"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 dénouement, 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—
"And vowed he'd steal no more".
Having in the course of his work shown the bad effects arising from theft, he evidently means this last moral reflection to operate with his readers as a gentle and polite dissuasive from stealing.
"The Knave of Hearts
Brought back those tarts,
And vowed he'd steal no more!"