‘Sir, The conversation we had on Sunday morning concerning Rousseau, Voltaire, Shakspeare, etc. started an idea as I was returning home, which I immediately put into the form you see. I would not have you suppose, Sir, I mean to depreciate the talents of Voltaire; that is far from my intention; I would only vindicate the poet who of all others within my sphere of knowledge, and as far as my judgment extends, is infinitely the greatest. I should have sent you the verses before, because I know your reverence for my favourite bard,[[7]] but that I kept them to see if after sleeping two or three nights I still thought them fit to be read. I am yet in doubt; for any thing middling on such a subject is contemptible. However, I have not yet shewn them to any person, except you, Sir, and Mr Bonneville, at whose lodgings they were written.
‘Clad in the wealthy robes his genius wrought,
In happy dreams was gentle Shakspeare laid;
His pleas’d soul wand’ring through the realms of thought,
While all his elves and fairies round him play’d.
‘Voltaire approach’d—strait fled the quaint-eyed band,
For Envy’s breath such sprites may not endure:
He pilfer’d many a gem with trembling hand;
Then stabb’d the bard to make the theft secure.
‘Ungrateful man! Vain was thy black design: