everely on the miscarriages of Government; for if scandal be not
allowed, you are no free-born subjects. If GOD has not blessed you with
the talent of rhyming, make use of my poor stock and welcome; let your
verses run upon my feet: and for the utmost refuge of notorious
blockheads, reduced to the last extremity of sense, turn my own lines
upon me, and, in utter despair of your own satire, make me satirize
myself. Some of you have been driven to this bay already; but above all
the rest, commend me to the Non-conformist parson, who writ _The Whip
and Key_. I am afraid it is not read so much as the piece deserves,
because the bookseller is every week crying Help, at the end of his
Gazette, to get it off. You see I am charitable enough to do him a
kindness, that it may be published as well as printed; and that so much
skill in Hebrew derivations may not lie for waste-paper in the shop.
Yet I half suspect he went no farther for his learning, than the index
of Hebrew names and etymologies, which is printed at the end of some
English bibles. If Achitophel signify the brother of a fool, the author
of that poem will pass with his readers for the next of kin. And,
perhaps, 'tis the relation that makes the kindness. Whatever the verses
are, buy them up, I beseech you, out of pity; for I hear the
conventicle is shut up, and the brother of Achitophel out of service.

Now footmen, you know, have the generosity to make a purse, for a
member of their society, who has had his livery pulled over his ears:
and even Protestant flocks are brought up among you, out of veneration
to the name. A dissenter in poetry from sense and English, will make as
good a Protestant rhymer, as a dissenter from the Church of England a
Protestant parson. Besides, if you encourage a young beginner, who
knows but he may elevate his style a little, above the vulgar epithets
of profane and saucy Jack, and atheistic scribbler, with which he
treats me, when the fit of enthusiasm is strong upon him? By which
well-manner'd and charitable expressions, I was certain of his sect,
before I knew his name. What would you have more of a man? He has
damned me in your cause from Genesis to the Revelations; and has half
the texts of both the Testaments against me, if you will be so civil to
yourselves as to take him for your interpreter, and not to take them
for Irish witnesses. After all, perhaps, you will tell me, that you
retained him only for the opening of your cause, and