should appear either more ungrateful in my silence, or more
extravagantly vain in my endeavours to acknowledge them: For, since
all acknowledgements bear a face of payment, it may be thought, that I
have flattered myself into an opinion of being able to return some
part of my obligements to you;--the just despair of which attempt, and
the due veneration I have for his person, to whom I must address, have
almost driven me to receive only with a profound submission the
effects of that virtue, which is never to be comprehended but by
admiration; and the greatest note of admiration is silence. It is that
noble passion, to which poets raise their audience in highest
subjects, and they have then gained over them the greatest victory,
when they are ravished into a pleasure which is not to be expressed by
words. To this pitch, my lord, the sense of my gratitude had almost
raised me: to receive your favours, as the Jews of old received their
law, with a mute wonder; to think, that the loudness of acclamation
was only the praise of men to men, and that the secret homage of the
soul was a greater mark of reverence, than an outward ceremonious joy,
which might be counterfeit, and must be irreverent in its tumult.
Neither, my lord, have I a particular right to pay you my
acknowledgements: You have been a good so universal, that almost every
man in the three nations may think me injurious to his propriety, that
I invade your praises, in undertaking to celebrate them alone; and
that I have assumed to myself a patron, who was no more to be
circumscribed than the sun and elements, which are of public benefit
to human kind.

As it was much in your power to oblige all who could pretend to merit
from the public, so it was more in your nature and inclination. If any
went ill-satisfied from the treasury, while it was in your lordship's
management, it proclaimed the want of desert, and not of friends: You