defended my own innocence. I speak not of my poetry, which I have
wholly given up to the critics--let them use it as they please--
posterity, perhaps, may be more favourable to me; for interest and
passion will lie buried in another age, and partiality and prejudice
be forgotten. I speak of my morals, which have been sufficiently
aspersed--that only sort of reputation ought to be dear to every
honest man, and is to me. But let the world witness for me that I
have been often wanting to myself in that particular; I have seldom
answered any scurrilous lampoon when it was in my power to have
exposed my enemies; and, being naturally vindicative, have suffered
in silence, and possessed my soul in quiet.

Anything, though never so little, which a man speaks of himself, in
my opinion, is still too much; and therefore I will waive this
subject, and proceed to give the second reason which may justify a
poet when he writes against a particular person, and that is when he
is become a public nuisance. All those whom Horace in his satires,
and Persius and Juvenal have mentioned in theirs with a brand of
infamy, are wholly such. It is an action of virtue to make examples
of vicious men. They may and ought to be upbraided with their
crimes and follies, both for their own amendment (if they are not
yet incorrigible), and for the terror of others, to hinder them from
falling into those enormities, which they see are so severely
punished in the persons of others. The first reason was only an
excuse for revenge; but this second is absolutely of a poet's office
to perform. But how few lampooners are there now living who are
capable of this duty! When they come in my way, it is impossible
sometimes to avoid reading them. But, good God! how remote they are
in common justice from the choice of such persons as are the proper
subject of satire, and how little wit they bring for the support of