since the family of the Attici is and ought to
be above the common forms of concluding letters, that I may take my
leave in the words of Cicero to the first of them: _Me, O Pomponi,
valde paenitet vivere: tantum te oro, ut quoniam me ipse semper amasti,
ut eodem amore sis; ego nimirum idem sum. Inimici mei mea mihi non
meipsum ademerunt. Cura, Attice, ut valeas._

Dabam. Cal.
Jan. 1690.

Footnotes:
1. In order to escape as far as possible the odium, which after the
Revolution was attached to Dryden's politics and religion, he seems
occasionally to have sought for patrons amongst those Nobles of
opposite principles, whom moderation, or love of literature,
rendered superior to the suggestions of party rancour; or, as he
himself has expressed it in the Dedication of "Amphitryon," who,
though of a contrary opinion themselves, blamed him not for
adhering to a lost cause, and judging for himself what he could not
chuse but judge. Philip Sidney, the third earl of Leicester, had
taken an active part against the king in the civil wars, had been
named one of his judges, though he never look his seat among the
regicides, and had been one of Cromwell's Council of State. He was
brother of the famous Algernon Sidney, and although retired from
party strife, during the violent contests betwixt the Whigs and
Tories in 1682-3, there can be no doubt which way his inclinations
leaned. He died 6th March, 1696-7, aged more than eighty years. Mr
Malone has strongly censured the strain of this Dedication, because
it represents Leicester as abstracted from parties and public
affairs, notwithstanding his active share in the civil wars. Yet
Dryden was not obliged to draw the portrait of his patron from his
conduct thirty years before; and if Leicester's character was to be
taken from the latter part of his life, surely the praise of
moderation is due to him, who, during the factious contests of
Charles II's. reign, in which his own brother made so conspicuous a
figure, maintained the neutrality of Pomponius Atticus.

2. When Henrietta Maria, widow of Charles I. and queen-dowager of
England, visited her son after the Restoration, she chose
Somerset-House for her residence, and added all the buildings
fronting the river. Cowley, whom she had long patronised, composed
a poem on the "Queen's repairing Somerset-House," to which our
author refers. Mr Malo