umstance our author hints at in his
dedication of his poem on the Battle of Ramellies, to lord Hallifax,
'I have lately, says he, had very great obligations to your lordship,
you have been pleased to take some care of my fortune, at a time when
I most wanted it, and had the least reason to expect it from you.'
This poem on the Battle of Ramellies is a cold unspirited performance;
it has neither fire, nor elevation, and is the true poetical sister
of another poem of his, on the Battle of Blenheim, addressed to Queen
Anne, and for which the duke of Marlborough rewarded him, says Mr.
Coxeter, with a present of a hundred guineas. In these poems he
has introduced a kind of machinery; good and bad angels interest
themselves in the action, and his hero, the duke of Marlborough,
enjoys a large share of the celestial protection.

Mr. Dennis had once contracted a friendship[B] with Sir Richard
Steele, whom he afterwards severely attacked. Sir Richard had promised
that he would take some opportunity of mentioning his works in public
with advantage, and endeavour to raise his reputation. When Sir
Richard engaged in a periodical paper, there was a fair occasion
of doing it, and accordingly in one of his Spectators he quotes the
following couplet, which he is pleased to call humorous, but which
however is a translation from Boileau.

One fool lolls his tongue out at another,
And shakes his empty noddle at his brother.

The citation of this couplet Mr. Dennis imagined, was rather meant to
affront him, than pay a compliment to his genius, as he could discover
nothing excellent in the lines, and if there was, they being only a
translation, in some measure abated the merit of them. Being fired with
resentment at this affront, he immediately, in a spirit of fury, wrote
a letter to the Spectator, in which he treated him with very little
ceremony, and informed him, that if he had been sincere in paying a
compliment to him, he should have chosen a quotation from his poem on
the Battle of Ramellies; he then points out a particular passage,
of which he himself had a very high opinion, and which we shall here
insert as a specimen of that performance.

A coelestial spirit visits the duke of Marlborough the night before
the battle, and after he has said several other things to him, goes on
thus,

A wondrous victory attends thy arms,
Great in itself, and in its sequel vast;
Whose ecchoing sound thro' all the West shall run,
Tra