Arm'd with this truth, all critics I defy;
For if I fall, by my own pen I die;
While snarlers strive with proud but fruitless pain
To wound immortals, or to slay the slain.
Sore prest with danger, and in awful dread
Of twenty pamphlets levell'd at my head,
Thus have I forg'd a buckler in my brain,
Of recent form, to serve me this campaign:
And safely hope to quit the dreadful field
Delug'd with ink, and sleep behind my shield;