Page:Lives of Poets-Laureate.djvu/76

62 ignoble jostling of one another in the ante-chamber of a patrician. There are no pangs of jealousy, because Mæcenas smiled on one and passed another by unnoticed. Write what the public can read to its benefit or its pleasure, and by the sweat and labour of your brain you will earn your bread as independently as man can amid the mutual relations, "nice connections and strong dependencies" of the economy in which we live. The best will, for the most part, be the best rewarded; and though we cannot weed hate and envy from the human heart, there is an instinct in men which prompts them to acquiesce in what is fair and reasonable; and there will be less of railing and bickering when ability and exertion meet with their proportionate recompense, when success no longer depends on circumstance and accident, when a letter of introduction can no more clothe mediocrity in purple and fine linen, or the want of it leave genius in squalor and rags. Jonson's literary strifes must be again alluded to, though the quarrels of authors be neither a flattering or pleasing aspect of literary history.

He next produced "Every Man out of his Humour," which met with a favourable reception. This and all of his earliest and best productions were part of

And the Virgin Queen's honouring the performance with her presence called forth from the grateful poet the following tribute to her in the epilogue. It was spoken by Macilente, who kneels and prays:

Yet humble as the earth do I implore, O Heaven, that she, whose presence hath effected This change in me, may suffer most late change In her admired and happy government: