ave here taken into
consideration; illustrated moreover with elegant etchings, designed
either as _hieroglyphical_ explanations of the subject, or as _practical
puns_ on the name of the author?--And yet in truth so it is,--and on
this subject I wish to give a word of advice to my countrymen.

Many of them have applied to me by letter, to assist them with designs
for prefixing to their poems; and this I should very willingly have
done, had those gentlemen been kind enough to subscribe their real names
to their requests: whereas, all that I have received have been signed,
_Tom Long_, _Philosophus_, _Philalethes_, and such like. I have
therefore been prevented from affording them the assistance I wished;
and cannot help wondering, that the gentlemen did not consider, that it
was impossible for me to provide _typical references_ for feigned names;
as, for ought I know, the person who signs himself _Tom Long_ may not be
four feet high; _Philosophus_ may be possessed of a considerable share
of folly; and _Philalethes_ may be as arrant a liar as any in the
kingdom.

It may not however be useless to offer some general reflections for all
who may require them. It is not improbable, that, as the subject of
their poems is the _Restoration_, many of my fellow-citizens may choose
to adorn their _title-pages_ with the representation of His Majesty,
Charles the Second, escaping the vigilance of his pursuers in the _Royal
Oak_. There are some particularities generally observable in this
picture, which I shall point out to them, lest they fall into similar
errors. Though I am as far as any other Briton can be, from wishing to
"curtail" his Majesty's Wig "of its fair proportion;" yet I have
sometimes been apt to think it rather improper, to make the Wig, as is
usually done, of larger dimensions than the tree in which it and his
Majesty are concealed. It is a rule in Logic, and I believe may hold
good in most other Sciences, that "_omne majus continet in se minus_,"
that "every thing larger can hold any thing that is less;" but I own,
I never heard the contrary advanced or defended with any plausible
arguments, viz. "that every little thing can hold one larger."
I therefore humbly propose, that there should be at least an edge of
foliage round the outskirts of the said wig; and that its curls should
not exceed in number the leaves of the tree. There is also another
practice almost equally prevalent, of which I am sceptic enough to doubt