IN the INTRODUCTION to the preceding pages, I have given a brief account of the rise and progress of that spurious species of poetry, which lately infested this metropolis, and gave occasion to the BAVIAD. I was not ignorant of what I exposed myself to, by the publication of that work. If abuse could have affected me, I should not probably have made a set of people my enemies, habituated to ill language, and possessed of such convenient vehicles* for NOTES. Most of these fashionable writers were connected with the public prints. Della Crusca was a worthy coadjutor of the mad and malignant idiot who conducted the World. Arno, and Lorenzo, were either its dissemination. But I never regarded it from such hands; and, indeed, deprecated nothing but their praise. I respect, in common with every man of sense, the censure of the wise and good: but the angry ebullitions of folly unmasked, and vanity mortified, pass by me, "like the idle wind;" or, if noticed, serve merely to grace some succeeding edition of the Baviad. I confess, however, that the work was received more favourably than I expected. Bell, indeed, and a few others, whose craft I had touched, vented their indignation in prose, and verse: but, on the whole, the clamour against me was not loud; and was lost by insensible degrees in the applauses of such as I was truly ambitious to please. Thus supported, the good effects of the satire (gloriosè loquor) were not long in manifesting them NOTES. proprietors or editors of another paper. Edwin and Anna Matilda, were favoured contributors to several, and Laura Maria from the sums she squandered on puffs, could command a corner in all. selves. Della Crusca appeared no more in the Oracle, and, if any of his followers ventured to treat the town with a soft sonnet, it was not, as before, introduced by a pompous preface. Pope and Milton resumed their superiority; and Este and his coadjutors, silently acquiesced in the growing opinion of their incompetency, and shewed some sense of shame. With this I was satisfied. I had taken up my pen for no other end: and was quietly retiring, with the idea that I had "done the state some ser"vice;" and purposing to abandon for ever the cæstus, which a respectable critic fancies I wielded "with too much severity;" when I was once more called into the lists,* by the re-appearance of some of the scattered enemy. NOTES. I hope no one will do me the injustice to suppose that I imagine myself another Hercules, contending with Hydras, &c. Far from it. My enemies cannot well have an humbler opinion of me, than I have of myself; and yet "if I am not ashamed of them, I am |