It may not however be useless to offer some general reflections for all who may require them.
It is not improbable, that, as the subject of their poems is the Restoration, many of my fellow-citizens may choose to adorn their title-pages with the representation of His Majesty, Charles the Second, escaping the vigilance of his pursuers in the Royal Oak. There are some particularities generally observable in this picture, which I shall point out to them, lest they fall into similar errors. Though I am as far as any other Briton can be, from wishing to "curtail" his Majesty's Wig "of its fair proportion;" yet I have sometimes been apt to think it rather improper, to make the Wig, as is usually done, of larger dimensions than the tree in which it and his Majesty are concealed. It is a rule in Logic, and I believe may hold good in most other Sciences, that "omne majus continet in se minus," that "every thing larger can hold any thing that is less;" but I own, I never heard the contrary advanced or defended with any plausible arguments, viz. "that every little thing can hold one larger." I therefore humbly propose, that there should be at least an edge of foliage round the outskirts of the said wig; and that its curls should not exceed in number the leaves of the tree. There is also another practice almost equally prevalent, of which I am sceptic enough to doubt the propriety. I own, I cannot think it by any
means conducive to the more effectual concealment of his Majesty, that there should be three Regal Crowns stuck on three different branches of the tree. Horace says indeed,
————Pictoribus atque Poetis,
Quidlibet audendi semper fuit æqua potestas.
Painters and Poets our indulgence claim,
Their daring equal, and their art the same.—Fran.
And this may be reckoned a very allowable poetical licence; inasmuch as it lets the spectator into the secret, who is in the tree. But it is apt to make him at the same time throw the accusation of negligence and want of penetration on the three dragoons, who are usually depicted on the foreground, cantering along very composedly, with serene countenances, erect persons, and drawn swords, very little longer than themselves.
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