'T is true, I should be glad if I could persuade him to continue his good offices, and write such another critique on anything of mine for I find by experience he has a great stroke with the reader, when he condemns any of my poems, to make the world have a better opinion of them.

He has taken some pains with my poetry, but nobody will be persuaded to take the same with his.

If I had taken to the Church, (as he affirms, but which was never in my thoughts,) I should have had more sense, if not more grace, than to have turn'd myself out of my benefice by writing libels on my parishioners.

But his account of my manners and my principles are of a piece with his cavils and his poetry; and so I have done with him for ever.
As for the City Bard, or Knight Physician, I hear his quarrel to me is that I was the author of _Absalom and Achitophel_, which, he thinks, is a little hard on his fanatic patrons in London.
But I will deal the more civilly with his two poems, because nothing ill is to be spoken of the dead; and therefore peace be to the _manes_ of his _Arthurs_.

I will only say that it was not for this noble knight that I drew the plan of an epic poem on King Arthur, in my preface to the translation of Juvenal.