Dignum Laude virum Mufa p vetat mori, Cælo, 9 Mufa beat. Sic r Jovis interest Optatis epulis impiger Hercules: Clarum s Tyndaridæ fidus ab infimis t Quaffas eripiunt æquoribus rates: Ornatus viridi tempora pampino 30 Liber " vota bonos ducit ad exitus. 35 AP common poet can revive The man who once has been alive : But Mac revives, by magic power, The man who never liv'd before. Such hocus pocus tricks, I own, Belong to Gallic bards alone. My 1 mufe would think her power enough, ba 65 Then r Doctor K-, that broad divine, With lords and dukes fhould ever dine; Poft, prate, and preach, for years on years, 70 THE DEAN AND THE SQUIRE. A POLITICAL ECLOGUE: HUMBLY DEDICATED TO SOAME JENYNS, ESQ. REMEMBER that the principles, for which the WHIGS "struggle, are the foundation of our prefent Government, "which they apprehend to be undermined, whenever Tory "maxims are openly avowed." Addrefs to the Cocoa-Tree [A CARD. The Author prefents his best respects to the Reader, and begs that he would do him the favour to read the two first heads of Mr. Jenyns's feventh Difquifition, before he cuts open this pam-. phlet, that he may perceive the full force of the allufions here made to that wonderful performance. If the delicacy of fome readers fhould be offended at the broadness of the jeft in the following Eclogue, he is willing, like the ingenious author of the Walloons, to fubmit to correction, a cor. rection to which, if he finds himself justly obnoxious, he shall withdraw the passages, and own himfelf both edified and flattered by it. Nay, he does not know (if his Bookfeller will agree to it) but he hall, for the future, only write fentimentally.] ** See an ricle in a late news-paper. DEDICATION, TO SOAME JENYNS, Esq SIR, WHEN I lately read your Difquifition on Government and Civil Liberty, it gave me much concern to find, that you had not written it in verfe. Such images and fuch fentiments, fuch wit and fuch arguments, were furely too good to be wasted on profe. And you who have written verfe fo long, and with fo much facility, are highly inexcufeable for not having employed that talent on fo important an occafion as the prefent, when you had taken upon you to confute "fo many abfurd "principles concerning government and liberty, which have of late been diffeminated with un. "ufual industry;" principles, let me add, which were still more induftriously diffeminated at the Revolution by Locke, at the Acceffion by Hoadley, and a hundred years before either, by Hooker; principles, which you fay, are as falfe as "mischievous, as inconfiftent with common fense 66 as with all human fociety, and which reVOL. II. 66' quire D "quire nothing more than to be fairly stated, to "be refuted." The pious poet, Herbert, I think tells us, that "A verfe may catch him, who a fermon flies." Why then should you discard verfe, when you intend to catch fuch carelefs readers as would be apt to fly a fermon? Why, by dividing your dif course into five methodical heads, thould you make it appear as formal as the gravest pulpit-lecture ever delivered by old bishop Beveridge, or young bishop Bagot? I proteft, Mr. Jenyns, I cannot account for this ftrange proceeding. However, that fuch fort of readers may read you, I have attempted to do that for your benefit and theirs which you would not do for them, or for yourself and unequal as I am to the task, have dreft up your two first, and as I think, principal topics, in as easy and fashionable metre as I was capable of writing. I know you would have done this much better. But, as my work is but a fragment, I am not without my hopes, that what I have done may be a fpur to your indolence, and that you may be tempted not only to correct, but complete it. But |