Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II
by
Alexander Pope
Part 7 out of 8
John, King, i. 252.
James I., iv. 176.
Jacob, Giles, iii. 149.
Janssen, a gamester, iv. 326.
Jones, Inigo, iii. 328.
Johnston, iv. 112.
Knight, Robert, iv. 561.
Kuster, iv. 237.
Kirkall, ii. 160.
Lintot, Bernard, i. 40; ii. 53.
Laws, William, ii. 413.
Log, King, i. lin. ult.
Locke, iii. 215.
More, James, ii. 50, &c.
Morris, Bezaleel, ii. 126; iii. 168.
Mist, Nathaniel, i. 208.
Milbourn, Luke, ii. 349.
Mahomet, iii. 97.
Mears, William, ii. 125; iii. 28.
Motteux, Peter, ii. 412.
Monks, iii. 52.
Mandevil, ii. 414.
Morgan, ibid.
Montalto, iv. 105.
Mummius, an antiquary, iv. 371.
Milton, iii. 216.
Murray, iv. 169.
Newcastle, Duchess of, i. 141.
Nonjuror, i. 253.
Newton, iii. 216.
Ogilby, John, i. 141, 328.
Oldmixon, John, ii. 283.
Ozell, John, i. 285.
Ostrogoths, iii. 93.
Omar, the Caliph, iii. 81.
Owls, i. 271, 290; iii. 54.
Owls, Athenian, iv. 362.
Osborne, bookseller, ii. 167.
Osborne, mother, ii. 312.
Prynne, William, i. 103.
Philips, Ambrose, i. 105; iii. 326.
Paridel, iv. 341.
Prior, ii. 124-138.
Popple, iii. 151.
Pope, iii. 332.
Pulteney, iv. 170.
Quarles, Francis, i. 140.
Querno, Camillo, ii. 15.
Ralph, James, i. 216; iii. 165.
Roome, Edward, iii. 152.
Ripley, Thomas, iii. 327.
Ridpath, George, i. 208; ii. 149.
Roper, Abel, ii. 149.
Rich, iii. 261.
Settle, Elkanah, i. 90, 146; iii. 37.
Smedley, Jonathan, ii. 291, &c.
Shadwell, Thomas, i. 240; iii. 22.
Scholiasts, iv. 231.
Silenus, iv. 492.
Sooterkins, i. 126.
Swift, i. 19; ii. 116, 138; iii. 331.
Shaftesbury, iv. 488.
Tate, i. 105, 238.
Theobald, or Tibbald, i. 133, 286.
Tutchin, John, ii. 148.
Toland, John, ii. 399; iii. 212.
Tindal, Dr, ii. 399; iii. 212; iv. 492.
Taylor, John, the Water-Poet, iii. 19.
Thomas, Mrs, ii. 70.
Tonson, Jacob, i. 57; ii. 68.
Thorold, Sir George, i. 85.
Talbot, iv. 168.
Vandals, iii. 86.
Visigoths, iii. 94.
Walpole, late Sir Robert, praised by our author, ii. 314
Withers, George, i. 296.
Wynkyn de Worde, i. 149 (or 140),
Ward, Edw. i. 233; ii. 34.
Webster, ii. 258.
Whitfield, ibid.
Warner, Thomas, ii. 125.
Wilkins, ibid.
Welsted, Leonard, ii. 207; iii. 170.
Woolston, Thomas, iii. 212.
Wormius, iii. 188.
Wasse, iv. 237.
Walker, Hat-bearer to Bentley. iv. 206, 273.
Wren, Sir C., iii. 329.
Wyndham, iv. 167.
Young, Ed., ii. 116.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] 'Patricio:' Lord Godolphin.
[2] 'Charron:' an imitator of Montaigne.
[3] 'Perjured prince:' Louis XI. of France. See 'Quentin Durward'.
[4] 'Godless regent:' Philip Duke of Orleans, Regent of France in the
minority of Louis XV., a believer in judicial astrology, though an
unbeliever in all religion.
[5] 'Charles:' Charles V.
[6] 'Philip:' Philip II. in the battle of Quintin.
[7] 'Punk:' Cleopatra.
[8] 'Wilmot:' Earl of Rochester.
[9] 'Noble dame a whore:' the sister of Cato, and mother of Brutus.
[10] 'Lanesborough:' an ancient nobleman, who continued this practice
long after his legs were disabled by the gout. Upon the death of Prince
George of Denmark, he demanded an audience of the Queen, to advise her
to preserve her health and dispel her grief by dancing.--P.
[11] 'Narcissa:' Mrs Oldfield, the actress.
[12] 'Sappho:' Lady M. W. Montague.
[13] 'Narcissa:' Duchess of Hamilton.
[14] 'Philomede:' Henrietta, younger Duchess of Marlborough, to whom
Congreve left the greater part of his fortune.
[15] 'Her Grace:' Duchess of Montague.
[16] 'Atossa:' Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough.
[17] 'Chloe:' Mrs Howard, afterwards Countess of Suffolk.
[18] 'Mahomet:' servant to the late king, said to be the son of a
Turkish pasha, whom he took at the siege of Buda, and constantly kept
about his person--P.
[19] 'Parson Hale;' Dr Stephen Hale, not more estimable for his useful
discoveries as a natural philosopher, than for his exemplary life and
pastoral charity as a parish priest.--P.
[20] 'Epistle III.:' this epistle was written after a violent outcry
against our author, on a supposition that he had ridiculed a worthy
nobleman merely for his wrong taste. He justified himself upon that
article in a letter to the Earl of Burlington; at the end of which are
these words: 'I have learnt that there are some who would rather be
wicked than ridiculous; and therefore it may be safer to attack vices
than follies. I will therefore leave my betters in the quiet possession
of their idols, their groves, and their high places; and change my
subject from their pride to their meanness, from their vanities to their
miseries; and as the only certain way to avoid misconstructions, to
lessen offence, and not to multiply ill-natured applications, I may
probably, in my next, make use of real names instead of fictitious
ones.'--P.
[21] 'Ward:' John Ward of Hackney, Esq., member of Parliament, being
prosecuted by the Duchess of Buckingham, and convicted of forgery, was
first expelled the House, and then stood in the pillory on the 17th of
March 1727.--P.
[22] 'Chartres:' see a former note.
[23] 'The patriot's cloak:' this is a true story, which happened in the
reign of William III. to an unsuspected old patriot, who coming out at
the back-door from having been closeted by the king, where he had
received a large bag of guineas, the bursting of the bag discovered his
business there.--P.
[24] 'Ship off senates:' alludes to several ministers, counsellors, and
patriots banished in our times to Siberia, and to that more glorious
fate of the Parliament of Paris, banished to Pontoise in the year
1720.--P.
[25] 'Coals:' some misers of great wealth, proprietors of the
coal-mines, had entered at this time into an association to keep up
coals to an extravagant price, whereby the poor were reduced almost to
starve, till one of them, taking the advantage of underselling the rest,
defeated the design. One of these misers was worth ten thousand, another
seven thousand a-year.--P.
[26] 'Colepepper:' Sir William Colepepper, Bart., a person of an ancient
family and ample fortune, without one other quality of a gentleman, who,
after ruining himself at the gaming table, passed the rest of his days
in sitting there to see the ruin of others; preferring to subsist upon
borrowing and begging, rather than to enter into any reputable method of
life, and refusing a post in the army which was offered him.--P.
[27] 'Turner:' a miser of the day.
[28] 'Hopkins:' a citizen whose rapacity obtained him the name of
Vulture Hopkins.--P.
[29] 'Japhet:' Japhet Crook, alias Sir Peter Stranger, was punished with
the loss of those parts, for having forged a conveyance of an estate to
himself.--P.
