POETICAL WORKS OF ALEXANDER POPE, WITH HIS LAST CORRECTIONS, ADDITIONS, AND IMPROVEMENTS, FROM THE TEXT OF DR. WARBURTON. WITH THE LIFE OF THE AUTHOR. VOL. II. PHILADELPHIA, PRINTED FOR BENJAMIN JOHNSON, No. 31, & J. JOHNSON, No. 147, MARKET-STREET, & IT will be in vain to deny that I have some regard for this Piece, since I dedicate it to you. Yet you may bear me witness, it was intended only to divert a few young ladies, who have good sense and good 5 humour enough to laugh not only at their sex's lit; tle unguarded follies, but at their own. was communicated with the air of a secret, it soon found its way into the world. An imperfect copy having been offered to a bookseller, you had the But as good-nature, for my sake, to consent to the publication of one more correct: this I was forced to before I had executed half my design, for the machinery was entirely wanting to complete it. The machinery, Madam, is a term invented by the critics, to signify that part which the deities, an. gels, or dæmons, are made to act in a poem : for the ancient poets are in one respect like many modern ladies, let an action be ever so trivial in itself, they always make it appear of the utmost importance. These machines I determined to raise on a very new and odd foundation, the Rosicrusian doctrine of spirits. I know how disagreeable it is to make use of hard words before a lady; but it is so much the concern of a poet to have his works understood, and particularly by your sex, that you must give me leave to explain two or three difficult terms. The Rosicrusians are a people I must bring you ac quainted with. The best account I know of them is in a French book called Le Compte de Gabalis, which, both in its title and size, is so like a novel, that many of the fair sex have read it for one by mistake. According to these gentlemen, the four |