been a follower of Fortune or Succefs; he has lived with the Great without flattery; been a friend to Men in power, without penfions, from whom, as he asked, fo he received, no favour, but what was done Him in his Friends. As his Satires were the more just for being delayed, fo were his Panegyrics; beftowed only on fuch perfons as he had familiarly known, only for fuch virtues as he had long obferved in them, and only at fuch times as others cease to praise, if not begin to calumniate them, I mean when out of power or out of fashion. A fatire, therefore, on writers fo notorious for the contrary practice, became no man fo well as himself; as none, it is plain, was fo little in their friendships, or fo much in that of those whom they had most abused, namely the Greatest and Best of all Parties. Let me add a further reason, that, though engaged in their Friendships, he never espoused their Animofities; and can almoft fingly challenge this honour, not to have written a line of any man, which, through Guilt, through Shame, or through Fear, through variety of Fortune, or change of Interefts, he was ever unwilling to own.

As Mr. Wycherley, at the time the Town declaimed against his book of Poems; Mr. Walsh, after his death; Sir William Trumbull, when he had refigned the Office of Secretary of State; Lord Bolingbroke, at his leaving England, after the Queen's death; Lord Oxford, in his laft decline of life; Mr. Secretary Craggs, at the end of the South-Sea year, and after his death: Others only in Epitaphs.

I fhall

I fhall conclude with remarking, what a pleasure it must be to every reader of Humanity, to fee all along, that our Author, in his very laughter, is not indulging his own ill-nature, but only punishing that of others. As to his Poem, thofe alone are capable of doing it justice, who, to use the words of a great writer, know how hard it is (with regard both to his fubject and his manner) VETUSTIS DARE NOVITATEM, OBSOLETIS NITOREM, OBSCURIS LUCEM,

ΓΙΑΜ,

FASTIDITIS GRA

I am

St. James's, Dec. 22d, 1728.

Your most humble Servant,

WILLIAM CLELAND,

d This gentleman was of Scotland, and bred at the Univerfity of Utrecht, with the Earl of Mar. He ferved in Spain under Earl Rivers. After the Peace, he was made one of the Commiffioners of the Customs in Scotland, and then of Taxes in England; in which, having fhewn himself for twenty years diligent, punctual, and incorruptible, (though without any other affiftance of Fortune) he was fuddenly difplaced by the Minifter, in the fixty-eighth year of his age; and died two months after, in 1741. He was a perfon of universal Learning, and an enlarged Conversation; no man had a warmer heart for his Friend, or a fincerer attachment to the Conftitution of his Country.

MAR

MARTINUS SCRIBLERUS

HIS

Prolegomena and Illustrations

TO THЕ

DUNCIA D:

WITH THE

Hypercritics of ARISTARCHUS.