that it could hardly be either felt or seen from thence during the space of five months; and drove on too without any manner of regard to the new style.-These blunders and inconveniences must be prevented for the future, and that they may, I am determined to be charioteer only. Let the Muses, therefore, if they please, take the poetical province entirely on themselves.-I here renounce it for good.

Mom. And what will become then of your poetical godship?

Rather

Apollo. Why even let it go the way it came. than be a god on the former terms, I would choose to roll stones with Sisyphus, or be made a whirligig with Ixion, though it were on the same spit that roasts Pluto's dinner for him.

Clio. And we (I speak for my sisters as well as myself) are so run off our feet, which you see have neither shoes nor stockings on them, and so jaded with the midwifery of every phlegmatic brain, that we are, one and all, resolved to hire with the country farmers, if Minerva will teach us to spin. There is no enduring the life we lead. Why, I was forced to stay six months with Codrus, before I could deliver him of his burden, and so heavy a one it proved that no mortal could bear it. It was a sort of an epicdamned by every reader at the first sight. While I was with him, I had four thousand messages from others, who all miscarried. Then I laid five hundred epigrammatists and sonnetteers in one week. All this would not vex one, were it not that every brat of them, through the distempers of their parents, or the difficulty of the births, is born distorted, goggle-eyed, monstrous; and dies the moment it is dropped. -Then our employment is only fit for camelions.—It is not like that of Lucina, who gets a hearty swig at the caudle-cup, a comfortable dram every now and then, a swinging bellyful of good cakes at the blith-meat, and comes in besides, for her share of the fees at the christening. But we poor drudges are forced to ply in the garrets, which, you know are at so great a distance from the kitchens, that deuce a morsel any body will be at the trouble of carrying up to us. Here it is that we are called to poetical consultations with the two frightful goddesses, Hunger and Cold,

who take upon them to dictate just as they please. The province of invention is assumed by the first; and she, it must be owned, is a sufficient mistress of dispatch. But whatever she strikes out, the other instantly congeals to an icicle, which Phoebus with all his rays is not able to thaw. All I get leave to do, is to make them clink two and two together, like bobbins, which I call the birth of a distich, and for this I make use of Bysshe, as Lucina does of Culpeper.

Mom. Well, you Muses will certainly make delicate spinsters, your wheels are likely to dance about to some tune.

Jup. Forbear, Momus, do not jest with the afflictions of others. I must own, Apollo, and you my dear girls, your case is very hard. But bear it patiently a little longer, and all shall be well.-Mercury will let you into a project which is likely to set us all up again in newer and better employments.

and from that, if there is occasion, into a third. Have you ever tried to hold an eel by the tail?

Mom. I have, but cannot boast much of my success.

Jup. Well, you may do it with infinitely more ease, than keep one of these men to a point a moment longer than he pleases. By this artifice, and by not at once declaring their principles, they give themselves an opportunity of slily feeling the pulse of your faith, now venturing out a little, and then slipping in again, as you have seen a mouse do at the mouth of her hole, till they have found out whether you are a brother, or whether your previous way of thinking affords any hope of making you one in time.

Mom. Delicate fellows, I'faith! they are the right dabsters at a sly, or a dry joke; for they do all by way of ratiocination, with so grave a face, that it is impossible not to be taken in or bit at every turn. I will go, and spend a year among them, after which I will not only banter you all out of countenance, but out of being too, if I please. Venus may assure herself, that pretty nose of hers shall run a new sort of risk, by the time I shall have taken my degree of master in this inimitable art.

Jup. Well, but let us proceed to deliberate on the two important points proposed.-Is there any one here can speak to either?

Merc. That can your faithful aid-du-camp. I am very well versed in the controversies between our friends the Arians, and our enemies the orthodox, as they conceitedly style themselves. Uncle Pluto and I have been of their council any time these fifty years. Perhaps therefore what I am about to say may not seem altogether unworthy the attention of this most august assembly. Know then, O ye gods, that, many a time, when ye were all locked up fast asleep in your alcoves of gold, I have been at the ear of an Arian, conformably to my name of Hermes, in which I glory, prompting his invention with new and wonderful interpretations of words; and at his hand gently guiding it to write an s, at the end of god.-That I have at length succeeded almost to a miracle, you may see in some late performances, published by my directions. This, I hope, will convince you, that I deserve to be heard on the present subject.

All the Gods. Ay; hear him, hear him, hear the watchful and sagacious Mercury.

Merc. As to the first point, how the Arians may be assisted, as I take it, they stand in little need of aid. All the art, necessary to a decisive victory on their side, consists in a certain knack of making any word in the Hebrew or Greek languages signify any one thing, although ever so remote from, or contrary to, the intention of him who uses it, and the obvious purport of the passage, wherein he applies it: now, I have so tutored them all in this art, that the dullest scholar among them is fit to instruct Pluto himself in the mystery. This you will soon see by a Hebrew concordance, soon to be published, wherein my amanuensis has so laboured the business of that obsolete language, that, in a little time, all the Christians will perceive themselves tied to the worship of more gods than one, even by their own Old Testament (so they call a strange antique book, which contains the writings of Moses, and the other Jewish prophets). Thus this formidable volume, which hath hitherto been made so great a use of against us, is likely to stand hereafter on our side, and to become classically orthodox. You will wonder, it may be, where I learned this dead and barbarous language.-Why, I know not a tittle of it to this day. But this will only serve to increase your wonder, after telling you I had so great a hand in the concordance, till I farther tell you that my ignorance was doubly an advantage to me in carrying on the aforesaid work.

My amanuensis, you must know, could make a shift to read the Hebrew, which, as fast as he did, I suggested seven meanings to every word, and he constantly took all, but dwelt on that, which was most favourable to his Arian polytheism. Now, had I understood the real sense of the words, I should have been but the more confined for my learning, and should have been tempted to suggest only such meanings, as were some way analogous to those of the writer. Besides, as myriads were to be made interpreters, who neither had, nor could have, any knowledge of what the Christians call, the original languages, was I not a fitter prompter for these would-be critics, than one more