Bee, which, in doing
less Mischief than the Serpent, yet (as _Virgil_ says) meets with the
same Fate.----_Animasque in vulnere ponunt._ Why then may I not wish you
would be advis'd by a Fact which actually happen'd at the _Tower_
Guard? An honest lusty Grenadier, while a little creeping Creature of an
Ensign, for some trifling Fault, was impotently laying him on with his
Cane, quietly folded his Arms across, and shaking his Head, only reply'd
to this valiant Officer, "Have a care, dear Captain! don't strike so
hard! upon my Soul you will hurt yourself!"

Now, Sir, give me leave to open your _Dunciad_, that we may see what
Work your Wit has made with my Name there.

When the Goddess of _Dulness_ is shewing her Works to her chosen Son,
she closes the Variety with letting him see, _ver._ 235.

_How, with less Reading than makes Felons 'scape
Less human Genius than God gives an Ape,
Small Thanks to_ France, _and none to_ Rome, _or_ Greece,
_A patch'd, vamp'd, future, old, reviv'd, new Piece,
'Twixt_ Plautus, Fletcher, Congreve _and_ Corneille,
_Can make a_ Cibber, Johnson, _or_ Ozell.

And pray, Sir, why my Name, under this scurvy Picture? I flatter myself,
that if you had not put it there, no body else would have thought it
like me, nor can I easily believe that you yourself do: but perhaps you
imagin'd it would be a laughing Ornament to your Verse, and had a mind
to divert other Peoples Spleen with it, as well as your own. Now let me
hold up my Head a little, and then we shall see how far the Features hit
me! If indeed I had never produc'd any Plays, but those I alter'd of
other Authors, your Reflexion then might have had something nearer an
Excuse for it: But yet, if many of those Plays have liv'd the longer for
my meddling with them, the Sting of your Satyr only wounds the Air, or
at best debases it to impotent Railing. For you know very well that
_Richard the Third_, _The Fop's Fortune_, _The Double Gallant_, and some
others, that had been dead to the Stage out of all Memory, have since
been in a constant course of Acting above these thirty or forty Years.
Nor did even _Dryden_ think it any Diminution of his Fame to take the
same liberty with _The Tempest_, and the _Troilus and Cressida_ of
_Shakespear_; and tho' his Skill might be superior to mine, yet while my
Success has been equal to his, why then will you have me so
ill-favouredly like the Dunce you have drawn for me? Or do those alter'd
Plays at