prodigious parts_, Boileau _the smoothest pen and noblest genius of his time, because their prince is alive, and equally generous to reward their flattery, as greedy to have it: but poor I, because I have been dead one thousand four hundred years, and better, I am an idle rascally fellow. But even at this distance I am no stranger to the transactions of_ Versailles; _and since you have spit out so much of your blackest venom against me and my hero, I shall take the freedom to call to mind some of those very remarkable particulars which give so glorious a lustre, as you call it, to your_ viro immortali. _His life has been one continued series of rapines and murders, perjuries and desolations. For tho’ the first disorders in_ Hungary, _were in some measure owing to the injustices count_ Teckeley _received from the ministers of the empire, yet it is undeniably true, that_ France _fomented the war, and sollicited the_ Turk _to espouse_ Teckeley_’s quarrels, and promised to assist him himself. The negotiations of the_ French _ambassadors at the Port, the vast sums of money remitted to_ Teckeley, _and the endeavours to disengage the king of_ Poland _and the duke of_ Bavaria _from the interest of the empire; these things, Mons._ Boileau, _were not managed with so much secrecy, but the more essential particulars are come to many peoples knowledge. His other underhand dealings with several princes and cities of_ Germany, _shewed his formidable army in_ Alsatia _was not to succour the empire, but to seize on it. But the raising the siege at_ Vienna _broke all their measures at_ Versailles, _and the king of_ France, _confounded at his disappointment, vented his rage upon his own subjects, and that part of them too that set the crown upon his head, when the most considerable of the_ Roman Catholicks _abandon’d his interest. The ravage he committed in the territories of the three ecclesiastical electors, and in the_ Palatinate _at the same time, shewed him rather the scourge of mankind, than the eldest son of the church_.