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DEDICATION AND PREFACE

TO THE

FABLE S:

FIRST PRINTED IN FOLIO, IN 1700.

DEDICATION

OF

FABLES, ANCIENT AND MODERN.

TO HIS GRACE

THE DUKE OF ORMOND.7

MY LORD,

SOME

ME estates are held in England by paying a fine at the change of every lord. I have enjoyed the patronage of your family from the time of your excellent grandfather to this present day. I have dedicated the translation of the Lives of Plutarch to the first Duke; and have celebrated the memory of your heroick father. Though I

James, the second Duke of Ormond, was the eldest son of Thomas, Earl of Ossory, of whom some account has already been given. See vol. ii. p. 388. He was born in the Castle of Dublin about the year 1662, and in 1683 married Lady Anne Hyde, one of the daughters of Laurence, Earl of Rochester; who dying in 1685, he married Lady Mary Somerset, second daughter of Henry, Duke of Beaufort. On the landing of King William the Third, he was one of the first of the nobility who joined that Prince at Sherborne; and was made by him a Lord of his

am very short of the age of Nestor, yet I have lived to a third third generation of your house; and by

Bedchamber, and Knight of the Garter. In the subsequent reign he filled several high offices, civil and military; but soon after the accession of George the First, being zealously attached to the Pretender, with whom it is now well known, that he, Lord Bolingbroke, the Duke of Marlborough, Bishop Atterbury, and others, held a correspondence previous to the death of Queen Anne, he fled, and was attainted by act of Parliament. He died in Spain, from whence his body was brought to England, and interred in Westminster Abbey, May 22, 1746.

In confirmation of what has here been stated, with respect to the Duke of Ormond and the Bishop of Rochester, I subjoin the following anecdote, communicated to Mr. Spence by Dr. Lockier, already mentioned.

Upon the death of the Queen, Ormond, Atterbury, and Lord Mareschall, held a private conversation together, in which Atterbury desired the latter to go out immediately, and to proclaim the PRETENDER in form. Ormond, who was more afraid of consequences, desired to communicate it first to the Council. "Damn it, says Atterbury, in a great heat, (for he did not value swearing,) you very well know that things have not been concerted enough for that yet, and that we have not a moment to lose." Indeed, it was the only thing they could have done: such a bold step would have made people believe they were a great deal stronger than they really were, and might have taken strangely. The late King, [George I.] I am fully persuaded, would not have stirred a foot, if there had been a strong opposition.'

A few years afterwards the Bishop of Rochester being sent to the Tower, "upon its being said in the Drawing

your Grace's favour, am admitted still to hold from you by the same tenure.

I am not vain enough to boast that I have deserved the value of so illustrious a line; but my fortune is the greater, that for three descents they have been pleased to distinguish my poems from those of other men; and have accordingly made me their peculiar care. May it be permitted me to say, that as your grandfather and father were cherished and adorned with honours by two successive monarchs, so I have been esteemed and patronized by the grandfather, the father, and the son, descended from one of the most ancient, most conspicuous, and most deserving families in Europe.

room, What shall we do with the man? Lord Cadogan answered, Fling him to the lions. The Bishop was told of this; and soon after, in a letter to Mr. Pope, said, that he had fallen upon some verses, which he must copy out for him to read. These were four extreme severe lines against Lord Cadogan ;"—which are said to have run thus:

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By fear unmoved, by shame unaw’d,

Offspring of hangman and of bawd;

Ungrateful to the ungrateful man he grew by, "A bold bad boist'rous blust'ring bloody booby."

Spence's ANECDOTES. This anecdote was communicated by Pope, who, however, only recollected the concluding line. The other lines were furnished by another hand.

The violence of Atterbury's temper, and Tickell's encomium on Lord Cadogan, induce me to believe that these sarcastick verses were merely the effect of partyspleen, and had no foundation in truth whatsoever.

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