SIR, Your Most Humble, and Most Obedient Servant, A. Hill. I have now attempted, as far as I am able, to throw off a Weight, which my Mind has been uneasy under. I cannot say, in the City Phrase, that I have balanc'd the Account, but you must admit of Composition, where full Payment is impossible. I shall be so far from regretting you the old Benefit of Lex talionis, that I forgive you heartily, beforehand, for any thing you may hereafter think fit to say, or do, to my Disadvantage; nay, the Pleasure I enjoy by reflecting on your good Nature, will degenerate to a Pain, if one Accident or other, in the Course of your Life, does not favour me with some Occasion of advancing your Interest. Having said thus much to you, in your Quality of a Good Man, I will proceed to address you, in your other Quality, of a Great Poet; in which Light I look up to you with extraordinary Comfort, as to a new Constellation breaking out upon our World, with equal Heat, and Brightness, and cross-spangling, as it were, the whole Heaven of Wit with your milky way of Genius. You cou'd never have been born at a Time, which more wanted the Influence of your Example: All the Fire you bring with you, and the Judgment you are acquiring, in the Course of your Journey, will be put to their full stress, to support and rebuild the sinking Honours of Poetry. It was a Custom, which prevail'd generally among the Ancients, to impute Celestial Descent to their Heroes; The Vanity, methinks, might have been pardonable, and rational, if apply'd to an Art; since Arts, when they are at once delightful and profitable, as you will certainly leave Poetry, have one real Mark of Divinity, they become, in some measure, immortal. And as the oldest, and, I think, the sublimest Poem in the World, is of Hebrew Original, and was made immediately after passing the Red-Sea, at a Time, when the Author had neither Leisure, nor Possibility, to invent a new Art: It must therefore be undeniable, either that the Hebrews brought Poetry out of Egypt, or that Moses receiv'd it from God, by immediate Inspiration. This last, being what a Poet should be fondest of believing, I wou'd fain suppose it probable, that God, who was pleas'd to instruct Moses with what Ceremony he wou'd be worship'd, taught him also a Mode of Thinking, and expressing Thought, unprophan'd by vulgar Use, and peculiar to that Worship. God then taught Poetry first to the Hebrews, and the Hebrews to Mankind in general.