sur son passage.

_I leave the words to work their effect upon your Lordship, in their own
language; because no other can so well express the nobleness of the
thought: and wish you may be soon called to bear a part in the affaires
of the Nation, where I know the World expects you, and wonders why you
have been so long forgotten; there being no person amongst our young
nobility, on whom the eyes of all men are so much bent. But, in the
meantime, your Lordship may imitate the Course of Nature, which gives us
the flower before the fruit; that I may speak to you in the language of
the Muses, which I have taken from an excellent Poem to the King [i.e.,_
CHARLES II.]

_As Nature, when she fruit designs, thinks fit
By beauteous blossoms to proceed to it,
And while she does accomplish all the Spring,
Birds, to her secret operations sing.

I confess I have no greater reason in addressing this Essay to your
Lordship, than that it might awaken in you the desire of writing
something, in whatever kind it be, which might be an honour to our Age
and country. And, methinks, it might have the same effect upon you,
which, HOMER tells us, the fight of the Greeks and Trojans before the
fleet had on the spirit of ACHILLES; who, though he had resolved not to
engage, yet found a martial warmth to steal upon him at the sight of
blows, the sound of trumpets, and the cries of fighting men.

For my own part, if in treating of this subject, I sometimes dissent from
the opinion of better Wits, I declare it is not so much to combat their
opinions as to defend mine own, which were first made public. Sometimes,
like a scholar in a fencing school, I put forth myself, and show my own
ill play, on purpose to be better taught. Sometimes, I stand desperately
to my arms, like the Foot, when deserted by their Horse; not in hope to
overcome, but only to yield on more honourable terms.

And yet, my Lord! this War of Opinions, you well know, has fallen out
among the Writers of all Ages, and sometimes betwixt friends: only it has
been persecuted by some, like pedants, with violence of words; and
managed, by others, like gentlemen, with candour and civility. Even TULLY
had a controversy with his dear ATTICUS; and in one of his_ Dialogues,
_makes him sustain the part of an enemy in Philosophy, who, in his_
Letters, _is his confident of State, and made privy to the most weighty
affairs of the Roman Senate: and the same respect, which was paid b