Thus, my lord, your sickness is but the imitation of
your health; the poet but subordinate to the statesman in you; you
still govern men with the same address, and manage business with the
same prudence; allowing it here (as in the world) the due increase and
growth, till it comes to the just height; and then turning it when it
is fully ripe, and nature calls out, as it were, to be delivered.
With this only advantage of ease to you in your poetry, that you
have fortune here at your command; with which wisdom does often
unsuccessfully struggle in the world. Here is no chance, which you
have not foreseen; all your heroes are more than your subjects, they
are your creatures; and though they seem to move freely in all the
sallies of their passions, yet you make destinies for them, which
they cannot shun. They are moved (if I may dare to say so) like the
rational creatures of the Almighty Poet, who walk at liberty, in their
own opinion, because their fetters are invisible; when, indeed, the
prison of their will is the more sure for being large; and, instead of
an absolute power over their actions, they have only a wretched desire
of doing that, which they cannot chuse but do[1].
[Footnote 1: The earl of Orrery was author of several plays. If the
reader is not disposed to admit, that his habit of composing them,
when tormented by the gout, enhanced their value, it may be allowed to
apologise for their faults.
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