Bramston applauds the silencing of Woolston. The contrast between Thespis and Defoe is clearly mock-heroic, but Bramston implies that Woolston's similarity to an ancient satyr is a decline from the character expected of a modern clergyman.

Sometimes the mere fact of changing from a poetic to a political context produces the satire or humour. What is praiseworthy in a poet—the ability to mingle fact and fiction skillfully (151)—becomes highly ironic when applied to a politician who

Horace's "ut pictura poesis" (361) produces this bland but destructive couplet:

More humourous than satirical is the relation between Horace's declaration that there's no place for a mediocre poet (372-73) and Bramston's

The conclusion of the poem involves a somewhat more complex transformation. Horace closes with a humourously self-deprecating description of the "poetic itch": the afflicted poet stumbles into ditches as he babbles his verses aloud; people flee from him, and with good reason; if he catches anyone, he hangs on like a leech and reads his victim to death. Bramston describes another "sort of itch," parliamenteering. Sir Harry Clodpole knows better than to make speeches to the electors; he solicits their votes by feasting them, and they run towards him (or his table), not away. They, not he, are the leeches; "they never leave him while he's worth a groat" (p. 45).

Bramston—it seems an excessive refinement to speak of a persona or narrator—presents himself as a rather simple, naive political observer who yearns for clear-cut distinctions between parties; he wants to know where politicians stand on issues. The confusion, the blurring of old party lines, in present-day England is like the monster in the frontispiece. Though simple, he is also well informed. He seems to have a good knowledge of British history since the Restoration, referring casually to the Exclusion Crisis of 1680-81 (p. 15), the Kentish Petition of 1701 (p. 10), and the South Sea Bubble of 1720 (p. 7). All these past events are used to reinforce present lessons. He is up-to-date, as shown by his reference to the recent events in the careers of Methuen and Woolston. He professes familiarity with the characters of the leading politicians and also knows something about what is going on in the constituencies. He knows, or claims to know, how different kinds of listeners will react to different kinds of speeches.

For a son of Christ Church, one of the most Tory Colleges of Tory Oxford, he seems remarkably non-partisan, though his Opposition biases do show through. When he says that "Addison's immortal Page" shows us how "to screen good Ministers from Publick rage" (p. 9), he is clearly aiming at Walpole, known as the "Screenmaster General" since his success in shielding many of the perpetrators of the South Sea Bubble in 1720. (I have not been able to discover the passage of Addison that Bramston had in mind.) When the aspiring orator is urged not to "join with silver Tongue a brazen Face" (p. 24), Walpole is again present by innuendo, for "brazen-face" was another of his nicknames. On the other hand, Bramston also makes fun of the "everlasting Fame" that results from quibbling on Sir Robert's name (p. 6). Bramston perhaps has it both ways here; while ridiculing commonplace puns, he also invites us to remember that "Robin" does indeed sound very much like "robbing."

Sometimes he is more subtle and ironic. This subtlety caused difficulty for at least one contemporary reader, and may do the same for us. Consider the following passage, which parallels Horace's advice always to show Achilles wrathful, Orestes mourning, and the like:

One of Bramston's early readers found his poem very faulty, and many of his complaints were directed against the passage just quoted.

This critic finds two main faults in the poem: misinformation and confusion about particular individuals and, more generally, an inability to distinguish Whigs from Tories and give each their due. This last complaint of course mocks Bramston's lament at the beginning of the poem about the current lack of distinction between parties.

To what extent is this critique justified? What is Bramston trying to do in this passage? There is no problem with the second line: Sir Paul Methuen did indeed resign his office, and one gets the impression from Hervey (pp. 101-2, 250) that he never let anyone forget that he resigned. Thus we have here the most conventional of truisms. Walpole is more difficult. He was certainly no friend of the universities, which were Tory hotbeds. On the other hand, he was reluctant to try to reduce their privileges or bring them more closely under government control, for fear of rousing them to keener opposition. Nowhere else did he follow so faithfully his policy of letting sleeping dogs lie.