Te menacent, Louis, d’une pareille entreprise:
Ils revivent en toi ces anciens tyrans:
Crains notre désespoir: la noblesse a des Guises,
Paris des Ravaillacs, le clergé des Cléments.
K.
Though poetry was certainly neither a point of their rivalship, nor of their ambition, it may not be unwelcome to the curious to compare these great men even in their poetic capacities. The following sonnet was written by Sir R. Walpole when a very young man; the elegy, by Lord Bolingbroke, rather past his middle age. Had they climbed no mountain but Parnassus, it is obvious how far Lord Bolingbroke would have ascended above his competitor, since, when turned of fifty, he excelled in the province of youth.