“The King of Hearts
      Called for those tarts”.

We are all conscious of the fault of our hero, and all tremble with him, for the punishment which the enraged monarch may inflict: 

     “And beat the Knave full sore!”

The fatal blow is struck!  We cannot but rejoice that guilt is justly punished, though we sympathize with the guilty object of punishment.  Here Scriblerus, who, by the by, is very fond of making unnecessary alterations, proposes reading “score” instead of “sore”, meaning thereby to particularize that the beating bestowed by this monarch consisted of twenty stripes.  But this proceeds from his ignorance of the genius of our language, which does not admit of such an expression as “full score”, but would require the insertion of the particle “a”, which cannot be, on account of the metre.  And this is another great artifice of the poet.  By leaving the quantity of beating indeterminate, he gives every reader the liberty to administer it, in exact proportion to the sum of indignation which he may have conceived against his hero, that by thus amply satisfying their resentment they may be the more easily reconciled to him afterwards.

       “The King of Hearts
        Called for those tarts,
     And beat the Knave full sore.”

Here ends the second part, or middle of the poem, in which we see the character and exploits of the hero portrayed with the hand of a master.

Nothing now remains to be examined but the third part, or end.  In the end it is a rule pretty well established that the work should draw towards a conclusion, which our author manages thus:—­

     “The Knave of Hearts
      Brought back those tarts”.

Here everything is at length settled; the theft is compensated, the tarts restored to their right owner, and poetical justice, in every respect, strictly and impartially administered.

We may observe that there is nothing in which our poet has better succeeded than in keeping up an unremitted attention in his readers to the main instruments, the machinery of his poem, viz. the tarts; insomuch that the afore-mentioned Scriblerus has sagely observed that “he can’t tell, but he doesn’t know, but the tarts may be reckoned the heroes of the poem”.  Scriblerus, though a man of learning, and frequently right in his opinion, has here certainly hazarded a rash conjecture.  His arguments are overthrown entirely by his great opponent, Hiccius, who concludes by triumphantly asking, “Had the tarts been eaten, how could the poet have compensated for the loss of his heroes?”

We are now come to the denouement, the setting all to rights:  and our poet, in the management of his moral, is certainly superior to his great ancient predecessors.  The moral of their fables, if any they have, is so interwoven with the main body of their work, that in endeavouring to unravel it we should tear the whole.  Our author has very properly preserved his whole and entire for the end of his poem, where he completes his main design, the reformation of his hero, thus—­