Sir Richard Steel, and Sir John Vanbrugh were at the fame time comic authors and members of parliament. The primacy of doctor Tillotson, the embaffy of Mr. Prior, Sir Ifaac Newton's employment, Mr. Addison's fecretaryship are but the common consequences of the regard and efteem, in which men of fuperior parts are held among you. They are enriched by you during their lives, and on their decease, you erect them monuments and ftatues. Even your celebrated actreffes are placed in the churches next to your famous poets. Mrs. Bracegirdle and Mrs: Oldfield who both fucceeded in the great art to please, as foon as their courfe was over, were honourably conducted to the eternal refting-place of all your lettered. republic; where they are magnificently lodged While our divine Moliere who much better deferved fuch honours, could hardly obtain the cold fatisfaction of being placed' in a common church-yard; and the amiable le Couvreur whofe eyes I closed, was denied the accustomed ceremony of burial. This perfon formerly fo honoured:

honoured and fo much admired, was now, thro' charity thrown into a hackney coach, and carried to the banks of the river Seine, where the lies interred. Does not the god of love feem to strike with anger and with horror at this relation, and breaking his arrows, fly away? does not Melpomene in tears abandon and depart the ungrateful spot which fhe fo long adorned with her noble charms ?

Every thing feems to bring back the French to that barbarism from which we were raised by Lewis the fourteenth and cardinal Richelieu. Woe to the politicians who do not know the value of the fine arts! The earth is covered with nations as powerful as we are. How comes it, notwithstanding, that we look upon almost all of them with little esteem? It is for the fame reason that in fociety we despise a rich man without taste or education. Above all things, do not imagine that this empire of the mind, this honour of being the model of other nations is at frivolous advantage. It is an infallible mark of the grandeur of an empire: It

has

has been always under the greateft princes, that arts have flourished, and their decline has fometimes been the epoch of that of the state. Hiftory is full of fuch examples; but this fubject would lead me too far: Adieu, my good friend; continue cultivating the Belles-Lettres and philosophy, without forgetting to fend fhips to the Mediterranean.

SECOND

SECOND EPISTLE

To Sir EVERARD FALKENer,

Ambaffador at Conftantinople.

Taken from the fecond edition of Zara.

MY

Y dear friend; for your new dignity of ambaffador renders our friendship only more refpectable, and does not hinder me from making use of a title more facred than that of public minifter. The name of Friend is much fuperior to that of Excellence.

I dedicate to the ambaffador of a great king, and of a free nation, the fame. work which I dedicated to the private citizen, the english merchant.

They who know to what point commerce is honoured in your country, know alfo, that a merchant there is fometimes a legiflator, a good officer, a public mini

fter.

Some

Some people depraved by the bafe custom of paying homage to grandeur alone, strove to throw a ridicule on the novelty of a dedication to a man who then had only merit of his fide. They had the impudence to infult on a stage confecrated to falfe tafte and to detraction*, the author of that dedication, and the man who received it; they had the impudence to upbraid him with being a merchant. You must not impute to our nation fo great a barbarity, which the most unpolished nations would be ashamed of. The magiftrates, who, among us, are entrusted with the care of our manners, and who are continually bufied in fuppreffing fcandalous practices, were, on this occafion, deceived. But the con tempt and horror of the public for the known author of this base attempt, are

There was a low farce acted on the Italian comic theatre at Paris, in which feveral perfons of merit were grofly infulted; and among the reft, Sir Everard Falkener. The public treated this undertaking with all the diflike and contempt it. deferved. Voltaire.

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