"ever perfuade me to part with d." Our poet had charitably endeavoured to administer a cure to it: But he telleth us plainly, "My superiors perhaps may be "mended by him; but for my part I own myself in"corrigible. I look upon my Follies as the best part "of my Fortune e." And with good reason: We fee to what they have brought him!

Secondly, ,' as to Buffoonry, "Is it (faith he) a time "of day for me to leave off these fooleries, and set up ❝a new character ? ́I can no more put off my Follies

than my Skin; I have often tried, but they stick "too close to me: nor am I fure my friends are dif"pleased with them, for in this light I afford them "frequent matter of mirth, &c. &c. f"

Having then fo publickly declared himself incorrigible, he is become dead in law (I mean the law Epopoeian), and devolveth upon the Poet as his property; who may take him, and deal with him as if he had been dead as long as an old Egyptian hero; that is to fay, embowel and embalm him for pofterity.

Nothing therefore (we conceive) remaineth to hinder his own prophecy of himself from taking immediate effect. A rare felicity! and what few Prophets have had the fatisfaction to fee, alive! Nor can we conclude better than with that extraordinary one of his, which is conceived in thefe Oraculous words, MY DULNESS WILL FIND SOMEBODY TO DO IT RIGHT %.

d Life, p. 424. P. 243. octavo edit.

f P. 17.

e P. 19.

"Tandem

F 3

7 RICARDUS ARISTARCHUS, &c.

<< Tandem Phœbus adeft, morfufque inferre parantem "Congelat, et patulos, ut erant, INDURAT hiatush ̧”

h Ovid, of the serpent biting at Orpheus's head,

By

By AUTHORITY.

By virtue of the Authority in Us velled by the Act for fubjecting Poets to the Power of a Licenser, we have reviled this Piece where finding the style and appellation of KING to have been given to a certain Pretender, Pfeudo-Poet, or Phantom, of the name of TIBBALD; and apprehending the lame may be deemed in lome fort a Reflection on Majefty, or at least an InCult on that Legal Authority which has bellowed on another Perlon the Crown of Poefy: We have ordered the laid Pretender, Pfeudo-Poet, or Phantom, utterly to vanish and evaporate out of this work: And do declare the laid Throne of Poely from henceforth to be abdicated and vacant, unlels duly and lawfully Cupplied by the LAUREATE himself. And it is hereby enacted, that no other perlon do presume to fill the lame.

၁C. Ch.

THE Propofition, the Invocation, and the Infcription. Then the Original of the great Empire of Dulness, and cause of the continuance thereof. The College of the Goddess in the City, with her private Academy for Poets in particular; the Governors of it, and the four Cardinal Virtues. Then the Poem haftes into the midst of things, presenting her, on the evening of a Lord Mayor's day, revolving the long fucceffion of her Sons, and the glories paft and to come. She fixes her eye on Bays* to be the Inftrument of that great Event which is the Subject of the Poem. He is described pensive among his Books, giving up the Cause, and apprehending the Period of

VARIATION.

her

* In the first editions Tibbald was the Hero of the Poem, which will account for most of the subsequent variations,