These were princely rewards for a man’s poor endeavours to please: who would not bring up their children in a choir? or who would not learn to sing? you have met, I must confess, Sir, with but small encouragement in the main, and made but a slender fortune in comparison of what might have been reasonably expected from your talents: the most civiliz’d quarter of the world has been your audience, and admirer; and you have left every where a name, that cannot die but with musick, and that will survive even nature; for in the numerous cracklings of the last conflagration, there will be, as it were, a noble symphony, that she may cease to be in proportion, and what is her apothesis, will draw the curtain to a new creation. But that enlargement of our knowledge, which is the necessity of our spiritualization, shows me there is a malevolency in the influences of your stars, that will ever dash your rising hopes, and oppose your fortune. You cannot but have heard how _Alexander the Great_ very generously distributed all the spoils to his soldiers, and contented himself with glory for his dividend. Thus your consolation must be, whenever the fickle goddess frowns upon you; that noble resolution of being above contempt, shows a magnanimity of mind equal to the greatest philosopher. But virtue is very often unfortunate, nay, sometimes oppress’d. Here are some devilish, ignorant, censorious, lying people, that will maintain, you were so impertinent as to give a gentleman, the trouble of cudgelling you, and there are many here whose wicked tempers are improv’d by the conversation of the place, as rogues by being in _Newgate_, and those give credit to the aspersions; but the tribe of _Helicon_ endeavour your justification, for he that cou’d charm the king of _Poland_’s bears with the warbling accents of his mellifluous tongue, might with the same harmony have mov’d the sturdy oak, and that is as heavy as a hundred canes. ’Twas the glory of _Arion_, that the stones danced after his lyre; and as long as there are poets it will be said, that _Orpheus_ drew the tigers and the trees, to listen to his trembling lays. May you not justly expect a place in the volumes of immortality, since it may be all said literally true of you, that was but a fable of these darlings of our forefathers? no matter if some people put an ill construction on it, the best actions of our lives are subject to be traduc’d.---- Here was a dear joy of quality suffer’d the discipline of the place for stealing the diamond ring from you, that the king of _France_ gave you at _Fountainbleau_: to mitigate the blackness of the fact, he alledg’d the necessitousness of his condition, and that it was pity so many gallant men should want for their loyalty, while a jackanapes cou’d get an estate for a song. At this, _Rhadamanthus_ order’d him a hundred stripes more for his pride in affecting a character his own confession had so far derogated from. There are some