[226]: I have done something, so far to conquer my own spirit as to ask it.
[227]: More libels have been written against me than almost any man now living. I have seldom answered any scurrilous lampoon, and, being naturally vindictive, have suffered in silence, and possessed my soul in quiet.
[228]: I shall say the less of Mr Collier, because in many things he has taxed me justly; and I have pleaded guilty to all thoughts or expressions of mine, which can be truly argued of obscenity, profaneness, or immorality; and retract them.—If he be my enemy, let him triumph. If he be my friend, and I have given him no personal occasion to be otherwise, he will be glad of my repentance.»—Il y a de l'esprit dans ce qui suit: «He is too much given to horseplay in his raillery, and comes to battle, like a Dictator from the plough; I will not say: the zeal of God's house has eaten him up; but I am sure it has devoured some part of his good manners and civility. (Préface des Fables.)
[229]: Thoughts, such as they are, come crowding in so fast upon me, that my only difficulty is to chuse or to reject; to run them into verses or to give them the other harmony of prose. I have so long studied and practised both, that they are grown into habit and become familiar to me.
[230]: They who can criticise so weakly as to imagine that I have done my worst may be convinced at their own cost, that I can write severely with more ease, than I can gently.
[231]: Charles Ier.
[232]: Le duc de Monmouth.
[233]: Le comte de Shaftesbury.
Of these false Achitophel was first;
A name to all succeeding ages curst:
For close designs and crooked counsels fit;
Sagacious, bold, and turbulent of wit;
Restless, unfix'd in principles and place;
In power unpleas'd, impatient of disgrace:
A fiery soul, which, working out its way,
Fretted the pigmy body to decay,
And o'er-inform'd the tenement of clay.
A daring pilot in extremity;
Pleas'd with the danger when the waves went high,
He sought the storms; but, for a calm unfit,
Would steer too nigh the sands to boast his wit.
Great wits are sure to madness near allied,
And thin partitions do their bounds divide;
Else why should he, with wealth and honour blest,
Refuse his age the needful hours of rest?
Punish a body which he could not please,
Bankrupt of life, yet prodigal of ease?
And all to leave what with his toil he won,
To that unfeather'd two-legg'd thing, a son;
Got, while his soul did huddled notions try,
And born a shapeless lump, like anarchy.
In friendship false, implacable in hate;
Resolv'd to ruin or to rule the state.
[234]: Le duc de Buckingham.