of the most improper and ridiculous expressions, provided there be but
an alliteration. It is very remarkable, that an affectation of this
beauty is ridiculed by Shakespear, in Love's Labour Lost, Act II. where
the Pedant Holofernes says,

I will something affect the letter, for it argues facility.--
The praiseful princess pierced, and prickt.--

Mr. Upton, in his letter concerning Spencer, observes, that alliteration
is ridiculed too in Chaucer, in a passage which every reader does not
understand.

The Ploughman's Tale is written, in some measure, in imitation of
Pierce's Ploughman's Visions; and runs chiefly upon some one letter, or
at least many stanza's have this affected iteration, as

A full sterne striefe is stirr'd now,--
For some be grete grown on grounde.

When the Parson therefore in his order comes to tell his tale, which
reflected on the clergy, he says,

--I am a southern man,
I cannot jest, rum, ram, riff, by letter,
And God wote, rime hold I but little better.

Ever since the publication of Mr. Pitt's version of the Aeneid, the
learned world has been divided concerning the just proportion of merit,
which ought to be ascribed to it. Some have made no scruple in defiance
of the authority of a name, to prefer it to Dryden's, both in exactness,