_’Tis true, there never was any prince but had his flatterers: but you_ French _have been guilty of the grossest to the present king of_ France, _that ever were recorded. My_ Julian _would have blush’d, or rather trembled, at such blasphemous adulation_. Loüis _has been adored for his mercy, and yet exceeded our_ Nero _in barbarity and bloodshed. Fire and sword were mild executioners of his cruelty; for his impetuous lust of mischief has been so fruitful in inventing torments, that he has made all those forms of death desirable to his subjects that were the reproach of tyrants: his ingenious malice has contrived exquisite pain, without destroying the persons that suffer it; and if he could compel man to be immortal, he would vie miseries with hell itself. He scorns all the humble paths of_ Domitian_’s perfidiousness: such puny perjuries are too mean for_ Loüis le Grand: _And since he could not possibly make them greater in their nature, he aggravated them by their number. The peace of the_ Pyreneans, _that of_ Aix la Chapelle, _that of_ Nimeguen, _the truce for twenty years, the edict of_ Nants, _the treaty at_ Reswick, _are sufficient arguments, that he only promised that he might not perform; and vow’d to observe treaties that he might have the lechery of breaking them afterwards with a more execrable guilt. Your servile flattery stiles him the restorer and preserver of the peace of_ Christendom, _yet he arm’d the Crescent against the Cross, and carried desolation through every corner of_ Europe. _There is no prince but he has invaded, no neighbour that he has not oppress’d, no law that he has not violated, no religion that he has not trampled on, and shewed the successors of St._ Peter, _that he had one sword sharper than both theirs. His panegyrists have refined the impious wit of_ Commodus_’s sycophants; and lest books should not transmit their blasphemies low enough to posterity, they have raised superb monuments of his arrogancy and their own shame. What statues, what pictures of him at_ Versailles, Fountainbleau, Marly, _the_ Louvre, _the_ Invalides, Paris _gates, the_ Palace Royal, _&c. Where have I, Mons._ Boileau, _arm’d my_ Julian _with a [56] thunderbolt? have I any thing equal to your_ viro immortali, _to your_ divo Ludivico? _Why then am I such an infamous flatterer, such a sneaking cringing rascal? I have nothing comparable to your fustian bombast, nor to the hyperboles of_ Pelisson, _nor the impertinent titles of every_ Frenchman _that sets pen to paper. I leave the world to judge, if my hero has not a juster claim to all the eulogies I have given him, ten thousand times preferable to_ Loüis le Grand, _and yet you have said ten thousand times more of him_. POSTSCRIPT.