[30] 'Endow a college or a cat:' a famous Duchess of Richmond, in her
last will, left considerable legacies and annuities to her cats.--P.
[31] 'Bond:' the director of a charitable corporation.
[32] 'To live on venison:' in the extravagance and luxury of the
South-sea year, the price of a haunch of venison was from three to five
pounds.--P.
[33] 'General excise:' many people, about the year 1733, had a conceit
that such a thing was intended, of which it is not improbable this lady
might have some intimation.--P.
[34] 'Wise Peter:' an attorney who made a large fortune.
[35] 'Rome's great Didius:' a Roman lawyer, so rich as to purchase the
Empire when it was set to sale upon the death of Pertinax.--P.
[36] 'Blunt:' one of the first projectors of the South-sea scheme.
[37] 'Oxford's better part:' Edward Harley, Earl of Oxford--P.
[38] 'The Man of Ross:' the person here celebrated, who, with a small
estate, actually performed all these good works, and whose true name was
almost lost (partly by the title of the Man of Ross, given him by way of
eminence, and partly by being buried without so much as an inscription)
was called Mr John Kyrle. He effected many good works, partly by raising
contributions from other benevolent persons. He died in the year 1724,
aged 90, and lies interred in the chancel of the church of Ross, in
Herefordshire.--P.
[39] 'Go search it there:' the parish register.
[40] 'Eternal buckle takes in Parian stone:' the poet ridicules the
wretched taste of carving large periwigs on bustos, of which there are
several vile examples in the tombs at Westminster and elsewhere.--P.
[41] 'Great Villiers lies:' this lord, yet more famous for his vices
than his misfortunes, after having been possessed of about L.50,000
a-year, and passed through many of the highest posts in the kingdom,
died in the year 1687, in a remote inn in Yorkshire, reduced to the
utmost misery.--P.
[42] 'Shrewsbury:' the Countess of Shrewsbury, a woman abandoned to
gallantries. The earl, her husband, was killed by the Duke of Buckingham
in a duel; and it has been said, that during the combat she held the
duke's horse in the habit of a page.--P.
[43] 'Cutler:' a notorious miser.
[44] 'Where London's column:' the monument, built in memory of the fire
of London, with an inscription, importing that city to have been burnt
by the Papists.
[45] 'Topham:' a gentleman famous for a judicious collection of
drawings.--P.
[46] 'Hearne:' the antiquarian.
[47] 'Ripley:' this man was a carpenter, employed by a first minister,
who raised him to an architect, without any genius in the art; and after
some wretched proofs of his insufficiency in public buildings, made him
comptroller of the Board of Works.--P.
[48] 'Bubo:' Bubb Doddington, who had just finished a mansion at
Eastbury.
[49] 'Dr Clarke:' Dr S. Clarke's busto placed by the Queen in the
Hermitage, while the doctor duly frequented the court.--P.
[50] 'Timon's villa:' Cannons, the estate of Lord Chandos. See Life.
[51] 'Verrio or Laguerre:' Verrio (Antonio) painted many ceilings, &c.,
at Windsor, Hampton Court, &c; and Laguerre at Blenheim Castle, and
other places.--P.
[52] 'Who never mentions hell:' this is a fact; a reverend Dean,
preaching at court, threatened the sinner with punishment in 'a place
which he thought it not decent to name in so polite an assembly.'--P.
[53] 'Sancho's dread doctor:' see 'Don Quixote,' chap, xlvii.--P.
[54] This was originally written in the year 1715, when Mr Addison
intended to publish his book of medals; it was sometime before he was
Secretary of State; but not published till Mr Tickell's edition of his
works; at which time the verses on Mr Craggs, which conclude the poem,
were added, viz., in 1720.--P.
[55] 'Vadius:' see his history, and that of his shield, in the 'Memoirs
of Scriblerus,' ch. ii.
[56] Alemena, mother of Hercules, is after his death here recounting her
misfortunes to Iole, who replies by narrating the transformations of her
sister Dryope.
[57] Such sons: Eteocles and Polynices.
[58] The Marchantes Tale. Written at sixteen or seventeen years of age.
[59] The first part of this prologue was written by Pope, the conclusion
by Mallet.
[60] Shows a cap with ears.
[61] Flings down the cap, and exit.
[62] 'Basset-Table:' only this of all the Town Eclogues was Mr Pope's,
and is here printed from a copy corrected by his own hand. The humour of
it consists in this, that the one is in love with the game, and the
other with the sharper--W.
[63] 'The Lady Frances Shirley:' a lady whose great merit Mr Pope took a
real pleasure in celebrating.
[64] 'Bertrand's:' a famous toy-shop at Bath.
[65] 'Fool or ass:' 'The Dunciad.'--P.
[66] 'Flattery or fib:' the 'Epistle to Dr Arbuthnot.'--P.
[67] 'Arms:' such toys being the usual presents from lovers to their
mistresses.--P.
[68] 'Print:' when she delivers Aeneas a suit of heavenly armour.--P.
[69] 'Truth nor lies:' if you have neither the courage to write satire,
nor the application to attempt an epic poem. He was then meditating on
such a work.--P.
[70] 'Algerian grot:' alluding to Numa's projecting his system of
politics in this grot, assisted, as he gave out, by the goddess
Aegeria.--P.
[71] 'What-d'ye-call-it:' a comedy by Gay.
[72] 'Turk:' Ulrick, the Turk.
[73] 'Pope:' the author.
[74] 'Bellenden, Lepell, and Griffin:' ladies of the Court of the
Princess Caroline.
[75] 'Blunderland:' Ireland.
[76] 'Meadows:' see verses to Mrs Howe.
[77] 'God send the king safe landing:' this ballad was written anno
1717.
[78] 'Philips:' Ambrose Philips.
[79] 'Budgell:' Eustace Budgell.
[80] 'Carey:' Henry Carey.
[81] 'Mrs Pulteney:' the daughter of John Gumley of Isleworth, who
acquired his fortune by a glass manufactory.
[82] 'Sandys:' George Sandy's, the old, and as yet unequalled,
translator of Ovid's Metamorphoses.
[83] 'Jacob's:' old Jacob Tonson, the publisher of the Metamorphoses.
[84] 'P----:' perhaps Pembroke.
[85] 'Umbra:' intended, it is said, for Ambrose Philips.
[86] 'Only Johnson:' Charles Johnson, a second-rate dramatist.
[87] 'The Man Mountain:' this Ode, and the three following pieces, were
produced by Pope on reading 'Gulliver's Travels.'
[88] 'Biddel:' name of a sea captain mentioned in Gulliver's Travels.
[89] 'Pannel:' name of a sea captain mentioned in Gulliver's Travels.
[90] 'B----:' Britain.
[91] 'C----:' Cobham.
[92] 'P----'s: Pulteney's.
[93] 'S----:' Sandys.
[94] 'S----:' Shippen.
[95] 'C----:' Perhaps the Earl of Carlisle.
[96] 'Ch---s W----:' Sir Charles Hanbury Williams.
[97] 'Sir Har-y or Sir P----:' Sir Henry Oxenden or Sir Paul Methuen.
[98] 'G---r, C---m, B---t:' Lords Gower, Cobham, and Bathurst.
[99] 'C---d:' Chesterfield.
[100] 'C---t:' Lord Carteret.
[101] 'P----:' William Pulteney, created in 1742 Earl of Bath.
[102] 'W----:' Walpole.
[103] 'H----:' either Sir Robert's brother Horace, who had just quitted
his embassy at the Hague, or his son Horace, who was then on his
travels.
