I’ll dose the knave with drastic jalap.
Lest the more critical and polite reader should complain, that in order to let myself down to the level of your worshipful capacities, I have anglicized my sublime motto in too vulgar and colloquial a style, I shall take the liberty, politely, to parodize thereon, and, as lord Bacon says, “to bring it home to men’s business and bosoms;” that is, to make the application to that particular kind of gentry, against whom my hedgehog quills, aforesaid, are pointed in terrorem.
Ladies and gentlemen, REVIEWERS!
You are a set of mischief brewers;
A gang of scandalous backbiters,
Who feast on us, poor murder’d writers.
Now if you dare to throw the gauntlet,
I tell you honestly I sha’n’t let
Your impudences, with impunity,
Impose in future on community.