tisfied with Peter's colder temperament, actually composed the
superlative dedication to himself, and completed the misery of the
apparent author by subscribing it with his name. This circumstance was
so notorious at the time, that it occasioned a satirical dialogue
between Motteux and his patron Heveningham. The patron, in his zeal to
omit no possible distinction that might attach to him, had given one
circumstance which no one but himself could have known.

PATRON.

I must confess I was to blame,
That one particular to name;
The rest could never have been known
_I made the style so like thy own_.

POET.

I beg your pardon, Sir, for that.

PATRON.

Why d----e what would you be at?
I _writ below myself_, you sot!
Avoiding figures, tropes, what not;
For fear I should my fancy raise
_Above the level of thy plays_!

Warton notices the common practice, about the reign of Elizabeth, of an
author's dedicating a work at once to a number of the nobility.
Chapman's Translation of Homer has sixteen sonnets addressed to lords
and ladies. Henry Lock, in a collection of two hundred religious
sonnets, mingles with such heavenly works the terrestrial composition of
a number of sonnets to his noble patrons; and not to multiply more
instances, our great poet Spenser, in compliance with this disgraceful
custom, or rather in obedience to the established tyranny of patronage,
has prefixed to the Faery Queen fifteen of these adulatory pieces, which
in every respect are the meanest of his compositions. At this period all
men, as well as writers, looked up to the peers as if they were beings
on whose smiles or frowns all sublunary good and evil depended. At a
much later period, Elkanah Settle sent copies round to the chief party,
for he wrote for both parties, accompanied by addresses to extort
pecuniary presents in return. He had latterly one standard _Elegy_, and
one _Epithalamium_, printed off with blanks, which by ingeniously
filling up with the printed names of any great person who died or was
married; no one who was going out of life, or was entering into it,
could pass scot-free.

One of the most singular anecdotes respecting DEDICATIONS in English
bibliography is that of the Polyglot Bible of Dr. Castell. Cromwell,
much to his honour, patronized that great labour, and allowed the paper
to be imported free of all duties,