[104] 'W----:' W. Winnington.
[105] 'Young:' Sir William Young.
[106] 'Bub:' Dodington.
[107] 'H----:' probably Hare, Bishop of Chicester.
[108] 'F----, H---y:' Fox and Henley.
[109] 'H---n:' Hinton.
[110] 'Ebor:' Blackburn, Archbishop of York, and Hoadley, Bishop of
Winchester.
[111] 'O---w:' Onslow, Speaker of the House of Commons, and the Earl of
Delawar, Chairman of the Committees of the House of Lords.
[112] 'N----:' Newcastle.
[113] 'D----'s sager:' Dorset; perhaps the last word should be _sneer_.
[114] 'M----'s:' Duke of Marlborough.
[115] 'J----'s:' Jekyll.
[116] 'H---k's:' Hardwick.
[117] 'C----:' probably Sir John Cummins, Lord Chief-Justice of the
Common Pleas.
[118] 'B----:' Britain.
[119] 'S---w:' Earl of Scarborough.
[120] 'M-m-t's:' Marchmont.
[121] 'P---th:' Polwarth, son to Lord Marchmont.
[122] 'W---m:' Wyndham.
[123] 'Sl---s:' slaves.
[124] 'Se---s:' senates.
[125] 'Ad....:' administration.
[126] King's.
[127] 'Religion:' an allusion perhaps to Frederick Prince of Wales.
[128] 'First Book of Horace:' attributed to Pope.
[129] The person here meant was Dr Robert Friend, head master of
Westminster School.
[130] The Misses Lisle.
[131] There occurred here originally the following lax stanza:--
Can sins of moment claim the rod
Of everlasting fires?
[132] And that offend great nature's God, Which nature's self
inspires.--See Boswell's 'Johnson.'
[133] This gentleman was of Scotland, and bred at the university of
Utrecht, with the Earl of Mar. He served in Spain under Earl Rivers.
After the peace, he was made one of the Commissioners of the Customs in
Scotland, and then of Taxes in England, in which having shewn himself
for twenty years diligent, punctual, and incorruptible, though without
any other assistance of fortune, he was suddenly displaced by the
minister in the sixty-eighth year of his age, and died two months after,
in 1741.--P.
[134] Giles Jacob's Lives of Poets, vol. ii. in his Life.
[135] Dennis's Reflections on the Essay on Criticism.
[136] Dunciad Dissected, p. 4.
[137] Guardian, No. 40.
[138] Jacob's Lives, &c. vol. ii.
[139] Dunciad Dissected, p. 4.
[140] Farmer P--- and his Son.
[141] Dunciad Dissected.
[142] Characters of the Times, p. 45.
[143] Female Dunciad, p. ult.
[144] Dunciad Dissected.
[145] Roome, Paraphrase on the 4th of Genesis, printed 1729.
[146] Character of Mr Pope and his Writings, in a Letter to a Friend,
printed for S. Popping, 1716, p. 10. Curll, in his Key to the Dunciad
(first edition, said to be printed for A. Dodd), in the 10th page,
declared Gildon to be author of that libel; though in the subsequent
editions of his Key he left out this assertion, and affirmed (in the
Curlliad, p. 4 and 8) that it was written by Dennis only.
[147] Reflections, Critical and Satirical, on a Rhapsody called An Essay
on Criticism. Printed for Bernard Lintot, 8vo.
[148] Essay on Criticism in prose, 8vo, 1728, by the author of the
Critical History of England.
[149] Preface to his Poems, p.18, 53.
[150] Spectator, No. 253.
[151] Letter to B. B. at the end of the Remarks on Pope's Homer, 1717.
[152] Printed 1728, p. 12.
[153] Alma, canto 2.
[154] In his Essays, vol. i., printed for E. Curll.
[155] Censor, vol. ii. n. 33.
[156] _Vide_ preface to Mr Tickel's translation of the first book of the
Iliad, 4to. Also _vide_ Life.
[157] Daily Journal, March 18, 1728.
[158] Ibid, April 3, 1728.
[159] Verses to Mr Pope on his translation of Homer.
[160] Poem prefixed to his works.
[161] In his poems, printed for B. Lintot.
[162] Universal Passion, Satire i.
[163] In his Poems, and at the end of the Odyssey.
[164] The names of two weekly papers.
[165] Theobald, Letter in Mist's Journal, June 22, 1728.
[166] Smedley, Preface to Gulliveriana, p. 14, 16.
[167] Gulliveriana, p. 332.
[168] Anno 1723.
[169] Anno 1729.
[170] Preface to Remarks on the Rape of the Lock, p. 12, and in the last
page of that treatise.
[171] Pages 6, 7 of the Preface, by Concanen, to a book entitled, A
Collection of all the Letters, Essays, Verses, and Advertisements
occasioned by Pope and Swift's Miscellanies. Printed for A. Moore, 8vo,
1712.
[172] Key to the Dunciad, third edition, p. 18.
[173] A list of persons, &c., at the end of the forementioned Collection
of all the Letters, Essays, &c.
[174] Introduction to his Shakspeare Restored, in 4to, p. 3.
[175] Commentary on the Duke of Buckingham's Essay, 8vo, 1721, p. 97,
98.
[176] In his prose Essay on Criticism.
[177] Printed by J. Roberts, 1742, p. 11.
[178] Battle of Poets, folio, p. 15.
[179] Printed under the title of the Progress of Dulness, duodecimo,
1728.
[180] Cibber's Letter to Mr Pope, p. 9, 12.
[181] In a letter under his hand, dated March 12, 1733.
[182] Dennis's Preface to his Reflections on the Essay on Criticism.
[183] Preface to his Remarks on Homer.
[184] Remarks on Homer, p. 8, 9.
[185] Ibid, p. 8.
[186] Character of Mr Pope, p. 7.
[187] Ibid, p. G.
[188] Gulliver, p. 886.
[189] Cibber's Letter to Mr. Pope, p. 19.
[190] Burnet Homerides, p. 1 of his Translation of the Iliad.
[191] The London and Mist's Journals, on his undertaking of the Odyssey.
[192] Vide Bossu, Du Poeme Epique, ch. viii.
[193] Bossu, chap. vii.
[194] Book i. ver. 32, &c.
[195] Ver. 45 to 54.
[196] Ver. 57 to 77.
[197] Ver. 80.
[198] Ibid, chap, vii., viii.
[199] Bossu, chap. viii. Vide Aristot. Poetic, chap. ix.
[200] Cibber's Letter to Mr Pope, pp. 9, 12, 41.
[201] See his Essays.
[202] Si nil Heros Poëtique doit être un honnête homme. Bossu, du Poême
Epique, lib. v. ch. 5.
[203] Dedication to the Life of C. C.
[204] Life, p. 2, 8vo edition.
[205] Life, ibid.
[206] Life, p. 23, 8vo.
[207] Alluding to these lines in the Epistle to Dr Arbuthnot:
'And has not Colley still his lord and whore,
His butchers, Henley, his freemasons, Moore?'
[208] Letter to Mr Pope, p. 46.
[209] P. 31.
[210] Life, p. 23, 24.
[211] Letter, p. 8.
[212] Letter, p. 53.
[213] Letter, p. 1.
[214] Don Quixote, Part ii. book ii. ch. 22.
[215] See Life, p. 148.
[216] Life, p. 149.
[217] p. 424.
[218] p. 366.
[219] p. 457.
[220] p. 18.
[221] p. 425.
[222] pp. 436, 437.
[223] p. 52.
[224] p. 47.
[225] p. 57.
[226] pp. 58, 59.
[227] A statuary.
[228] Life, p. 6.
[229] p. 424.
[230] p. 19.
[231] Life, p. 17.
[232] Ibid. p. 243, 8vo edition.
[233] Ovid, of the serpent biting at Orpheus's head.
[234] 'The Dunciad:' _sic_ MS. It may well be disputed whether this be a
right reading. Ought it not rather to be spelled Dunceiad, as the
etymology evidently demands? Dunce with an _e_, therefore Dunceiad with
an _e_? That accurate and punctual man of letters, the restorer of
Shakespeare, constantly observes the preservation of this very letter
_e_, in spelling the name of his beloved author, and not like his common
careless editors, with the omission of one, nay, sometimes of two _e's_
(as Shakspear), which is utterly unpardonable. 'Nor is the neglect of a
single letter so trivial as to some it may appear; the alteration
whereof in a learned language is an achievement that brings honour to
the critic who advances it; and Dr Bentley will be remembered to
posterity for his performances of this sort, as long as the world shall
have any esteem for the remains of Menander and Philemon.'--_Theobald_.
This is surely a slip in the learned author of the foregoing note, there
having been since produced by an accurate antiquary, an autograph of
Shakspeare himself, whereby it appears that he spelled his own name
without the first _e_. And upon this authority it was, that those most
critical curators of his monument in Westminster Abbey erased the former
wrong reading, and restored the true spelling on a new piece of old
Egyptian granite. Nor for this only do they deserve our thanks, but for
exhibiting on the same monument the first specimen of an edition of an
author in marble; where (as may be seen on comparing the tomb with the
book), in the space of five lines, two words and a whole verse are
changed, and it is to be hoped will there stand, and outlast whatever
hath been hitherto done in paper; as for the future, our learned sister
University (the other eye of England) is taking care to perpetuate a
total new Shakspeare, at the Clarendon press.--_Bentl_.
It is to be noted, that this great critic also has omitted one
circumstance: which is, that the inscription with the name of Shakspeare
was intended to be placed on the marble scroll to which he points with
his hand; instead of which it is now placed behind his back, and that
specimen of an edition is put on the scroll, which indeed Shakspeare
hath great reason to point at.--_Anon_.
Though I have as just a value for the letter _e_ as any grammarian
living, and the same affection for the name of this poem as any critic
for that of his author, yet cannot it induce me to agree with those who
would add yet another _e_ to it, and call it the Dunceiade; which being
a French and foreign termination, is no way proper to a word entirely
English and vernacular. One _e_, therefore, in this case is right, and
two _e's_ wrong. Yet, upon the whole, I shall follow the manuscript, and
print it without any _e_ at all; moved thereto by authority (at all
times, with critics, equal, if not superior to reason). In which method
of proceeding, I can never enough praise my good friend, the exact Mr
Thomas Hearne; who, if any word occur which to him and all mankind is
evidently wrong, yet keeps he it in the text with due reverence, and
only remarks in the margin _sic_ MS. In like manner we shall not amend
this error in the title itself, but only note it _obiter_, to evince to
the learned that it was not our fault, nor any effect of our ignorance
or inattention.--_Scriblerus_.
This poem was written in the year 1726. In the next year, an imperfect
edition was published at Dublin, and reprinted at London in twelves;
another at Dublin, and another at London in octavo; and three others in
twelves the same year. But there was no perfect edition before that of
London in quarto; which was attended with notes. We are willing to
acquaint posterity, that this poem was presented to King George the
Second and his queen by the hands of Sir Robert Walpole, on the 12th of
March 1728-9.--_Schol. Vet_.
It was expressly confessed in the preface to the first edition, that
this poem was not published by the author himself. It was printed
originally in a foreign country. And what foreign country? Why, one
notorious for blunders; where finding blanks only instead of proper
names, these blunderers filled them up at their pleasure.
The very hero of the poem hath been mistaken to this hour; so that we
are obliged to open our notes with a discovery who he really was. We
learn from the former editor, that this piece was presented by the hands
of Sir Robert Walpole to King George II. Now the author directly tells
us, his hero is the man
'who brings
The Smithfield muses to the ear of kings.'
And it is notorious who was the person on whom this prince conferred the
honour of the laurel.
It appears as plainly from the apostrophe to the great in the third
verse, that Tibbald could not be the person, who was never an author in
fashion, or caressed by the great; whereas this single characteristic is
sufficient to point out the true hero, who, above all other poets of his
time, was the peculiar delight and chosen companion of the nobility of
England, and wrote, as he himself tells us, certain of his works at the
earnest desire of persons of quality.
Lastly, the sixth verse affords full proof; this poet being the only one
who was universally known to have had a son so exactly like him, in his
poetical, theatrical, political, and moral capacities, that it could
justly be said of him,
'Still Dunce the second reign'd like Dunce the first.'--_Bentl_.
[235] 'Her son who brings,' &c. Wonderful is the stupidity of all the
former critics and commentators on this work! It breaks forth at the
very first line. The author of the critique prefixed to Sawney, a poem,
p. 5, hath been so dull as to explain 'the man who brings,' &c., not of
the hero of the piece, but of our poet himself, as if he vaunted that
kings were to be his readers--an honour which though this poem hath had,
yet knoweth he how to receive it with more modesty.
We remit this ignorant to the first lines of the Aeneid, assuring him
that Virgil there speaketh not of himself but of Aeneas:
'Arma virumque cano, Trojae qui primus ab oris
Italiam, fato profugus, Lavinaque venit
Littora: multum ille et terris jactatus et alto,' &c.
I cite the whole three verses, that I may by the way offer a conjectural
emendation, purely my own, upon each: First, _oris_ should be read
_aris_, it being, as we see, Aen. ii. 513, from the altar of Jupiter
Hercaeus that Aeneas fled as soon as he saw Priam slain. In the second
line I would _flatu_ for _fato_, since it is most clear it was by winds
that he arrived at the shore of Italy. _Jactatus_, in the third, is
surely as improperly applied to _terris_, as proper to _alto_. To say a
man is tossed on land, is much at one with saying, he walks at sea.
_Risum teneatis, amici_? Correct it, as I doubt not it ought to be,
_vexatus_.--_Scriblerus_.
[236] 'The Smithfield Muses.' Smithfield was the place where Bartholomew
Fair was kept, whose shows, machines, and dramatical entertainments,
formerly agreeable only to the taste of the rabble, were, by the hero of
this poem and others of equal genius, brought to the theatres of Covent
Garden, Lincolns-Inn-Fields, and the Haymarket, to be the reigning
pleasures of the court and town. This happened in the reigns of King
George I. and II. See Book iii.
[237] 'By Dulness, Jove, and Fate:' _i.e._, by their judgments, their
interests, and their inclinations.--W.
[238] 'Say how the goddess,' &c. The poet ventureth to sing the action
of the goddess; but the passion she impresseth on her illustrious
votaries, he thinketh can be only told by themselves.--_Scribl. W_.
[239] 'Daughter of Chaos,' &c. The beauty of this whole allegory being
purely of the poetical kind, we think it not our proper business, as a
scholiast, to meddle with it, but leave it (as we shall in general all
such) to the reader, remarking only that Chaos (according to Hesiod's
[Greek: Theogonia]), was the progenitor of all the gods.--_Scriblerus_.
[240] 'Laborious, heavy, busy, bold,' &c. I wonder the learned
Scriblerus has omitted to advertise the reader, at the opening of this
poem, that Dulness here is not to be taken contractedly for mere
stupidity, but in the enlarged sense of the word, for all slowness of
apprehension, shortness of sight, or imperfect sense of things. It
includes (as we see by the poet's own words) labour, industry, and some
degree of activity and boldness--a ruling principle not inert, but
turning topsy-turvy the understanding, and inducing an anarchy or
confused state of mind. This remark ought to be carried along with the
reader throughout the work; and without this caution he will be apt to
mistake the importance of many of the characters, as well as of the
design of the poet. Hence it is, that some have complained he chooses
too mean a subject, and imagined he employs himself like Domitian, in
killing flies; whereas those who have the true key will find he sports
with nobler quarry, and embraces a larger compass; or (as one saith, on
a like occasion)--
'Will see his work, like Jacob's ladder, rise,
Its foot in dirt, its head amid the skies.'--_Bentl_.
[241] 'Still her old empire to restore.' This restoration makes the
completion of the poem. _Vide_ Book iv.--P.
[242] 'Drapier, Bickerstaff, or Gulliver!' the several names and
characters he assumed in his ludicrous, his splenetic, or his
party-writings; which take in all his works.--P.
[243] 'Or praise the court, or magnify mankind:' _ironicè_, alluding to
Gulliver's representations of both. The next line relates to the papers
of the Drapier against the currency of Wood's copper coin in Ireland,
which, upon the great discontent of the people, his Majesty was
graciously pleased to recall.
[244] 'By his famed father's hand:' Mr Caius-Gabriel Cibber, father of
the poet laureate. The two statues of the lunatics over the gates of
Bedlam Hospital were done by him, and (as the son justly says of them)
are no ill monuments of his fame as an artist.
[245] 'Bag-fair' is a place near the Tower of London, where old clothes
and frippery are sold--P.
[246] 'A yawning ruin hangs and nods in air:'--Here in one bed two
shivering sisters lie, The cave of Poverty and Poetry.
[247] 'Curll's chaste press, and Lintot's rubric post:' two booksellers,
of whom, see Book ii. The former was fined by the Court of King's Bench
for publishing obscene books; the latter usually adorned his shop with
titles in red letters.--P.
[248] 'Hence hymning Tyburn's elegiac lines:' it is an ancient English
custom for the malefactors to sing a psalm at their execution at Tyburn,
and no less customary to print elegies on their deaths, at the same
time, or before.--P.
[249] 'Sepulchral lies:' is a just satire on the flatteries and
falsehoods admitted to be inscribed on the walls of churches, in
epitaphs, which occasioned the following epigram:--
'Friend! in your epitaphs, I'm grieved,
So very much is said:
One-half will never be believed,
The other never read.'--W.
[250] 'New-year odes:' made by the poet laureate for the time being, to
be sung at Court on every New-Year's Day, the words of which are happily
drowned in the voices and instruments.--P.
[251] 'Jacob:' Tonson, the well-known bookseller.
[252] 'How farce and epic--how Time himself,' allude to the
transgressions of the unities in the plays of such poets. For the
miracles wrought upon time and place, and the mixture of tragedy and
comedy, farce and epic, see Pluto and Proserpine, Penelope, &c., if yet
extant.--P.
[253] ''Twas on the day, when Thorold rich and grave, like Cimon,
triumph'd:' viz., a Lord Mayor's day; his name the author had left in
blanks, but most certainly could never be that which the editor foisted
in formerly, and which no way agrees with the chronology of the
poem.--_Bentl_. The procession of a lord mayor is made partly by land,
and partly by water. Cimon, the famous Athenian general, obtained a
victory by sea, and another by land, on the same day, over the Persians
and Barbarians.--P.
[254] 'Glad chains:' The ignorance of these moderns! This was altered in
one edition to gold chains, showing more regard to the metal of which
the chains of aldermen are made than to the beauty of the Latinism and
Graecism--nay, of figurative speech itself: _Loetas segetes_, glad, for
making glad, &c.--P.
[255] 'But lived, in Settle's numbers, one day more:' a beautiful manner
of speaking, usual with poets in praise of poetry, in which kind nothing
is finer than those lines of Mr Addison:--
'Sometimes, misguided by the tuneful throng,
I look for streams immortalised in song,
That lost in silence and oblivion lie,
Dumb are their fountains, and their channels dry;
Yet run for over by the Muses' skill,
And in the smooth description murmur still.--P.
Settle was poet to the city of London. His office was to compose yearly
panegyrics upon the lord mayors, and verses to be spoken in the
pageants. But that part of the shows being at length frugally abolished,
the employment of city-poet ceased, so that upon Settle's demise there
was no successor to that place.--P.
[256] John Heywood, whose interludes were printed in the time of Henry
VIII.--P.
[257] 'Daniel Defoe,' a man in worth and original genius incomparably
superior to his defamer.
[258] 'And Eusden eke out,' &c.: Laurence Eusden, poet laureate. Mr
Jacob gives a catalogue of some few only of his works, which were very
numerous. Mr Cook, in his Battle of Poets, saith of him--
'Eusden, a laurell'd bard, by fortune raised,
By very few was read, by fewer praised.'--P.
[259] Nahum Tate was poet laureate, a cold writer, of no invention; but
sometimes translated tolerably when befriended by Mr Dryden. In his
second part of Absalom and Achitophel are above two hundred admirable
lines together of that great hand, which strongly shine through the
insipidity of the rest. Something parallel may be observed of another
author here mentioned.--P.
[260] 'Dennis rage:' Mr John Dennis was the son of a sadler in London,
born in 1657. He paid court to Mr Dryden; and having obtained some
correspondence with Mr Wycherly and Mr Congreve, he immediately obliged
the public with their letters. He made himself known to the Government
by many admirable schemes and projects, which the ministry, for reasons
best known to themselves, constantly kept private.--P.
[261] 'Shame to Fortune:' because she usually shows favour to persons of
this character, who have a threefold pretence to it.
[262] 'Poor Fletcher's half-eat scenes:' a great number of them taken
out to patch up his plays.--P.
[263] 'Tibbald:' this Tibbald, or Theobald, published an edition of
Shakspeare, of which he was so proud himself as to say, in one of Mist's
journals, June 8, 'That to expose any errors in it was impracticable.'
And in another, April 27, 'That whatever care might for the future be
taken by any other editor, he would still give above five hundred
emendations, that shall escape them all.'--P.
[264] 'Wish'd he had blotted:' it was a ridiculous praise which the
players gave to Shakspeare, 'that he never blotted a line.' Ben Jonson
honestly wished he had blotted a thousand; and Shakspeare would
certainly have wished the same, if he had lived to see those alterations
in his works, which, not the actors only (and especially the daring hero
of this poem) have made on the stage, but the presumptuous critics of
our days in their editions--P.
[265] 'Ogilby the great:' 'John Ogilby was one who, from a late
initiation into literature, made such a progress as might well style him
the prodigy of his time! sending into the world so many large volumes.
His translations of Homer and Virgil done to the life, and with such
excellent sculptures. And (what added great grace to his works) he
printed them all on special good paper, and in a very good
letter.'--Winstanly, Lives of Poets.--P.
[266] 'There, stamp'd with arms, Newcastle shines complete:' Langbaine
reckons up eight folios of the Duchess of Newcastle's works, which were
usually adorned with gilded covers, and had her coat of arms upon them.
[267] 'Worthy Settle, Banks, and Broome:' the poet has mentioned these
three authors in particular, as they are parallel to our hero in his
three capacities--1. Settle was his brother laureate--only, indeed, upon
half-pay, for the city instead of the court; but equally famous for
unintelligible flights in his poems on public occasions, such as shows,
birth-days, &c.; 2. Banks was his rival in tragedy (though more
successful) in one of his tragedies, the Earl of Essex, which is yet
alive: Anna Boleyn, the Queen of Scots, and Cyrus the Great, are dead
and gone. These he dressed in a sort of beggar's velvet, or a happy
mixture of the thick fustian and thin prosaic; exactly imitated in
Perolla and Isidora, Caesar in Egypt, and the Heroic Daughter; 3. Broome
was a serving-man of Ben Jonson, who once picked up a comedy from his
betters, or from some cast scenes of his master, not entirely
contemptible.--P.
[268] 'Caxton:' a printer in the time of Edward IV., Richard III., and
Henry VII.; Wynkyn de Worde, his successor, in that of Henry VII. and
VIII.--P.
[269] 'Nich. de Lyra:' or Harpsfield, a very voluminous commentator,
whose works, in five vast folios, were printed in 1472.--P.
[270] 'Philemon Holland:' doctor in physic. 'He translated so many
books, that a man would think he had done nothing else; insomuch that he
might be called translator general of his age. The books alone of his
turning into English are sufficient to make a country gentleman a
complete library.'--Winstanly.--P.
[271] 'E'er since Sir Fopling's periwig:' the first visible cause of the
passion of the town for our hero, was a fair flaxen full-bottomed
periwig, which, he tells us, he wore in his first play of the Fool in
Fashion. It attracted, in a particular manner, the friendship of Col.
Brett, who wanted to purchase it.--P.
[272] 'Ridpath--Mist:' George Ridpath, author of a Whig paper, called
the Flying Post; Nathanael Mist, of a famous Tory journal.--P.
[273] 'Rome's ancient geese:' relates to the well-known story of the
geese that saved the Capitol; of which Virgil, Aen. VIII.
'Atque hic auratis volitans argenteus anser
Porticibus, Gallos in limine adesse canebat.'
A passage I have always suspected. Who sees not the antithesis of
_auratis_ and _argenteus_ to be unworthy the Virgilian majesty? And what
absurdity to say a goose sings? _canebat_. Virgil gives a contrary
character of the voice of this silly bird, in Ecl. ix.
... 'argutos interstrepere anser olores.'
Read it, therefore, _adesse strepebat_. And why _auratis porticibus_?
does not the very verse preceding this inform us,
'Romuleoque recens horrebat regia culmo.'
Is this thatch in one line, and gold in another, consistent? I scruple
not (_repugnantibas omnibus manuscriptis_) to correct it _auritis_.
Horace uses the same epithet in the same sense.--P.
[274] 'Bear and Fiddle:' see 'Butler's Hudibras.'
[275] 'Gratis-given Bland--Sent with a pass.' It was a practice so to
give the Daily Gazetteer and ministerial pamphlets (in which this Bland,
Provost of Eton, was a writer), and to send them post-free to all the
towns in the kingdom.--P.
[276] 'With Ward, to ape-and-monkey climes.' Edward Ward, a very
voluminous poet in Hudibrastic verse, but best known by the London Spy,
in prose. He has of late years kept a public-house in the City (but in a
genteel way), and with his wit, humour, and good liquor (ale) afforded
his guests a pleasurable entertainment, especially those of the
High-Church party. Jacob, Lives of Poets, vol. ii., p. 225. Great number
of his works were yearly sold into the plantations. Ward, in a book
called Apollo's Maggot, declared this account to be a great falsity,
protesting that his public-house was not in the City, but in
Moorfields.--P.
[277] 'Tate, Shadwell:' two of his predecessors in the Laurel.--P.
[278] 'The dear Nonjuror, Moliere's old stubble:' a comedy threshed out
of Moliere's Tartuffe, and so much the translator's favourite, that he
assures us all our author's dislike to it could only arise from
disaffection to the government:
'Qui meprise Cotin, n'estime point son roi,
Et n'a, selon Cotin, ni Dieu, ni foi, ni loi.'--Boil.
He assures us, that 'when he had the honour to kiss his Majesty's hand
upon presenting his dedication of it, he was graciously pleased, out of
his royal bounty, to order him two hundred pounds for it. And this he
doubts not grieved Mr P.'--P.
[279] 'Thulè:' An unfinished poem of that name, of which one sheet was
printed many years ago, by Amb. Philips, a northern author. It is a
usual method of putting out a fire to cast wet sheets upon it. Some
critics have been of opinion that this sheet was of the nature of the
asbestos, which cannot be consumed by fire: but I rather think it an
allegorical allusion to the coldness and heaviness of the writing.--P.
[280] 'Tibbald:' Lewis Tibbald (as pronounced) or Theobald (as written)
was bred an attorney, and son to an attorney (says Mr Jacob) of
Sittenburn, in Kent. He was author of some forgotten plays,
translations, and other pieces. He was concerned in a paper called the
Censor, and a Translation of Ovid. 'There is a notorious idiot, one
hight Whachum, who, from an under-spur-leather to the law, is become an
under-strapper to the play-house, who hath lately burlesqued the
Metamorphoses of Ovid by a vile translation, &c. This fellow is
concerned in an impertinent paper called the Censor.' Dennis, Rem. on
Pope's Hom. pp. 9, 10.--P.
[281] 'Ozell:' 'Mr John Ozell (if we credit Mr Jacob) did go to school
in Leicestershire, where somebody left him something to live on, when he
shall retire from business. He was designed to be sent to Cambridge, in
order for priesthood; but he chose rather to be placed in an office of
accounts in the city, being qualified for the same by his skill in
arithmetic, and writing the necessary hands. He has obliged the world
with many translations of French plays.' Jacob, Lives of Dram. Poets, p.
198.--P. Mr Jacob's character of Mr Ozell seems vastly short of his
merits, and he ought to have further justice done him, having since
fully confuted all sarcasms on his learning and genius, by an
advertisement of September 20, 1729, in a paper called the Weekly
Medley, &c. 'As to my learning, this envious wretch knew, and everybody
knows, that the whole bench of bishops, not long ago, were pleased to
give me a purse of guineas, for discovering the erroneous translations
of the Common Prayer in Portuguese, Spanish, French, Italian, &c. As for
my genius, let Mr Cleland show better verses in all Pope's works than
Ozell's version of Boileau's Lutrin, which the late Lord Halifax was so
pleased with, that he complimented him with leave to dedicate it to him,
&c. Let him show better and truer poetry in the Rape of the Lock than in
Ozell's Rape of the Bucket (La Secchia Rapita). And Mr Toland and Mr
Gildon publicly declared Ozell's translation of Homer to be, as it was
prior, so likewise superior to Pope's. Surely, surely, every man is free
to deserve well of his country.'--John Ozell. We cannot but subscribe to
such reverend testimonies as those of the bench of bishops, Mr Toland,
and Mr Gildon.--P.
[282] 'A heidegger:' a strange bird from Switzerland, and not (as some
have supposed) the name of an eminent person who was a man of parts,
and, as was said of Petronius, _arbiter elegantiarum_.--P.
[283] 'Gildon:' Charles Gildon, a writer of criticisms and libels of the
last age, bred at St Omer's with the Jesuits; but renouncing Popery, he
published Blount's books against the divinity of Christ, the Oracles of
Reason, &c. He signalised himself as a critic, having written some very
bad plays, abused Mr Pope very scandalously in an anonymous pamphlet of
the Life of Mr Wycherly, printed by Curll; in another, called the New
Rehearsal, printed in 1714; in a third, entitled the Complete Art of
English Poetry, in two volumes, and others.--P.
[284] 'Howard:' Hon. Edward Howard, author of the British Princes, and a
great number of wonderful pieces, celebrated by the late Earls of Dorset
and Rochester, Duke of Buckingham, Mr Waller, &c.--P.
[285] 'Under Archer's wing--Gaming:' when the statute against gaming was
drawn up, it was represented that the king, by ancient custom, plays at
hazard one night in the year; and therefore a clause was inserted, with
an exception as to that particular. Under this pretence, the
groom-porter had a room appropriated to gaming all the summer the court
was at Kensington, which his Majesty, accidentally being acquainted of,
with a just indignation prohibited. It is reported the same practice is
yet continued wherever the court resides, and the hazard table there
open to all the professed gamesters in town.
'Greatest and justest sovereign! know ye this?
Alas! no more, than Thames' calm head can know
Whose meads his arms drown, or whose corn o'erflow.'
DONNE to QUEEN ELIZ.--P.
[286] 'Chapel-royal:' the voices and instruments used in the service of
the chapel-royal being also employed in the performance of the Birth-day
and New-year Odes.--_P_.
[287] 'But pious Needham:' a matron of great and peculiar fame, and very
religious in her way.--P.
[288] 'Back to the Devil:' the Devil Tavern in Fleet Street, where these
odes are usually rehearsed before they are performed at court.--W.
[289] 'Ogilby--God save King Log:' See Ogilby's Aesop's Fables, where,
in the story of the Frogs and their King, this excellent hemistich is to
be found.--P.
[290] Sir George Thorald, Lord Mayor of London in the year 1720.
[291] 'A little Ajax:' in duodecimo, translated from Sophocles by
Tibhald.
[292] 'Henley's gilt tub:' the pulpit of a dissenter is usually called a
tub; but that of Mr Orator Henley was covered with velvet, and adorned
with gold. He had also a fair altar, and over it is this extraordinary
inscription, 'The Primitive Eucharist.' See the history of this person,
book iii.
[293] 'Flecknoe's Irish throne:' Richard Flecknoe was an Irish priest,
but had laid aside (as himself expressed it) the mechanic part of
priesthood. He printed some plays, poems, letters, and travels.--P.
[294] 'Or that whereon her Curlls the public pours:' Edmund Curll stood
in the pillory at Charing Cross, in March 1727-8. 'This,' saith Edmund
Curll, 'is a false assertion. I had, indeed, the corporal punishment of
what the gentlemen of the long robe are pleased jocosely to call
mounting the rostrum for one hour; but that scene of action was not in
the month of March, but in February' (Curliad, 12mo, p. 19). And of the
history of his being tossed in a blanket, he saith--'Here, Scriblerus!
thou leeseth in what thou assertest concerning the blanket--it was not a
blanket, but a rug,' p. 25. Much in the same manner Mr Cibber
remonstrated, that his brothers at Bedlam, mentioned book i., were not
brazen, but blocks; yet our author let it pass unaltered, as a trifle
that no way altered the relationship.--P.
[295] 'Rome in her Capitol saw Querno sit:' Camillo Querno was of
Apulia, who, hearing the great encouragement which Leo X. gave to poets,
travelled to Rome with a harp in his hand, and sung to it twenty
thousand verses of a poem called Alexias. He was introduced as a buffoon
to Leo, and promoted to the honour of the laurel--a jest which the court
of Rome and the pope himself entered into so far as to cause him to ride
on an elephant to the Capitol, and to hold a solemn festival on his
coronation, at which it is recorded the poet himself was so transported
as to weep for joy.[296] He was ever after a constant frequenter of the
pope's table, drank abundantly, and poured forth verses without number.
Paulus Jovius, Elog. Vir. doct. chap. lxxxii. Some idea of his poetry is
given by Fam. Strada, in his Prolusions.--P.
[296] See Life of C.C. chap. vi. p. 149.
[297] 'Never was dash'd out, at one lucky hit:' our author here seems
willing to give some account of the possibility of Dulness making a wit
(which could be done no other way than by chance). The fiction is the
more reconciled to probability, by the known story of Apelles, who being
at a loss to express the foam of Alexander's horse, dashed his pencil in
despair at the picture, and happened to do it by that fortunate
stroke.--P.
[298] 'And call'd the phantom More:' Curll, in his Key to the Dunciad,
affirmed this to be James Moore Smith, Esq., and it is probable
(considering what is said of him in the Testimonies) that some might
fancy our author obliged to represent this gentleman as a plagiary, or
to pass for one himself. His case, indeed, was like that of a man I have
heard of, who, as he was sitting in company, perceived his next
neighbour had stolen his handkerchief. 'Sir,' said the thief, finding
himself detected, 'do not expose me, I did it for mere want; be so good
but to take it privately out of my pocket again, and say nothing.' The
honest man did so, but the other cried out, 'See, gentlemen, what a
thief we have among us! look, he is stealing my handkerchief!'--P.--
Moore was a notorious plagiarist.--It appears from hence, that this is
not the name of a real person, but fictitious. More, from [Greek:
moros], stultus, [Greek: moria], stultitia, to represent the folly of a
plagiary. Thus Erasmus, _Admonuit me Mori cognomen tibi, quod tam ad
Moriae vocabulum accedit quam es ipse a re alienus_. Dedication of
Moriae Encomium to Sir Tho. More; the farewell of which may be our
author's to his plagiary, _Vale, More! et moriam tuam gnaviter defende_.
Adieu, More! and be sure strongly to defend thy own folly! Scribl.--P.
[299] 'But lofty Lintot:' we enter here upon the episode of the
booksellers, persons whose names being more known and famous in the
learned world than those of the authors in this poem, do therefore need
less explanation. The action of Mr Lintot here imitates that of Dares in
Virgil, rising just in this manner to lay hold on a bull. This eminent
bookseller printed the Rival Modes before-mentioned.--P.
[300] 'Stood dauntless Curll:' we come now to a character of much
respect, that of Mr Edmund Curll. As a plain repetition of great actions
is the best praise of them, we shall only say of this eminent man, that
he carried the trade many lengths beyond what it ever before had arrived
at; and that he was the envy and admiration of all his profession. He
possessed himself of a command over all authors whatever; he caused them
to write what he pleased; they could not call their very names their
own. He was not only famous among these; he was taken notice of by the
state, the church, and the law, and received particular marks of
distinction from each. It will be owned that he is here introduced with
all possible dignity: he speaks like the intrepid Diomede; he runs like
the swift-footed Achilles; if he falls, 'tis like the beloved Nisus; and
(what Homer makes to be the chief of all praises) he is favoured of the
gods; he says but three words, and his prayer is heard; a goddess
conveys it to the seat of Jupiter: though he loses the prize, he gains
the victory; the great mother herself comforts him, she inspires him
with expedients, she honours him with an immortal present (such as
Achilles receives from Thetis, and Aeneas from Venus) at once
instructive and prophetical: after this he is unrivalled and triumphant.
The tribute our author here pays him is a grateful return for several
unmerited obligations. Many weighty animadversions on the public
affairs, and many excellent and diverting pieces on private persons, has
he given to his name. If ever he owed two verses to any other, he owed
Mr Curll some thousands. He was every day extending his fame, and
enlarging his writings: witness innumerable instances; but it shall
suffice only to mention the Court Poems, which he meant to publish as
the work of the true writer, a lady of quality; but being first
threatened, and afterwards punished for it by Mr Pope, he generously
transferred it from her to him, and ever since printed it in his name.
The single time that ever he spoke to C. was on that affair, and to that
happy incident he owed all the favours since received from him: so true
is the saying of Dr Sydenham, 'that any one shall be, at some time or
other, the better or the worse for having but seen or spoken to a good
or bad man.'--P.
[301] 'Left-legged Jacob:' Jacob Tonson.
