vice and folly such as prevail in our country, corrupt our manners, deform even social life, and contribute to make us ridiculous as well as miserable, will claim respect for the sake of the vicious and the foolish.  It will be then no longer sufficient to spare persons; for to draw even characters of imagination must become criminal when the application of them to those of highest rank and greatest power cannot fail to be made.  You began to laugh at the ridiculous taste or the no taste in gardening and building of some men who are at great expense in both.  What a clamour was raised instantly!  The name of Timon was applied to a noble person with double malice, to make him ridiculous, and you, who lived in friendship with him, odious.  By the authority that employed itself to encourage this clamour, and by the industry used to spread and support it, one would have thought that you had directed your satire in that epistle to political subjects, and had inveighed against those who impoverish, dishonour, and sell their country, instead of making yourself inoffensively merry at the expense of men who ruin none but themselves, and render none but themselves ridiculous.  What will the clamour be, and how will the same authority foment it, when you proceed to lash, in other instances, our want of elegance even in luxury, and our wild profusion, the source of insatiable rapacity, and almost universal venality?  My mind forebodes that the time will come—­and who knows how near it may be?—­when other powers than those of Grub Street may be drawn forth against you, and when vice and folly may be avowedly sheltered behind a power instituted for better and contrary purposes—­for the punishment of one, and for the reformation of both.

But, however this may be, pursue your task undauntedly, and whilst so many others convert the noblest employments of human society into sordid trades, let the generous Muse resume her ancient dignity, re-assert her ancient prerogative, and instruct and reform, as well as amuse the world.  Let her give a new turn to the thoughts of men, raise new affections in their minds, and determine in another and better manner the passions of their hearts.  Poets, they say, were the first philosophers and divines in every country, and in ours, perhaps, the first institutions of religion and civil policy were owing to our bards.  Their task might be hard, their merit was certainly great.  But if they were to rise now from the dead they would find the second task, if I mistake not, much harder than the first, and confess it more easy to deal with ignorance than with error.  When societies are once established and Governments formed, men flatter themselves that they proceed in cultivating the first rudiments of civility, policy, religion, and learning.  But they do not observe that the private interests of many, the prejudices, affections, and passions of all, have a large share in the work, and often the largest.  These put a sort of bias on the mind,