misapplied. Thus, by my long study of your lordship, I am arrived
at the knowledge of your particular manner. In the good poems of
other men, like those artists, I can only say, "This is like the
draught of such a one, or like the colouring of another;" in short,
I can only be sure that it is the hand of a good master: but in
your performances it is scarcely possible for me to be deceived. If
you write in your strength, you stand revealed at the first view,
and should you write under it, you cannot avoid some peculiar graces
which only cost me a second consideration to discover you: for I
may say it with all the severity of truth, that every line of yours
is precious. Your lordship's only fault is that you have not
written more, unless I could add another, and that yet greater, but
I fear for the public the accusation would not be true--that you
have written, and out of a vicious modesty will not publish.

Virgil has confined his works within the compass of eighteen
thousand lines, and has not treated many subjects, yet he ever had,
and ever will have, the reputation of the best poet. Martial says
of him that he could have excelled Varius in tragedy and Horace in
lyric poetry, but out of deference to his friends he attempted
neither.

The same prevalence of genius is in your lordship, but the world
cannot pardon your concealing it on the same consideration, because
we have neither a living Varius nor a Horace, in whose excellences
both of poems, odes, and satires, you had equalled them, if our
language had not yielded to the Roman majesty, and length of time
had not added a reverence to the works of Horace. For good sense is
the same in all or most ages, and course of time rather improves
nature than impairs her. What has been, may be again; another Homer