delighted in tyranny and blood; and as I had been one of _Pluto_’s disciples, I taught a sort of philosophy which I had learned, but never practised. Thus was my throne turn’d into a desk; and my scepter into a ferula. Heavens! what a shameful metamorphosis was this. But, gentlemen sycophants, with a murrian to you, I may thank you for it. You, like the _Cameleon_, can put on any colour, can turn vice into virtue, and virtue into vice, to deceive your masters; and under the specious pretence of religion can commit the greatest barbarities. But tho’ under the shelter of that reverend name, you think all your iniquities undiscovered, so you possess your prince with the abominable zeal of persecution; yet heaven sees and detests your hypocrisy, and even men at long-run, discover the cheat. Oh! ye unworthy enemies of virtue, whose only aim is to raise your own fortunes upon the ruin of others. How useful are you to the Devil? You matter it not, provided you compass your desired ends; if we lay waste the universe, and afterwards become the hate and scorn of all mankind: As for example, ’tis long of you that I have been a pedant in _Greece_, and that [41] one of my rank, had he not been taken to rest, would have been forced to cover his follies under a stinking cowl, in the lousy convent of _la Trape_. You will not fail, I know, to applaud all his actions, and say, if he lost all, ’twas only for obliging his subjects to take the true road to heaven, and give the title of resignation to meer necessity and compulsion. But is it a sacrifice to renounce thro’ despair, the grandeur we cannot maintain any longer? Is it not rather imitating the _animal in the fable_, that despises the grapes which are out of his reach? But I waste my lungs in vain, and talk to the deaf: however, if I have been humbled, believe that you will not always be exalted. ’Tis my comfort that you will one day be condemned to turn a wheel like _Ixion_, to roll stones like _Sysiphus_, to be devoured like _Prometheus_, continually thirsty like _Tantalus_, and to heighten your evils, that you will never lose the remembrance of those villanies you committed. _The Answer of the_ News-Mongers _to Young_ DIONYSIUS.