[Footnote 8:  Our author might also have alluded to the old apology for every thing inane or contemptible—­“It is a tale of the man in the moon.”  When that arch flatterer, John Lylie, published (in 1591) his “Endymion, or the man in the moon”—­a court comedy, as it was afterwards called; in other words, intended for the gratification of Queen Elizabeth, and in which her personal charms and attractions are grossly lauded—­he pleads guilty to its defect in plot, in the following exquisite apologetic prologue:—­

“Most high and happy Princess, we must tell you a tale of the man in the moon; which, if it seem ridiculous for the method, or superfluous for the matter, or for the means incredible, for three faults we can make but one excuse,—­it is a tale of the man of the moon.”

“It was forbidden in old time to dispute of Chymera, because it was a fiction:  we hope in our times none will apply pastimes, because they are fancies:  for there liveth none under the sun that knows what to make of the man in the moon.  We present neither comedy, nor tragedy, nor story, nor any thing, but that whosoever heareth may say this:—­ ‘Why, here is a tale of the man in the moon.’  Yet this is the man designated by Blount, who re-published his plays in 1632, as the ’only rare poet of that time, the witie, comicall, facetiously-quicke, and unparallel’d John Lylie, Master of Arts!’”]

[Footnote 9:  It is to be regretted that the author has not followed the good example set him by Johnson, in his Debates in the Senate of Magna Lilliputia, published in the Gentlemen’s Magazine for 1738:  the denominations of the speakers being formed of the letters of their real names, so that they might be easily deciphered.  This neglect has obscured many of the author’s most interesting satires.  Who could suppose from the letters alone, that Wigurd, Vindar, and Avarabet, were respectively intended for Godwin, Darwin, and Lavater?]

[Footnote 10:  It is a curious circumstance, that Swift, in his description of the Academy of Lagado, should have so completely anticipated the Pestalozzian invention.]

[Footnote 11:  Dryden’s Essay on Satire]