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The late Lord Melcombe, when Mr. Dodington, having permitted a certain writer of verſes to dedicate a volume of Poems to him, and put the author to ſome expence by directing him to cancel the dedication, when the whole impreſſion was printed off, and to draw up another with certain compliments, the heads of which his Lordſhip was pleaſed to furniſh; he took no farther notice of him, except that he ſhewed him his houſe at Hammerſmith with great oſtentation. The diſappointed Bard, to whoſe circumſtances, and very good character, his Lordſship, was no ſtranger, ſent him the following copy of verſes, which, being delivered to him by the hands of Lady H___, produced a handſome preſent.

To the Right Honourable
George Bub Dodington.
Timothy Tagwell, Haberdaſher of Dedications,
and Dealer in Verſe and Proſe,
takes the Liberty to bring in his Bill—
and his Reaſons for ſo doing

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The poem is quite clever, the poet itemizing Dodington's indebtedness to him and concluding "that paper and print, / And stamping the whole in poetical mint, / Have been very expensive—and yet not a cross / I've receiv'd to the credit of profit and loss." I do not know who Timothy Tagwell is. William Prideaux Courtney, writing on "George Bubb Dodington and his Literary Circle,"[3] names various of the writers associated with Dodington, and because the date of Dodington's purchase of "the house at Hammersmith," given as 1740 by Courtney, rules out one possible candidate, George Stubbes, and because Moses Browne, despite the fact that he had earlier (1729) dedicated his "Piscatory Eclogue" to Dodington, did not publish "a volume of Poems" between 1740 and 1762, the latter being the date of Dodington's death, he too must be ruled out. Dodington would not have treated Christopher Pitt, Edward Young, or James Thomson, the principal poets of his literary circle, in the fashion described in the headnote.