time of day; for you know I staid not to date my respects to you from
that title which now you have, and to which you bring a greater
addition by your merit, than you receive from it by the name; but I am
proud to let others know, how long it is that I have been made happy
by my knowledge of you; because I am sure it will give me a reputation
with the present age, and with posterity. And now, my lord, I know you
are afraid, lest I should take this occasion, which lies so fair for
me, to acquaint the world with some of those excellencies which I have
admired in you; but I have reasonably considered, that to acquaint the
world, is a phrase of a malicious meaning; for it would imply, that
the world were not already acquainted with them. You are so generally
known to be above the meanness of my praises, that you have spared my
evidence, and spoiled my compliment: Should I take for my common
places, your knowledge both of the old and the new philosophy; should
I add to these your skill in mathematics and history; and yet farther,
your being conversant with all the ancient authors of the Greek and
Latin tongues, as well as with the modern--I should tell nothing new
to mankind; for when I have once but named you, the world will
anticipate all my commendations, and go faster before me than I can
follow. Be therefore secure, my lord, that your own fame has freed
itself from the danger of a panegyric; and only give me leave to tell
you, that I value the candour of your nature, and that one character
of friendliness, and, if I may have leave to call it, kindness in you,
before all those other which make you considerable in the nation[4].

Some few of our nobility are learned, and therefore I will not
conclude an absolute contradiction in the terms of nobleman and
scholar; but as the world goes now, 'tis very hard to predicate one
upon the other; and 'tis yet more difficult to prove, that a nobleman
can be a friend to poetry. Were it not for two or three instances in