The satires of Lord Dorset seem to have consisted in short lampoons, if we may judge of those which have been probably lost, from such as are known to us. His mock "Address to Mr Edward Howard, on his incomparable and incomprehensible Poem, called the British Princes;" another to the same on his plays; a lampoon on an Irish lady; and one on Lady Dorchester,--are the only satires of his lordship's which have been handed down to us. He probably wrote other light occasional pieces of the same nature. [5] Shooting at rovers, in archery, is opposed to shooting at butts: In the former exercise the bowman shoots at random, merely to show how far he can send an arrow. [6] Probably meaning Sir Robert Howard, with whom our author was now reconciled, and perhaps Sir William D'Avenant. [7] The First Satire of Persius is doubtless levelled against bad poets; but that author rather engages in the defence of satire, opposed to the silly or bombastic verses of his contemporaries, than in censuring freedoms used with private characters. [8] The four sceptres were placed saltier-wise upon the reverse of guineas, till the gold coinage of his present majesty. [9] _Sic Maro nec Calabri tentavit carmina Flacci, Pindaricos posset cum superare modos; Et Vario cessit Romani laude cothurni, Cum posset tragico fortius ore loqui._ MART. _lib. VIII. epig. XVIII._ [10] "Would it be imagined," says Dr Johnson, "that, of this rival to antiquity, all the satires were little personal invectives, and that his longest composition was a song of eleven stanzas? The blame, however, of this exaggerated praise falls on the encomiast, not upon the author; whose performances are, what they pretend to be, the effusions of a man of wit; gay, vigorous, and airy." [11] Dryden's recollection seems here deficient. There is, no doubt, a close imitation of the Iliad throughout the Jerusalem; but the death of the Swedish Prince was so far from being the motive of Rinaldo's return to the wars, that Rinaldo seems never to have heard either of that person or of his fate until he was delivered from the garden of Armida, and on his voyage to join Godfrey's army. [12] Epic poems by Le Moyne, Chapelain, and Scuderi; of which it may be enough to say, that they are in the stale, weary, flat, and unprofitable taste of all French heroics. [13] This passage is certainly inaccurate in one particular, and probably in the rest. Sir Philip Sydney was killed at the battle of Zutphen, 16th October, 1586, and the "Faery Queen" was then only commenced. For, in a dialogue written by Bryskett, as Mr Malone conjectures, betwixt 1584 and 1586, Spenser is introduced describing himself as having undertaken a work in heroical verse, under the title of a "Faerie Queene;" and it is clear that he continued to labour in that task till 1594, when we learn, from his 80th sonnet, that he had just composed six books: