Note 112 — EPISTLE TO F. C. R. MUNDY, Esq. OF MARKETON, DERBYSHIRE.—WRITTEN 1794

l. 5. O! tell it not—“Tell it not in Gath, publish it not in the streets of Askelon, lest the sons of the Philistines rejoice, lest the daughters of the uncircumcised triumph.” The reader will perceive the propriety of the personages introduced in this parody. The muses are desired not to mention Mr Mundy’s preference of law to poetry, on the banks of the Hebrus, because it was there that the poet, Orpheus, was destroyed by Bacchanalian women, whose descendants would be likely to triumph in such a preference, from their hereditary aversion to the lyre; not in Lydia, because Midas, king of that country, decreed the palm to Pan, in his contest with Apollo.—His daughters, therefore, would probably exult in poetic apostacy.—It is thus