GENERAL POSTSCRIPT. 



FE W Poems, in the courfe of their compofition, have 

 been laid afide and relumed more cafually, or, in con- 

 fequence, publimed more leifurely, than the foregoing ; on 

 which account, while it does not pretend to the Horatian merit 

 of a nine-years fcrutiny under the correcting hand of its Au- 

 thor, it will not thence, he may perhaps hope, be found to 

 have that demerit which arifes from ill-connected parts and 

 an indigefted plan. For, as a fcheme was formed for the whole 

 four books before even the firft was written; and as that 

 fcheme has fince been purfued with very little, if any devia- 

 tion, it is prefumed that the three latter books will be found 

 flrictly confonant with the general principles advanced in the 

 former ; which, as it contained the principles, and ended 

 epifodically with a kind of hifloric deduction of the rife and 

 progrefs of the Art, might have been confidered in the light 

 of an entire work, (as the advertifement before it hinted) had 

 the fucceeding books been never written. 



However, as the whole defign is at length completed, it 

 may not be amifs to give in this place a fliort analyfis of the 



fevcral 



