ats upon occasion, to show
his reading, and garnish his conversation. Ned is indeed a true English
reader, incapable of relishing the great and masterly strokes of this
art; but wonderfully pleased with the little Gothic ornaments of
epigrammatical conceits, turns, points, and quibbles, which are so
frequent in the most admired of our English poets, and practised by
those who want genius and strength to represent, after the manner of the
ancients, simplicity in its natural beauty and perfection.

Finding myself unavoidably engaged in such a conversation, I was
resolved to turn my pain into a pleasure, and to divert myself as well
as I could with so very odd a fellow. "You must understand," says Ned,
"that the sonnet I am going to read to you was written upon a lady, who
showed me some verses of her own making, and is perhaps the best poet of
our age. But you shall hear it." Upon which he began to read as
follows:

"_To Mira on her Incomparable Poems._

I.

"_When dressed in laurel wreaths you shine,
And tune your soft melodious notes,
You seem a sister of the Nine,
Or Phoebus' self in petticoats._

II.

"_I fancy, when your song you sing
(Your song you sing with so much art),
Your pen was plucked from Cupid's wing;
For ah! it wounds me like his dart._"

"Why," says I, "this is a little nosegay of conceits, a very lump of
salt: every verse has something in it that piques; and then the dart in
the last line is certainly as pretty a sting in the tail of an epigram
(for so I think your critics call it) as ever entered into the thought
of a poet." "Dear Mr. Bickerstaff," says he, shaking me by the hand,
"everybody knows you to be a judge of these things; and to tell you
truly, I read over Roscommon's translation of Horace's 'Art of Poetry'
three several times, before I sat down to write the sonnet which I have
shown you. But you shall hear it again, and pray observe every line of
it, for not one of them shall pass without your approbation.

"_When dressed in laurel wreaths you shine._

"That is," says he, "when you have your garland on; when you are writing
verses." To which I replied, "I know your meaning: a metaphor!" "The
same," said he, and went on:

"_And tune your soft melodious notes._

"Pray observe the gliding of that verse; there is scarce a consonant in
it: I took care to make it run upon liquids. Give me your opinion of
it." "Truly," sai