Nor has the attentive author himself been deficient on this occasion, in the fatherly duty of bespeaking public opinion in favour of his offspring. In a preface remarkable for that startling species of modesty by which a man becomes the trumpeter of his own greatness, he predicts that, if not immediately, at least in eight or ten years hence, his works will make such an impression, as to occasion a revolution in the poetical taste of mankind, and become the model of a new school in the "Divine Art." The confidential puffers to whom the idea was imparted, in despite of whatever doubts they might entertain on the subject, scrupled not to give publicity to the prediction. A work destined to such an illustrious career, could not fail to be endowed with an exalted and overpowering excellence of some kind, and also of a kind different altogether from any that had hitherto given satisfaction to the readers of poetry. The poetical tastes and habits of our nature were, in fact, to be entirely changed by the influence of this mighty satire. No wonder, therefore, that curiosity respecting the work was sufficiently awakened to occasion for it a large demand on its first appearance. Many of the conductors of the periodical press, who gave publicity to this exaggerated strain of praise, were, no doubt, sceptical as to its being altogether merited, and must have acted from motives either of interest or of courtesy. Yet there may have been some who believed in the possibility of the wonders which were predicted. Indeed, in this strange age, when miracles are scarcely to be accounted wonders--when ships are propelled without wind, and carriages without horses--when schoolboys and journeymen printers overturn governments and make and unmake kings with almost as much facility as the manager of a play-house casts the character of a drama; what extraordinary things may not with propriety be credited? Even philosophy may now, without reproach, believe in absurdity; and thoughtless paragraphists, without being laughed at, may be permitted to suppose that an adventurous rhymester may speak truth, when he asserts that he is about to revolutionize the principles of poetical taste and composition!