ALL my friends, learned and unlearned, have me not to publish this Satire with my name. If I w be "turn'd from the career of my humour by qu quick, and paper bullets of the brain," I should have plied with their counsel. But I am not to be terrifi abuse, or bullied by reviewers, with or without arms. safely say that I have attacked none personally who d commence on the offensive. An Author's works are 1 property: he who purchases may judge, and publi opinion if he pleases; and the Authors I have endeav to commemorate may do by me as I have done by t I dare say they will succeed better in scribblings, than in mending their own. not to prove that I can write well, nake others write better. condemning But my ob but, if possibl As the Poem has met with far more success than ected, I have endeavoured in this Edition to make resent Edition they are erased, and some uted in their stead; my only reason for hich I conceive would operate with any the same manner: a determination not my name any production which was not sively my own composition. the real talents of many of the poetical rformances are mentioned, or alluded to, pages, it is presumed by the Author that le difference of opinion in the Public at Zike other sectaries, each has his separate selytes, by whom his abilities are overrated, ▪ked, and his metrical canons received withwithout consideration. But the unques on of considerable genius by several of the asured, renders their mental prostitution retted. Imbecility may be pitied, or, at t and forgotten; perverted powers demand reprehension. No one can wish more than t some known and able writer had under-sure, but Mr. GIFFORD has devoted him prevalent and distressing rabies for rhyming.—As i Edinburgh Reviewers; it would, indeed, require a H les to crush the Hydra; but if the Author succeeds in n bruising one of the heads of the serpent," though hi hand should suffer in the encounter, he will be amply fied. |