alive, that I was admitted to the lord's closet, when a man of letters and merit would be thrust out of doors. And I was as familiar with the ladies as their lap-dogs: for to them I did often good services; under pretence of a lampoon, I conveyed a _billet doux_; and so, whilst I exposed their vast vices in the present, I prompted matter for the next lampoon." The following lampoon, in which it is highly improbable that Dryden had any share, is chiefly levelled against Sir Car Scrope, son of Sir Adrian Scrope of Cockington, in Lincolnshire, a courtier of considerable poetical talents, of whom Anthony Wood says, "that, as divers satirical copies of verses were made upon him by other persons, so he hath diverse made by himself upon them, which are handed about to this day." We have seen that he is mentioned with contempt in the "Essay on Satire;" and, in the "Advice to Apollo," in the State Poems, Vol. I. his studies are thus commemorated: ----Sir Car, that knight of withered face, Who, for the reversion of a poet's place, Waits on Melpomene, and sooths her grace; That angry miss alone he strives to please, For fear the rest should teach him wit and ease, And make him quit his loved laborious walks, Where, sad or silent, o'er the room he stalks, And strives to write as wisely as he talks. He is also mentioned in many other libels of the day, and some of his answers are still extant. Rochester assailed him in his "Allusion to the Tenth Satire of Horace's first Book." Sir Car Scrope replied, and published a poem in Defence of Satire, to which the earl retorted by a very coarse set of verses, addressed to the knight by name. Sir Car Scrope was a tolerable translator from the classics; and his version of the "Epistle from Sappho to Phaon" is inserted in the translation of Ovid's Epistles by several hands, edited by our author. Dryden mentions, in one of his prefaces, Sir Car Scrope's efforts with approbation. But it is not from this circumstance alone I conclude that this epistle has been erroneously attributed to our author; for the whole internal evidence speaks loudly against its authenticity. Indeed, it only rests on Dryden's name being placed to it in the 6th volume of the Miscellanies published after his death. A FAMILIAR EPISTLE TO MR JULIAN, SECRETARY OF THE MUSES.