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To my much honoured Friend the Author, on his most Excellent Epigrams.

Take heed ye crabbed Criticks, how
Ye censure; he that weares a brow
Curld up in furrow's, viewing these,
Is Traytor to th' Aonides.
Friend, (though without thy Lawrell on)
Feare not the conflagration

Of any (foolish) fiery Spirit,
Though he did Typhons yre inherit,
Thy Epigrams have strength and skill,
To sink him underneath a hill,
More ponderous then Ætnas loade,
Chiefe Darling to the Delphian God.
Th' Mnemosinides doate on thee,
(Those Ymps of Jove and Memory)
In this our Brittish Horizon
On JUDGEMENT, and INVENTION,
(The two wings with which MARTIAL flew)
Thou soar'st a pitch he never knew,
Rich in all knowledge; thou dost twist
The Poet, and Mythologist,
And (with a FIAT more then man)
The Catholick and Affrican.
Me thinks I heare sweet Martial mourne,
See; he with tears bedews his Urne
Angry, thou art as great as he
In all (save th' Art of Flattery)
He had a Cæsar, who at least
Gave him a Graunge (though else a beast)
But thou (his Rivall) canst find none,
Worthy a Dedication;
For who would force his Muse to trudge
To him that knows not how to judge
Nay, (which to water thrills my blood)
Cares not to gratifie a good.

But thus it hap't with him to fare,
In whom all Arts included are.
Homer, who doth all Judgments fix,
More then the dark Apocalyps,
Yet though reward crawle backward; this
Make thy Asylum; thou'lt not misse
Eternall Fame, the after times,
As Diamonds will prize thy Rimes,
And though the Parcæ gall thy thread,
Thou shalt survive when thou art dead:
And while thou liv'st, the wiser few
Who know the worth of wit, what's due)
To such a Genius as is thine,
So quaint so terse, and so Divine)
Will count it glory for to be
Partakers of thy Amitie.
This I pronounce (as back'd by Fate)
All know I scorn to Adulate.
Andrew Dixon.
previous section Epigrams theological, philosophical, and romantick
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