d; especially him whom you first
described, he is the very _Withers_ of the City. They have bought more
Editions of his works, than would serve to lay under all their pies at
the Lord Mayor's Christmas. When his famous poem [_i.e., Speculum
Speculativium; Or, A Considering Glass, Being an Inspection into the
present and late sad condition of these Nations.... London. Written June
xiii. XDCLX, and there imprinted the same year_] first came out in the
year 1660, I have seen them read it in the midst of Change time. Nay, so
vehement were they at it, that they lost their bargain by the candles'
ends! But what will you say, if he has been received among the Great
Ones? I can assure you, he is, this day, the envy of a Great Person, who
is Lord in the Art of Quibbling; and who does not take it well, than any
man should intrude so far into his province."

"All I would wish," replied CRITES, "is that they who love his writings,
may still admire him and his fellow poet. _Qui Bavium non odit &c._, is
curse sufficient."

"And farther," added LISIDEIUS; "I believe there is no man who writes
well; but would think himself very hardly dealt with, if their admirers
should praise anything of his. _Nam quos contemnimus eorum quoque laudes
contemnimus_."

"There are so few who write well, in this Age," said CRITES, "that
methinks any praises should be welcome. They neither rise to the dignity
of the last Age, nor to any of the Ancients: and we may cry out of the
Writers of this Time, with more reason than PETRONIUS of his, _Pace
vestra liceat dixisse, primi omnium eloquentiam perdidistis_! 'You have
debauched the true old Poetry so far, that Nature (which is the Soul of
it) is not in any of your writings!'"

"If your quarrel," said EUGENIUS, "to those who now write, be grounded
only upon your reverence to Antiquity; there is no man more ready to
adore those great Greeks and Romans than I am: but, on the other side, I
cannot think so contemptibly of the Age I live in, or so dishonourably of
my own Country as not to judge [that] we equal the Ancients in most kinds
of Poesy, and in some, surpass them; neither know I any reason why I may
not be as zealous for the reputation of our Age, as we find the Ancients
themselves, in reference to those who lived before them. For you hear
HORACE saying

"_Indignor quidquam reprehendi, non quia crasse
Compositum, ille pide've putetur, sed quia nuper._

"And, after,

"Si meliora dies,