r heard the old adage, that "_none but a poet should edit a
poet_," he would have saved his midnight oil, and solicited a ray from
Phoebus. Now, I take the road to poetry to be just as plain as the road
to Clapham. In the latter journey you have nothing to do but to invoke
Rowland Hill, and in the former to invoke the sacred nine, and your
business is done. You are dubbed one of the elect from that time forth,
and nothing but Bedlam or the mint can invalidate your title. For
myself, I can attribute my profound knowledge of the real text of my
author, to no other than the following cause. On turning accidentally to
volume I, page 409, of cunning little ISAAC's edition, I happened to
alight upon certain antique instructions, "_how a gallant should behave
himself in a playhouse_." This code of dramatic laws I found ushered in
by the following sentence: "The theatre is your poet's exchange, upon
which their Muses (that are now turned to merchants) meeting, barter
away that light commodity of words, for a lighter ware than words,
_plaudities_, and the breath of _the great beast_, which, like the
threatenings of two cowards, vanish all into air." This great beast I
take to be, "The many headed monster of the pit," mentioned in after
times by POPE, and the renowned JOHN BULL, celebrated by me, THEOBALDUS
SECUNDUS, in my dedication of last month. Be that however, as it may,
I read the treatise through, and was so smitten with the accurate view
it exhibited of the theatres of these days, that I immediately
determined to transport myself, as well as I could, to the golden times
of the _beheader of Mary Queen of Scots_. I instantly ran to the
water-side, bartered for a garret, purchased the wares of a strolling
company at a bargain, and I now pen this dissertation reclining on clean
straw, on a stage of my own construction, and smoking a pipe of Maryland
tobacco, according to the authority above quoted. "By spreading your
body on the stage, and by being a justice in examining plaies, you shall
put yourself into such a true scaenical authority, that some poet shall
not dare to present his Muse rudely before your eyes, without having
first unmasked her, rifled her, and discovered all her bare and most
mystical parts before you at a taverne, when you, most knightly, shall
for his paines, pay for both their suppers." If all these paines do not
produce a proportionate modicum of inspiration, then know I nothing of
Parnassus. Let us now p