been valuable with the matchless
Orinda; and since they deserved her esteem and commendations, who so
thinks them not worth the publishing, will put himself in the opposite
scale, where his own arrogance will blow him up.

I. W.

TO MR. HENRY VAUGHAN THE SILURIST: UPON THESE AND HIS FORMER POEMS.[58]

Had I ador'd the multitude, and thence
Got an antipathy to wit and sense,
And hugg'd that fate, in hope the world would grant
'Twas good affection to be ignorant;[59]
Yet the least ray of thy bright fancy seen,
I had converted, or excuseless been.
For each birth of thy Muse to after-times
Shall expiate for all this Age's crimes.
First shines thy Amoret, twice crown'd by thee,
Once by thy love, next by thy poetry;
Where thou the best of unions dost dispense,
Truth cloth'd in wit, and Love in innocence;
So that the muddy lover may learn here,
No fountains can be sweet that are not clear.
There Juvenal, by thee reviv'd, declares
How flat man's joys are, and how mean his cares;
And wisely doth upbraid[60] the world, that they
Should such a value for their ruin pay.
But when thy sacred Muse diverts her quil
The landscape to design of Sion's hill,[61]
As nothing else was worthy her, or thee,
So we admire almost t' idolatry.
What savage breast would not be rapt to find
Such jewels in such cabinets enshrin'd?
Thou fill'd with joys--too great to see or count--
Descend'st from thence, like Moses from the Mount,
And with a candid, yet unquestion'd awe
Restor'st the Golden Age, when Verse was Law.
Instructing us, thou so secur'st[62] thy fame,
That nothing can disturb it but my name:
Nay, I have hopes that standing so near thine
'Twill lose its dross, and by degrees refine.
Live! till the disabused world consent
All truths of use, of strength or ornament,
Are with such harmony by thee display'd