your heart akes of your _Amphions_ and your _Orpheus_’s, that drew trees and stones after them by the irresistible force of their harmony; this is so far from being a miracle among us, that the vilest thrummers in _England_ and _Wales_ do it every wake and fair they go to: then as for the various perturbations of mind caus’d by the antient musick, we saw something more wonderful happen upon our own theatre since the late revolution, than antiquity can boast of; for when _Harry Purcel_’s famous winter song at the _Opera_ of king _Arthur_, was sung at the play-house, half the gentlemen and ladies in the side boxes and pit got an ague by it, tho’ it was sung in the midst of the dog-days. Lastly, to conclude, for I am afraid I have trespass’d too much upon your patience, we infinitely exceed the antients in quickening of parts: _Virgil_, one of the topping wits of antiquity, was forc’d to retire out of the noise and hurry of _Rome_ to his country _Villa_, and bestow’d some ten or twelve years in composing his _Æneis_: whereas Sir _Richard Blackmore_, who passes but for a sixth rate versifier among us, was able to write both his _Arthurs_ in two or three years time, and that in the tumult and smoak of Coffee-houses, or in his coach as he was jolting it from one patient to another, amidst the vast multiplicity of his business too, which as the city bard frankly confesses, was never greater than then. The gentleman delivered his ironies with so good a grace that he set all the company a laughing, and for that time put an end to the dispute. And now since I am upon the chapter of Sir _Richard_, you must know, that the young wits, inhabiting upon the banks of _Phlegethon_, have lately pelted his _Arthurs_ with distichs; but I can only call to mind at present three of them. The two first reflect upon the poem’s genealogy, which was partly begot in a coffee-house, and partly in a coach. _Editus in_ plaustri _strepitu, fumoque_ tabernæ, _Non aliter nasci debuit_ iste _liber_. _Qui potuit matrem_ Arthuri _dixisse tabernam_ _e potest currum dicere_, Rufe, _patrem_. _Sæpius in libro memoratur_ Garthius _uno,_ _Quam levis_ Arthuro Maurus _utroque tumens_.