“There is too great reason to apprehend that this infection is spread among persons of almost all ranks, though some may think it decent still to keep on a religious masque. This is hypocrisy with a witness, the basest and meanest of vices. The cowards will not believe a God, because they dare not; for woe be to them if there be one, and consequently any future punishment! From such as these I desire no favour, but that of their ill word; as their crimes must expect none from me. If I could be ambitious of a name in the world, it should be that I might sacrifice it in so glorious a cause as that of religion and virtue. If none but generals must fight in this sacred war, when there are such infernal hosts on the other side, they could never prevail without one of the ancient miracles. If little people can but discharge the place of a private sentinel, it is all that is expected from us. I hope I shall never let the enemies of God and my country come on without firing, though it serve but to give the alarm; and, if I die without quitting my post, I desire no greater glory. I have no personal pique against any whose characters I may have given in this poem, nor think the worse of them for their thoughts of me. I hope I have everywhere done them justice, and have given them commendation where they merit it.” This is strong language respecting the chief writers of the day; but it was not unneeded. It is true, that, there were honourable exceptions—such as Addison, who was now enjoying his pension of £300 a year for his complimentary poem on one of the campaigns of King William; Sir Richard Steele, who was writing his “Christian Hero;” Dean Swift, who, having published his poetical essays, was now pondering his “Tale of a Tub;” Pope, who, as a boy twelve years old, was writing, in Windsor Forest, his “Ode on Solitude;” Parnell, who was just made M.A., and ordained a deacon; and Edward Young, who was now completing the first part of his education at Winchester. Of these and others we say nothing; but contemporaneous with them were William Wycherley, who attacked vice, it is true, but attacked it with the severity of a cynic, and the language of a libertine; Matthew Prior, who, notwithstanding his poetic fame, cohabited with a despicable drab of the lowest kind; William Congreve, “the ultimate effect of whose plays,” says Dr Johnson, “is to represent pleasure in alliance with vice, and to relax those obligations by which life ought to be regulated;” Lord Bolingbroke, whom Johnson designated “a scoundrel, who charged a pop-gun against Christianity; and a coward, who left half-a-crown to a beggarly Scotchman (David Mallet) to fire it off;” Anthony Collins, the infidel, who, notwithstanding his abilities as a writer, was detected in so many instances of false quotations, and other unfair modes of controversy, that he must ever be regarded as one of the most flagrant instances of literary