who carried their love and constancy beyond the grave. The exteriors of
mourning, a decent funeral, and black habits, are the usual stints of
common husbands: and perhaps their wives deserve no better than to be
mourned with hypocrisy, and forgot with ease. But you have distinguished
yourself from ordinary lovers, by a real and lasting grief for the
deceased; and by endeavouring to raise for her the most durable
monument, which is that of verse. And so it would have proved, if the
workman had been equal to the work, and your choice of the artificer as
happy as your design. Yet, as Phidias, when he had made the statue of
Minerva, could not forbear to engrave his own name, as author of the
piece: so give me leave to hope, that, by subscribing mine to this poem,
I may live by the goddess, and transmit my name to posterity by the
memory of hers. It is no flattery to assure your lordship, that she is
remembered, in the present age, by all who have had the honour of her
conversation and acquaintance; and that I have never been in any company
since the news of her death was first brought me, where they have not
extolled her virtues, and even spoken the same things of her in prose,
which I have done in verse.

I therefore think myself obliged to thank your lordship for the
commission which you have given me: how I have acquitted myself of it,
must be left to the opinion of the world, in spite of any protestation
which I can enter against the present age, as incompetent or corrupt
judges. For my comfort, they are but Englishmen, and, as such, if they
think ill of me to-day, they are inconstant enough to think well of me
to-morrow. And after all, I have not much to thank my fortune that I was
born amongst them. The good of both sexes are so few, in England, that
they stand like exceptions against general rules: and though one of them
has deserved a greater commendation than I could give her, they have
taken care that I should not tire my pen with frequent exercise on the