I do not wonder now at prince _Arthur_’s wonderful loquacity, says another, (for as I remember, when he and king _Hoel_ met upon the road, he welcomes him with a simile of forty lines perpendicular) since he was born at a coffee house; nor at the rumbling of the verse, since one half of the book was written in a leathern vehicle; for we find, continues he, that what is bred in the bone, will never out of the flesh; and thus, ’tis no wonder, that according to the observation of a modern virtuoso, the _Severn_ is so mischievous and cholerick a river, and so often ruins the country with sudden inundations, since it rises in _Wales_, and consequently participates sometimes of the nature of that hasty, iracund people among whom ’tis born. However, cries surly _Ben_, I must needs commend Sir _Richard_’s sagacity and politicks in taking care that his muse should be so openly deliver’d; for Epic poems, like the children of sovereign princes, ought to be born in publick. The other day, as I was taking a solitary turn by myself, ’twas my fortune to meet with a leash of old-fashion’d thread-bare mortals, with very dejected looks, and in the best equipage of those worthy gentlemen, whom you may see every day between the hours of twelve and one, walking in the _Middle-Temple_ and _Grays-Inn_ walks, to get ’em a stomach to their no-dinners. At first I took them for a parcel of fiddlers, when the oldest of them undeceiv’d me, by addressing himself to me as follows. Sir, says he, my name is _J. Hopkins_, my two companions are the fam’d _Sternhold_ and _Wisdom_, and understanding that you are lately arrived from _England_, I have presum’d to ask you a question: we have been inform’d some time ago, that two _Hibernian_ bards, finding fault with our version and language, have endeavour’d to depose myself and my two brethren here out of all parish-churches, where we have reign’d most melodiously so long, and to substitute their own translation in the room of it; I must confess it vexes me to the heart to think that I must be ejected after an hundred years quiet possession and better, which, by the Common as well as Civil law, gives a man a just title, and resign my ecclesiastical dominions to two new fangled usurpers, whom I never injur’d in my days. Now, Sir, pray tell me how my affairs go in your world, and whether I have reputation enough still left me with the people, to make head against those unrighteous innovators? Why truly, Mr. _Hopkins_, says I to him, when these adversaries first appeared in the world, I was in some pain about you, the conspiracy against your crown and dignity being so speciously laid, that nothing less than an universal defection seem’d to threaten you. ’Tis true indeed, some few churches in and about _London_, where the people you know are govern’d by a spirit of novelty, have thrown you out, but by what advices I can receive, excepting some few revolters, the generality of the people seem to be heartily engaged in your