ADVERTISEMENT

TO THIS EDITION.

HE Rhapsodist is glad of the opportunity of sending abroad another edition, with correction and enlargement. He has at last done with his Hero, with whom he was more likely to tire the reader than himself. Thanks to Voltaire, who pulled the check-ftring! for he denounces "woe to him, who fays all he knows upon any fubject!" If this collection of anecdotes and quotations has been without a number of admirers, it has not wanted readers, who have fairly confeffed, that they have received entertainment from the perufal. It is the greatest praise of a compofition, that it can interest the eye or the ear, from the beginning

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to

to the end. There is no charge against this pamphlet for being the offspring of party that difcolours every thing, or of want that puts the pen into the hand. A production of this fort, as Pope says of poetry and criticifm, "is the affair of idle men who write in their closets, and of idle men who read there." The hope, whatever became of the expectation, which was indulged of pleasing every body, has not vanished in pleafing nobody. Though the fummer melted the pen in the hand of the effayist, the winter has not frozen his ink nor his inclination to prepare a fecond impreffion for a reperufal, and to preferve fome traditionary circumstances that were going down the ftream of time into the lake of Oblivion. Some weeks ago, the fecond volume of Dr. Warton made it's appearance, as fore

told

told in this publication. It is a work calculated for the entertainment of fcholars, and will have all for its admirers who are able to become its readers. This is intended to convey a popular account of the man and the Poet; the other, is a description of his genius, and contains judicious remarks on his performances. This is an historical Rhapsody, the other a critical one. One is for the English and unlearned readers, of both fexes; the other for the skillful in the languages.

AN

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ΑΝ

HISTORICAL RHAPSODY.

Fan art or invention is to be estimated and praised in proportion to the pleasure it communicates to mankind, the greatest thanks are certainly due to poetry and to poets. In vain were they ordered to be banished from the commonwealth of Plato. Little has their importance in the world been leffened by the degrading affertion, that the inventor of a wheelbarow has done more fervice to mankind, than the writer of the Iliad and the Odyffey. The great Newton has paffed his cenfure in vain, in declaring, that," after all, he could not help agreeing "with his friend Dr. Barrow, that poetry "was ingenious nonfenfe." How inconfiderable are the number of the readers of Sir Ifaac's nobleft performances, in comparison