If I had taken to the
church (as he affirms, but which was never in my thoughts), I should
have had more sense, if not more grace, than to have turned myself out
of my benefice by writing libels on my parishioners. But his account
of my manners and my principles are of a piece with his cavils and his
poetry; and so I have done with him for ever.
As for the City Bard, or Knight Physician, I hear his quarrel to me
is, that I was the author of _Absalom and Achitophel_, which he thinks
was a little hard on his fanatic patrons in London.
But I will deal the more civilly with his two poems, because nothing
ill is to be spoken of the dead, and therefore peace be to the Manes
of his Arthurs. I will only say that it was not for this noble knight
that I drew the plan of an Epic poem on King Arthur in my preface to
the translation of Juvenal. The guardian angels of kingdoms were
machines too ponderous for him to manage; and therefore he rejected
them, as Dares did the whirlbats of Eryx, when they were thrown before
him by Entellus. Yet from that preface he plainly took his hint; for
he began immediately upon his story, though he had the baseness not
to acknowledge his benefactor; but instead of it, to traduce me in a
libel.
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