This was the course which has formerly been practised by the poets of that nation, who were masters of the universe. Horace and Ovid, who had little reason to distrust their immortality, yet took occasion to speak with honour of Virgil, Varius, Tibullus, and Propertius, their contemporaries; as if they sought, in the testimony of their friendship, a farther evidence of their fame. For my own part, I, who am the least amongst the poets, have yet the fortune to be honoured with the best patron, and the best friend. For, (to omit some great persons of our court, to whom I am many ways obliged, and who have taken care of me even amidst the exigencies of a war[3]) I can make my boast to have found a better Maecenas in the person of my Lord Treasurer Clifford[4], and a more elegant Tibullus in that of Sir Charles Sedley. I have chosen that poet to whom I would resemble you, not only because I think him at least equal, if not superior, to Ovid in his elegies; nor because of his quality, for he was, you know, a Roman knight, as well as Ovid; but for his candour, his wealth, his way of living, and particularly because of this testimony which is given him by Horace, which I have a thousand times in my mind applied to you: _Non tu corpus eras sine pectore: Dii tibi formam, Dii tibi divitias dederant, artemque fruendi. Quid voveat dulci nutricula majus alumno, Quam sapere, et fari possit quae sentiat, et cui Gratia, forma, valetudo contingat abunde; Et mundus victus, non deficiente crumena?_