All For Love, John Dryden [best ereader for pc .TXT] 📗

nd Baron Osborne of Kiveton, in Yorkshire; Lord High Treasurerof England, one of His Majesty's Most Honourable Privy Council,and Knight of the Most Noble Order of the Garter.

My Lord,

The gratitude of poets is so troublesome a virtue to great men,that you are often in danger of your own benefits: for you arethreatened with some epistle, and not suffered to do good inquiet, or to compound for their silence whom you have obliged.Yet, I confess, I neither am or ought to be surprised at thisindulgence; for your lordship has the same right to favourpoetry, which the great and noble have ever had--

Carmen amat, quisquis carmine digna gerit.

There is somewhat of a tie in nature betwixt those who are bornfor worthy actions, and those who can transmit them to posterity;and though ours be much the inferior part, it comes at leastwithin the verge of alliance; nor are we unprofitable membersof the commonwealth, when we animate others to those virtues,which we copy and describe from you.