Here in truth should we crave pardon of all the foresaid right honourable and worthy personages, for having mentioned them in the same page with such weekly riff-raff railers and rhymers, but that we had their ever-honoured commands for the same; and that they are introduced not as witnesses in the controversy, but as witnesses that cannot be controverted; not to dispute, but to decide. Certain it is, that dividing our writers into two classes, of such who were acquaintance, and of such who were strangers to our author; the former are those who speak well, and the other those who speak evil of him. Of the first class, the most noble JOHN DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM sums up his character in these lines: 'And yet so wondrous, so sublime a thing, As the great Iliad, scarce could make me sing, Unless I justly could at once commend A good companion, and as firm a friend; One moral, or a mere well-natured deed, Can all desert in sciences exceed.'[159] So also is he deciphered by the honourable SIMON HARCOURT. 'Say, wondrous youth, what column wilt thou choose, What laurell'd arch, for thy triumphant Muse? Though each great ancient court thee to his shrine, Though every laurel through the dome be thine. Go to the good and just, an awful train! Thy soul's delight.'[160] Recorded in like manner for his virtuous disposition and gentle bearing, by the ingenious MR WALTER HART, in this apostrophe: 'Oh! ever worthy, ever crown'd with praise! Bless'd in thy life, and bless'd in all thy lays. Add, that the Sisters every thought refine, And even thy life be faultless as thy line. Yet Envy still with fiercer rage pursues, Obscures the virtue, and defames the Muse. A soul like thine, in pain, in grief, resign'd, Views with just scorn the malice of mankind.'[161] The witty and moral satirist, DR EDWARD YOUNG, wishing some check to the corruption and evil manners of the times, calleth out upon our poet to undertake a task so worthy of his virtue: 'Why slumbers Pope, who leads the Muses' train, Nor hears that Virtue, which he loves, complain?'[162] MR MALLET, in his epistle on Verbal Criticism: 'Whose life, severely scann'd, transcends his lays; For wit supreme is but his second praise.' MR HAMMOND, that delicate and correct imitator of Tibullus, in his Love Elegies, Elegy xiv.: 'Now, fired by Pope and Virtue, leave the age, In low pursuit of self-undoing wrong, And trace the author through his moral page, Whose blameless life still answers to his song.' MR THOMSON, in his elegant and philosophical poem of the Seasons: 'Although not sweeter his own Homer sings, Yet is his life the more endearing song.' To the same tune also singeth that learned clerk of Suffolk, MR WILLIAM BROOME. 'Thus, nobly rising in fair Virtue's cause, From thy own life transcribe the unerring laws.'[163] And to close all, hear the reverend Dean of St Patrick's: