IT hath been very entertaining to the writer of these idle lines to have heard them commented on with great accuracy of Criticism; and as little quarter given to the Poet as he hath appeared to show to Sancho: — it will, doubtless, be said that he should expect no more: — however, he will take the liberty to point out to these profound Judges the line by which they should judge of their several demerits. The first (The HEROIC POSTSCRIPT) is a performance confined to no particular subject: the author has, by a former Poem, established — as he himself modestly expresses it— “A Fame as fix’d as fate,” and his present one was announced as superior even to that (“ — paullo majora canamus” — ) treating us at the same time with a specimen of the grave and majestic air which he intended to assume in his next. As for these trifling comments on that performance the author can only say, that there is no one Reader of them who shall not be perfectly welcome to alter every line and expression in them, or expunge till the Poem become a non-entity: — provided only that, admitting the obvious defects of the other, he will sit down and point out those defects with truly elegant language, and in truly good verses. When he shall have done this — the vanquished Scribler of the Familiar Epistle shall own him possessed of a degree of critical Assiduity and patient Dulness, which shall command his highed veneration, without one particle of Envy.
Those who are real judges, having, no doubt, at a glance discovered what true ground for ridicule there is in Sancho’s lad performance, will immediately perceive that this Stricture on it, is entirely addressed to the Level of their understandings who look upon that Bard as a Genius of the first rate: — not scrupling to charge their memories with his smooth couplets with as much care and repetition as they would bestow on a bon mot of their own, or a Rondeau of Signor Mellico.