I am almost of opinion, that we should force you to accept of the command, as sometimes the prætorian bands have compelled their captains to receive the empire. The court, which is the best and surest judge of writing, has generally allowed of verse; and, in the town, it has found favourers of wit and quality. As for your own particular, my lord, you have yet youth and time enough to give part of them to the divertisement of the public, before you enter into the serious and more unpleasant business of the world. That which the French poet said of the temple of Love, may be as well applied to the temple of the Muses. The words, as near as I can remember them, were these: _Le jeune homme à mauvaise grace, N'ayant pas adoré dans le Temple d'Amour; Il faut qu'il entre; et pour le sage Si ce n'est pas son vrai sejour, C'est un gîte sur son passage_. I leave the words to work their effect upon your lordship in their own language, because no other can so well express the nobleness of the thought; and wish you may be soon called to bear a part in the affairs of the nation, where I know the world expects you, and wonders why you have been so long forgotten; there being no person amongst our young nobility, on whom the eyes of all men are so much bent. But, in the mean time, your lordship may imitate the course of nature, who gives us the flower before the fruit; that I may speak to you in the language of the Muses, which I have taken from an excellent poem to the king: As Nature, when she fruit designs, thinks fit By beauteous blossoms to proceed to it; And while she does accomplish all the spring, Birds to her secret operations sing.[103]