All that have any taste of poetry will agree, that the great burlesque is much to be preferred to the low. It is much easier to make a great thing appear little, than a little one great: Cotton and others of a very low genius have done the former; but Philips, Garth, and Boileau, only the latter. A picture in miniature is every painter's talent; but a piece for a cupola, where all the figures are enlarged, yet proportioned to the eye, requires a master's hand. It must ftill be more acceptable than the low burlesque, because the images of the latter are mean and filthy, and the language itself entirely unknown to all men of good breeding. The ftyle of Billingfgate would not make a very agreeable figure at St. James's. A gentleman would take but little pleasure in language, which he would think it hard to be accosted in, or in reading words which he could not pronounce without blushing. The lofty burlefque is the more to be admired, because, to write it, the author must be mafter of two of the most different talents in nature. nature. A talent to find out and expose what is ridiculous, is very different from that which is to raise and elevate. We must read Virgil and Milton for the one, and Horace and Hudibras for the other. We know that the authors of excellent comedies have often failed in the grave ftyle, and the tragedian as often in comedy. Admiration and Laughter are of fuch oppofite natures, that they are feldom created by the fame person. The man of mirth is always obferving the follies and weakneffes, the ferious writer the virtues or crimes of mankind; one is pleased with contemplating a beau, the other a hero: Even from the fame object they would draw. different ideas: Achilles would appear in very different lights to Therfites and Alexander. The one would admire the courage and greatness of his foul; the other would ridicule the vanity and rashness of his temper. As the fatyrift fays to Hanibal: I curre per Alpes, Ut pueris placeas, & declamatio fias. The contrariety of ftyle to the fubject pleases the more strongly, because it is more furprifing; the expectation of the reader is plea pleasantly deceived, who expects an humble style from the subject, or a great subject from the style. It pleases the more universally, because it is agreeable to the tafte both of the grave and the merry; but more particularly fo to those who have a relish of the best writers, and the noblest sort of poetry. I fhall produce only one paffage out of this poet, which is the misfortune of his Galligafkins: My Galligafkins, which have long withstood This is admirably pathetical, and fhews very well the viciffitudes of fublunary things. The rest goes on to a prodigious height; and a man in Greenland could hardly have made a more pathetick and terrible complaint. Is it not surprising that the subject should be so mean, and the verfe fo pompous; that the least things in his poetry, as in a microscope, fhould grow great and formidable to the eye? especially confidering that, not understanding French, he had no model for his style? that he fhould have no writer to imitate, and himself himself be inimitable? that he should do all this before he was twenty? at an age, which is ufually pleased with a glare of false thoughts, little turns, and unnatural fustian? at an age, at which Cowley, Dryden, and I had almost said Virgil, were inconfiderable? So foon was his imagination at its full ftrength, his judgement ripe, and his humour complete. This poem was written for his own diverfion, without any defign of publication. It was communicated but to me; but foon spread, and fell into the hands of pirates. It was put out, vilely mangled, by Ben Bragge; and impudently faid to be corrected by the author. This grievance is now grown more epidemical; and no man now has a right to his own thoughts, or a title to his own writings. Xenophon answered the Perfian, who demanded his arms, "We have nothing now " left but our arms and our valour; if we "furrender the one, how: fhall we make " use of the other?" Poets have nothing but their wits and their writings; and if they are plundered of the latter, I don't see what good the former can do them. To pirate, ;: and publickly own it, to prefix their names to the works they fteal, to own and avow the theft, I believe, was never yet heard of but in England. It will found oddly to pofterity, that, in a polite nation, in an enlightened age, under the direction of the most wife, most learned, and moft generous encouragers of knowledge in the world, the property of a mechanick fhould be better secured than that of a fcholar; that the pooreft manual operations fhould be more valued than the noblest products of the brain; that it should be felony to rob a cobler of a pair of fhoes, and no crime to deprive the best author of his whole fubfiftence; that nothing fhould make a man a fure title to his own writings but the ftupidity of them; that the works of Dryden should meet with lefs encouragement than those of his own Flecknoe, or Blackmore; that Tillotfon and St. George, Tom Thumb and Temple, fhould be fet on an equal foot. This is the reafon why this very paper has been fo long delayed; and while the most impudent and fcandalous libels are publickly vended by the pirates, this innocent work is forced to fteal abroad as if it were a libel. 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