[5] Far be it from me to offer a pedantick affront to the Gentlemen who peruse me, by explaining the word _Incubus_; which Pliny and others, more learnedly, call _Ephialtes_.--I, modestly, state it to mean the _Night-Mare_, for the information of the Ladies. The chief symptom by which this affliction is vulgarly known, is a heavy pressure upon the stomach, when lying in a supine posture in bed. It would terrify some of my fair readers, who never experience'd this characteristick of the _Incubus_, were I to dwell on its effects; and it would irritate others, who are in the habit of labouring under its sensations.
[6] An old Gentlewoman, a great admirer of the BLACK LETTER, (as many _old Gentlewomen_ are) presented the Author of these Tales with the _Original MS._ of this Sonnet; advising the publication of a _facsimile_ of the Knight's hand-writing. It is painful, after this, to advance, that the Sonnet, so far from being genuine, is _one_ of the clumsiest literary forgeries, that the present times have witnessed. It appears, in this authentick Story, that Sir Thomas Erpingham was married in the reign of Henry the Fifth; and it is evidently intended, that _Moderns_ should believe he writ these love-verses almost immediately after his marriage; not only from the ardour with which he celebrates the beauty of his wife, but from the circumstance of a man writing any love-verses upon his wife at all;--but the style and language of the lines are most glaringly inconsistent with their pretended date. The fact is, we have here foisted upon us a close _imitation of_ COWLEY, (_vide the_ MISTRESS) who was not _born_ till the year 1618,--two centuries after the era in question. Chaucer died, A. D. 1400; and Henry the Fifth (who was king only 9 years, 5 months, and 11 days) began his reign scarcely 13 years after the death of that Poet. Sir Thomas, then, must, at least, have written in the obsolete phraseology of Chaucer,--and, probably, would have imitated him,--as did Lidgate, Occleve, and others;--nay, Harding, Skelton, &c. who were fifty or sixty years subsequent to Chaucer, were not so modern in their language as their celebrated predecessor. Having, _in few words_, prove'd (it is presume'd) this Sonnet to be spurious, an apology may be thought necessary for not saying _a great deal more_;--but this Herculean task is left, in deference, to the disputants on _Vortigern_; who will, doubtless, engage in it, as a matter of great importance, and, once more, lay the world under _very heavy_ obligations, with various _Pamphlets in folio_, upon the subject:--and, surely, too many acknowledgments cannot be given to men who are so indefatigably generous in their researches, that half the result of them, when publish'd, causes even the sympathetick reader to labour as much as the Writer!