To the right honourable, the Lady Katherine Roos.

Madam,

Such always has been the jurisdiction and so supreme and excellent the authority of the fair, noble and virtuous that poets seem to be created for no other purpose, but as anointed, to be the voice of their oracles and to attend and repeat them with as much reverence as priests do at the altars of the divinities they worship, to teach mankind how to honour them when living and when dead, to enlarge and transmit their noble actions to posterity. And whilst the world lasts, this will be the most spacious and delightful theme and will give the loftiest and divinest grace to poetry; this made Homer sing, he that was blind, had even that inspiration; and beauty from the beginning has never failed to have more adorers than the gods. Nay it has still had such power that it has been the author of as strange miracles. It has oft times made the miser a prodigal, the old, young, and the coward, valiant. What has it not done when joined with virtue? And what are you not able to inspire, in whom both excel, that your poet could never be said to run on too lavish in your encomium? For your fame would put a blush upon all, as too mean, that can be said of you; and not accuse me of flattery, if I could describe you with as much art as that rare painter who pictured his Venus with all the smiles and graces of womankind put together. How justly then have I heard the world admire at the infinite happiness of your lord. But pardon me, Madam, this is a stream would glide me insensibly away and if I do not check myself, I shall like inspired prophets say wonders not to be believed in such a style as our best poets have failed in. Therefore as one that is more a plain dealer than a courtier, I will leave myself severely to be censured by all that know you for not revealing your Ladyship’s character as I ought, rather than put angry blushes on your cheeks by an unexpected assault of so many rude phrases, for virtue so delicate and tender as yours is sooner touched and offended at the hearing of its just praises than at the calumny of the envious and detractors. And I protest to your Ladyship, I had rather owe my bread to charity than be thought to earn it at so vile a rate; only grant me leave to sail a little into the relation of the justness and gratitude of your Ladyship’s fortune. It is known that you are descended from the most noble house of the Noels and joined to that incomparable and princely family of the Manners; but let me say, by such a miracle, that never day appeared more beneficial to the benighted traveller than you over its clouded mansion, nor did the rainbow (the token of the almighty in the heavens, after the general deluge by the flood) to Noah's poor remaining progeny show itself more welcome and propitious than your Ladyship to the despairing and almost distracted family of the Rutlands, which after an unfortunate marriage, when it had long wandered upon the face of barren waters, you were at last discovered as a blessed and fruitful land to rest its weary ark upon and it may forever hereafter call. You, its good angel that in its flight from heaven first pitched upon the lofty and most graceful seat of Belvoir, whose antiquity, which I hope may ever last, will pay you more respect and adoration as to its preserver than it has done to its founder. For by your means and your illustrious offspring, England shall never want a branch that shall spread itself from so noble an original as your kind lord nor be the least of its glories that it can boast thereof. How much is to be admired the wisdom of the divine power which made so excellent a choice as your Ladyship, of whom it shall be said that Atlas has not supported the heavens with more fame than your Ladyship the tottering greatness of Belvoir. And the history of heroic women shall henceforth own you to be the greatest and noblest pattern of them all. Pardon me, Madam, I begin to fall into a relapse. I would not give the world an occasion to suspect that what I have said is but the prelude of a request I intend to beg of your Ladyship, which is that you would vouchsafe to accept of this poor poem and be pleased to let me set your name in the front of it, as princes put their arms over the doors of places they would have reverenced and esteemed. I will not then fear the wise critics, nor the conceited fops that are as curious in passing their censures on a young poet as your staunched beauties are to one that is newly cried up in the town; yet I doubt not but what you please to condescend to own, they will allow off. I am the rather emboldened to petition this of your Ladyship, because you are an encourager of poetry and I have been informed that not long since in the person of the famous earl of Rutland it has met with the most considerable patron that ever was. And all know that your gallant father, the present viscount Campden, is the best and greatest protector of wit and learning in this age. How can I fail then in my address to your Ladyship of either an acknowledgment beyond my desert, or at least a pardon for my faults, which I humbly implore you would not deny and is the greatest favour that can be hoped by, Madam,

Your Ladyship’s most humble, faithful and devoted servant,

John Banks.