[78] I
have found nothing like a trace of jealousy in that large and benignant
nature. In his vindication of the "Duke of Guise," he says, with honest
confidence in himself: "Nay, I durst almost refer myself to some of the
angry poets on the other side, whether I have not rather countenanced and
assisted their beginnings than hindered them from rising." He seems to
have been really as indifferent to the attacks on himself as Pope
pretended to be. In the same vindication he says of the "Rehearsal," the
only one of them that had any wit in it, and it has a great deal: "Much
less am I concerned at the noble name of Bayes; that's a brat so like his
own father that he cannot be mistaken for any other body. They might as
reasonably have called Tom Sternhold Virgil, and the resemblance would
have held as well." In his Essay on Satire he says: "And yet we know that
in Christian charity all offences are to be forgiven as we expect the
like pardon for those we daily commit against Almighty God. And this
consideration has often made me tremble when I was saying our Lord's
Prayer; for the plain condition of the forgiveness which we beg is the
pardoning of others the offences which they have done to us; for which
reason I have many times avoided the commission of that fault, even when
I have been notoriously provoked.
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