"Ah! let not youth to insolence allied,
In heat of blood, in full career of pride,
Possessed of genius, with unhallowed rage,
Mock the infirmities of reverend age.
The greatest genius to this fate may bow."
—Churchill's Epistle to Hogarth.
After advising the painter to learn how to die, the bard proceeds; repeats and amplifies what he had before written on Hogarth's envy, gives a metrical version of that North Briton which ridicules the artist's love of flattery, and beautifully versifies Mr. Wilkes' prosaic abuse of poor "Sigismunda."
In the lines which follow, he first throws the gauntlet, and then draws such a picture of the man he has challenged as must have subdued the rancour of an assassin; so far from being a stimulus to revenge, it excites pity, and concludes in the form of an apology:
"For me, who, warm and zealous for my friend,
In spite of railing thousands, will commend;