curious to neglect inquiring into the authors of the very age before you. And to think that this Insolent, in the account he is preparing for your view, designs to reduce them to a number so insignificant as I am ashamed to mention, it moves my zeal and my spleen for the honour and interest of our vast flourishing body, as well as of myself, for whom I know by long experience he has professed, and still continues, a peculiar malice.

It is not unlikely, that when your Highness will one day peruse what I am now writing, you may be ready to expostulate with your governor upon the credit of what I here affirm, and command him to show you some of our productions: to which he will answer (for I am well informed of his designs) by asking your Highness where they are, and what is become of them? and pretend it a demonstration that there never were any, because they are not then to be found. Not to be found! Who has mislaid them? Are they sunk in the abyss of things? It is certain that in their own nature they were light enough to swim upon the surface for all eternity, therefore the fault is in him who tied weights so heavy to their heels as to depress them to the centre. Is their very essence destroyed? who has annihilated. them? were they drowned by purges or martyred by pipes? who administered them to the posteriors

of? But that it may no longer be a doubt with your Highness who is to be the author of this universal ruin, I beseech you to observe that large and terrible scythe which your governor affects to bear continually about him. Be pleased to remark the length and strength, the sharpness and hardness of his nails and teeth; consider his baneful, abominable breath, enemy to life and matter, infectious, and corrupting, and then reflect whether it be possible for any mortal ink or paper of this generation to make a suitable resistance. Oh that your Highness would one day resolve to disarm this usurping maire du palais* of his furious engines, and bring your empire hors de page.t

It were endless to recount the several methods of tyranny and destruction which your governor is pleased to practise on this occasion. His inveterate. malice is such to the writings of our age, that of several thousands produced yearly from this renowned city, before the next revolution of the sun there is not one to be heard of. Unhappy infants, many of them barbarously destroyed before they have so

* Comptroller. The kingdom of France had a race of kings which they call les rois faineans, from their doing nothing, who lived lazily in their apartments, while the kingdom was administered by the maire de palais, till Charles Martel, the last mayor, put his master to death, and took the kingdom into his own hand.-Hawkes.

+ Out of guardianship.

much as learned their mother tongue to beg for pity! Some he stifles in their cradles, others he frights into convulsions, whereof they suddenly die : some he flays alive, others he tears limb from limb. Great numbers are offered to Moloch, and the rest, tainted by his breath, die of a languishing consumption.

But the concern I have most at heart is for our corporation of poets, from whom I am preparing a petition to your Highness, to be subscribed with the names of one hundred and thirty-six of the first rate, but whose immortal productions are never likely to reach your eyes, though each of them is now humble and an earnest appellant for the laurel, and has large comely volumes to show for a support to his pretensions. The never-dying works of these illustrious persons, your governor, sir, has devoted to unavoidable death; and your Highness is to be made believe that our age has never arrived at the honour to produce one single poet.

We confess immortality to be a great and powerful goddess: but in vain we offer up to her our devotions, and our sacrifices, if your Highness' governor, who has usurped the priesthood, must, by an unparalleled ambition and avarice, wholly intercept and devour them.

To affirm that our age is altogether unlearned, and

devoid of writers in any kind, seems to be an assertion so bold and so false, that I have been sometimes thinking the contrary may almost be provoked by uncontrollable demonstration. It is true, indeed, that although their numbers be vast, and their productions numerous in proportion, yet they are hurried so hastily off the scene that they escape our memory and elude our sight. When I first thought of this address, I had prepared a copious list of titles to present your Highness, as an undisputed argument for what I affirm: the originals were posted fresh upon all gates and corners of streets; but returning in a very few hours to take a review, they were all torn down, and fresh ones in their places. I inquired after them among readers and booksellers, but I inquired in vain; the memorial of them was lost among men, their place was no more to be found; and I was laughed to scorn for a clown and a pedant, without all taste and refinement, little versed in the course of present affairs, and that knew nothing of what had passed in the best companies of court and town. So that I can only avow in general to your Highness that we do abound in learning and wit; but to fix upon particulars is a task too slippery for my slender abilities. If I should venture, in a windy day, to affirm to your Highness that there is a large cloud near the horizon in the form of a bear, another

in the zenith with the head of an ass, a third to the westward with claws like a dragon, and your Highness should in a few minutes think fit to examine the truth, it is certain they would all be changed in figure and position: new ones would arise, and all we could agree upon would be, that clouds there were, but that I was grossly mistaken in the zoography and topography of them.

But your governor, perhaps, may still insist, and put the question, What is, then, become of those immense bales of paper which must have needs been employed in such numbers of books? Can these, also, be wholly annihilate, and so of a sudden as I pretend? What shall I say in return of so invidious an objection? it ill befits the distance between your Highness and me to send you for ocular conviction to a jakes or an oven, to the windows of a brothel, or to a sordid lantern. Books, like men, their authors, have no more than one way of coming into the world, but there are ten thousand to go out of it and return

no more.

I profess to your Highness, in the integrity of my heart, that what I am going to say is literally true this minute I am writing. What revolutions may happen before it shall be ready for your perusal I can by no means warrant. However, I beg of you to accept it as a specimen of our learning, our polite