True it is, that some bad poems, though not all, carry their owners' marks about them. There is some peculiar awkwardness, false grammar, imperfect sense, or, at the least, obscurity; some brand or other on this buttock, or that ear, that it is notorious who are the owners of the cattle, though they should not sign it with their names. But your lordship, on the contrary, is distinguished, not only by the excellency of your thoughts, but by your style and manner of expressing them. A painter, judging of some admirable piece, may affirm, with certainty, that it was of Holbein, or Vandyck; but vulgar designs, and common draughts, are easily mistaken, and misapplied. Thus, by my long study of your lordship, I am arrived at the knowledge of your particular manner. In the good poems of other men, like those artists, I can only say, this is like the draught of such a one, or like the colouring of another. In short, I can only be sure, that it is the hand of a good master; but in your performances, it is scarcely possible for me to be deceived. If you write in your strength, you stand revealed at the first view; and should you write under it, you cannot avoid some peculiar graces, which only cost me a second consideration to discover you: for I may say it, with all the severity of truth, that every line of yours is precious. Your lordship's only fault is, that you have not written more; unless I could add another, and that yet greater, but I fear for the public the accusation would not be true,--that you have written, and out of a vicious modesty will not publish. Virgil has confined his works within the compass of eighteen thousand lines, and has not treated many subjects; yet he ever had, and ever will have, the reputation of the best poet. Martial says of him, that he could have excelled Varius in tragedy, and Horace in lyric poetry, but out of deference to his friends, he attempted neither.[9] The same prevalence of genius is in your lordship, but the world cannot pardon your concealing it on the same consideration; because we have neither a living Varius, nor a Horace, in whose excellencies, both of poems, odes, and satires, you had equalled them, if our language had not yielded to the Roman majesty, and length of time had not added a reverence to the works of Horace. For good sense is the same in all or most ages; and course of time rather improves nature, than impairs her. What has been, may be again: another Homer, and another Virgil, may possibly arise from those very causes which produced the first; though it would be impudence to affirm, that any such have yet appeared.