Page:The Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets, Volume 4.djvu/352

348 tions with which it abounds, to the Queen; and a sermon preached before the House of Commons, 1729, on the martyrdom of King Charles, intituled, "An Apology for Princes, or the Reverence due to Government." But the "Second Discourse," the counterpart of his "Estimate," without which it cannot be called "a true estimate," though in 1728 it was announced as "soon to be published," never appeared; and his old friends the Muses were not forgotten. In 1730 he relapsed to poetry, and sent into the world "Imperium Pelagi: a Naval Lyrick, written in Imitation of Pindar's Spirit, occasioned by his Majesty's Return from Hanover, September 1729, and the succeeding Peace." It is inscribed to the Duke of Chandos. In the Preface we are told, that the Ode is the most spirited kind of Poetry, and that the Pindarick is the most spirited kind of Ode, "This I speak," he adds, "with sufficient candour, at my own very great peril. But truth has an eternal title to our confession, though we are sure to suffer by it." Behold, again, the fairest of poets. Young's "Imperium Pelagi" was ridiculed in Fielding’s "Tom Thumb;" but, let us not forget that it was Rh