With kindly Counter under mimick Shade,
Our pleasant _Willy_, ah! is dead of late:
With whom all Joy and jolly Merriment
Is also deaded, and in Dolour drent._

_Instead thereof, scoffing Scurrility
And scorning Folly with Contempt is crept,
Rolling in Rhimes of shameless Ribaudry,
Without Regard or due _Decorum_ kept;
Each idle Wit at will presumes to make,
And doth the Learned's Task upon him take._

_But that same gentle Spirit, from whose Pen
Large Streams of Honey and sweet _Nectar_ flow,
Scorning the Boldness such base-born Men,
Which dare their Follies forth so rashly throw;
Doth rather choose to sit in idle Cell,
Than so himself to Mockery to sell._

I know some People have been of Opinion, that _Shakespear_ is not meant
by _Willy_ in the first _Stanza_ of these Verses, because _Spencer's_
Death happen'd twenty Years before _Shakespear's_. But, besides that the
Character is not applicable to any Man of that time but himself, it is
plain by the last _Stanza_ that Mr. _Spencer_ does not mean that he was
then really Dead, but only that he had with-drawn himself from the
Publick, or at least with-held his Hand from Writing, out of a disgust
he had taken at the then ill taste of the Town, and the mean Condition
of the Stage. Mr. _Dryden_ was always of Opinion these Verses were meant
of _Shakespear_; and 'tis highly probable they were so, since he was
three and thirty Years old at _Spencer's_ Death; and his Reputation in