Should Flatman for his Client strain the laws The Painter gives some colour to the cause: Should Critics censure what the Poet writ, The Pleader quits him at the Bar of wit. ] [Footnote 3: Browne's diary (March, 1663-4) contains repeated mention of 'Mr. Flatman, chirurgeon' of Norwich, who had been a great traveller. This is additional evidence of the connexion of the Flatmans with Norfolk.] [Footnote 4: The publisher was Benjamin Tooke, whom Flatman in a letter of November 3, 1675, recommended to Sancroft if he wished to publish his Fifth of November sermon before the House of Commons (Tanner MS. xlii, fol. 181, in Bodley).] [Footnote 5: _V. inf._, p. 360.] [Footnote 6: Nor that slow drudge in swift Pindaric strains, Flatman, who Cowley imitates with pains, And rides a jaded Muse, whipt, with loose reins. Flatman, who had no bad blood in him, took a magnanimous revenge (_v. inf._, p. 365).] [Footnote 7: Four letters of Flatman are published in _Familiar Letters of Love, Gallantry, And Several Occasions, By the Wits of the last and present Age_, 1718, vol. i, pp. 249-54. One of these is a letter to an unnamed patron, sending his own portrait for the patron's collection as 'a foil to the rest'.] [Footnote 8: And that chiefly because Pope is supposed to have borrowed from them.] [Footnote 9: Flatman, however, is much less 'coarse' than most of his contemporaries. Putting a very few pieces aside (not themselves very shocking) he might almost challenge my Lord Roscommon for those 'unspotted bays' which his own supposed debtor Pope assigned, and of which we are all so tired.] [Footnote 10: The Additional Poems (p. 408 sq.) I owe to Mr. Percy Simpson, who collected them from their various sources, added variants throughout from the Firth MS., and gave some hints for correcting my own notes. Mr. G. Thorn-Drury has again given his valuable help.] TO HIS GRACE THE DUKE OF ORMOND _Lord Lieutenant of_ Ireland, _&c._ In humble acknowledgment of His Princely Favours These[1] _POEMS_ are with all Dutiful Respect DEDICATED By his GRACE's Ever Oblig'd, and most Obedient Servant, _Thomas Flatman_. [Footnote 1: So in 1682, where this Dedication first appeared: 1686 with its usual carelessness 'The', which is most improbable.] To the Reader.