The reader will perhaps be astonished to find, that the Doctor as supposed to flatter himself with the hope that his attentions were not altogether unacceptable to a young lady of singular elegance and personal accomplishments, here alluded to.
"Obscœnæque volucres signa dabant."
The poet invokes his heroi-comic predecessors, the author of the Lutrin, and Alessandro Tassoni, whose Secchia Rapita, or Rape of the Bucket, is well known to the amateurs of Italian poetry.