if he tells me true, has already
finished the three first Sticks of it. He has likewise promised me to
get the Measure of his Mistress's Marriage-Finger, with a Design to make
a Posy in the Fashion of a Ring, which shall exactly fit it. It is so
very easy to enlarge upon a good Hint, that I do not question but my
ingenious Readers will apply what I have said to many other Particulars;
and that we shall see the Town filled in a very little time with
Poetical Tippets, Handkerchiefs, Snuff-Boxes, and the like Female
Ornaments. I shall therefore conclude with a Word of Advice to those
admirable _English_ Authors who call themselves Pindarick Writers, [5]
that they would apply themselves to this kind of Wit without Loss of
Time, as being provided better than any other Poets with Verses of all
Sizes and Dimensions.

C.

[Footnote 1: Not a new paragraph in the first issue.]

[Footnote 2: which]

[Footnote 3: The 'Syrinx' of Theocritus consists of twenty verses, so
arranged that the length of each pair is less than that of the pair
before, and the whole resembles the ten reeds of the mouth organ or Pan
pipes ([Greek: syrigx]). The Egg is, by tradition, called Anacreon's.
Simmias of Rhodes, who lived about B.C. 324, is said to have been the
inventor of shaped verses. Butler in his 'Character of a Small Poet'
said of Edward Benlowes:

'As for Altars and Pyramids in poetry, he has outdone all men that
way; for he has made a gridiron and a frying-pan in verse, that
besides the likeness in shape, the very tone and sound of the words
did perfectly represent the noise that is made by those utensils.']

[Footnote 4: But a devout earnestness gave elevation to George Herbert's
ingenious conceits. Joshua Sylvester's dedication to King James the
First of his translation of the Divine Weeks and Works of Du Bartas has
not this divine soul in its oddly-fashioned frame. It begins with a
sonnet on the Royal Anagram 'James Stuart: A just Master;' celebrates
his Majesty in French and Italian, and then fills six pages with verse
built in his Majesty's honour, in the form of bases and capitals of
columns, inscribed each with the name of one of the Muses. Puttenham's
Art of Poetry, published in 1589, book II., ch. ii. contains the fullest
account of the mysteries and varieties of this sort of versification.]

[Footnote 5: When the tyranny of French criticism had imprisoned nearly
all our poetry in the heroic couplet, out