[302] 'Curll's Corinna:' this name, it seems, was taken by one Mrs
T----, who procured some private letters of Mr Pope, while almost a boy,
to Mr Cromwell, and sold them without the consent of either of those
gentleman to Curll, who printed them in 12mo, 1727. He discovered her to
be the publisher, in his Key, p. 11. We only take this opportunity of
mentioning the manner in which those letters got abroad, which the
author was ashamed of as very trivial things, full not only of levities,
but of wrong judgments of men and books, and only excusable from the
youth and inexperience of the writer.--P.--See Life.
[303] 'Down with the Bible, up with the Pope's Arms:' the Bible, Curll's
sign; the Cross-keys, Lintot's.
[304] 'Seas:' see Lucian's Icaro-Menippus, where this fiction is more
extended.--P.
[305] 'Evans, Young, and Swift:' some of those persons whose writings,
epigrams, or jests he had owned.--P.
[306] 'Bezaleel:' Bezaleel Morris was author of some satires on the
translators of Homer, with many other things printed in newspapers.
'Bond wrote a satire against Mr P----. Capt. Breval was author of the
Confederates, an ingenious dramatic performance to expose Mr P., Mr Gay,
Dr Arb., and some ladies of quality,' says Curll, Key, p. 11.--P.
[307] 'Joseph:' Joseph Gay, a fictitious name put by Curll before
several pamphlets, which made them pass with many for Mr Gay's.--P.
[308] 'And turn this whole illusion on the town:' it was a common
practice of this bookseller to publish vile pieces of obscure hands
under the names of eminent authors.--P.
[309] 'Cook shall be Prior:' the man here specified wrote a thing called
the Battle of the Poets, in which Philips and Welsted were the heroes,
and Swift and Pope utterly routed. He also published some malevolent
things in the British, London, and Daily journals; and at the same time
wrote letters to Mr Pope protesting his innocence. His chief work was a
translation of Hesiod, to which Theobald wrote notes and half-notes,
which he carefully owned.--P.
[310] 'Rueful length of face:' 'the decrepit person or figure of a man
are no reflections upon his genius; an honest mind will love and esteem
a man of worth, though he be deformed or poor. Yet the author of the
Dunciad hath libelled a person for his rueful length of face!'--Mist's
Journal, June 8. This genius and man of worth, whom an honest mind
should love, is Mr Curll. True it is he stood in the pillory, an
incident which would lengthen the face of any man though it were ever so
comely, therefore is no reflection on the natural beauty of Mr Curll.
But as to reflections on any man's face or figure Mr Dennis saith
excellently: 'Natural deformity comes not by our fault; 'tis often
occasioned by calamities and diseases, which a man can no more help than
a monster can his deformity. There is no one misfortune and no one
disease but what all the rest of mankind are subject to. But the
deformity of this author is visible, present, lasting, unalterable, and
peculiar to himself. 'Tis the mark of God and nature upon him, to give
us warning that we should hold no society with him, as a creature not of
our original, nor of our species; and they who have refused to take this
warning which God and nature have given them, and have, in spite of it,
by a senseless presumption, ventured to be familiar with him, have
severely suffered, &c. 'Tis certain his original is not from Adam, but
from the Devil,' &c.--Dennis, Character of Mr P., octavo, 1716.
Admirably it is observed by Mr Dennis against Mr Law, p. 33, 'That the
language of Billingsgate can never be the language of charity, nor
consequently of Christianity.'--P.
[311] 'On Codrus' old, or Dunton's modern bed:' of Codrus the poet's
bed, see Juvenal, describing his poverty very copiously, Sat. iii. ver.
103, &c. John Dunton was a broken bookseller, and abusive scribbler. He
wrote Neck or Nothing, a violent satire on some ministers of state; a
libel on the Duke of Devonshire, and the Bishop of Peterborough, &c.--P.
[312] 'And Tutchin flagrant from the scourge:' John Tutchin, author of
some vile verses, and of a weekly paper called the Observator. He was
sentenced to be whipped through several towns in the west of England,
upon which he petitioned King James II. to be hanged. When that prince
died in exile, he wrote an invective against his memory, occasioned by
some humane elegies on his death. He lived to the time of Queen
Anne.--P.
[313] 'There Ridpath, Roper:' authors of the Flying-post and Post-boy,
two scandalous papers on different sides, for which they equally and
alternately deserved to be cudgelled, and were so.--P.
[314] 'Himself among the storied chiefs he spies:' the history of
Curll's being tossed in a blanket and whipped by the scholars of
Westminster is well known.--P.
[315] 'Eliza:' Eliza Haywood. This woman was authoress of those most
scandalous books called the Court of Carimania, and the New Utopia.--P.
[316] 'Kirkall:' the name of an engraver. Some of this lady's works were
printed in four volumes in 12mo, with her picture thus dressed up before
them.--P.
[317] 'Osborne, Thomas;' a bookseller in Gray's Inn, very well qualified
by his impudence to act this part; and therefore placed here instead of
a less deserving predecessor. This man published advertisements for a
year together, pretending to sell Mr Pope's subscription books of
Homer's Iliad at half the price. Of which books he had none, but cut to
the size of them (which was quarto) the common books in folio, without
copperplates, on a worse paper, and never above half the value.--P. This
was the man Johnson knocked down.
[318] 'Rolli:' Paolo Antonio Rolli, an Italian poet, and writer of many
operas in that language, which, partly by the help of his genius,
prevailed in England near twenty years. He taught Italian to some fine
gentlemen, who affected to direct the operas.--P.
[319] 'Bentley:' this applies not to Richard but to Thomas Bentley, his
nephew, and a small imitator of his great uncle.
[320] 'Welsted:' Leonard Welsted, author of the Triumvirate, or a Letter
in verse from Palaemon to Celia at Bath, which was meant for a satire on
Mr P. and some of his friends about the year 1718.--P.
[321] 'With thunder rumbling from the mustard bowl:' the old way of
making thunder and mustard were the same; but since it is more
advantageously performed by troughs of wood with stops in them. Whether
Mr Dennis was the inventor of that improvement, I know not; but it is
certain that being once at a tragedy of a new author, he fell into a
great passion at hearing some, and cried, ''Sdeath! that is _my_
thunder.'--P.
[322] 'Norton:' see ver. 417.--J. Durant Breval, author of a very
extra-ordinary Book of Travels, and some poems.--P.
[323] 'Webster:' the editor of a newspaper called the Weekly Miscellany.
[324] 'Whitfield:' the great preacher--what a contrast to his satirist!
[325] 'As morning prayer, and flagellation end:' it is between eleven
and twelve in the morning, after church service, that the criminals are
whipped in Bridewell. This is to mark punctually the time of the day:
Homer does it by the circumstance of the judges rising from court, or of
the labourers' dinner; our author by one very proper both to the persons
and the scene of his poem, which we may remember commenced in the
evening of the Lord-mayor's day. The first book passed in that night;
the next morning the games begin in the Strand; thence along Fleet
Street (places inhabited by booksellers); then they proceed by Bridewell
towards Fleet-ditch; and, lastly, through Ludgate to the City and the
temple of the goddess.--P.
[326] 'Dash through thick and thin--love of dirt--dark dexterity:' the
three chief qualifications of party-writers: to stick at nothing, to
delight in flinging dirt, and to slander in the dark by guess.--P.
[327] 'The weekly journals:' papers of news and scandal intermixed, on
different sides and parties, and frequently shifting from one side to
the other, called the London Journal, British Journal, Daily Journal,
&c., the concealed writers of which for some time were Oldmixon, Roome,
Arnall, Concanen, and others; persons never seen by our author.--P.
[328] 'A peck of coals a-piece:' our indulgent poet, whenever he has
spoken of any dirty or low work, constantly puts us in mind of the
poverty of the offenders, as the only extenuation of such practices. Let
any one but remark, when a thief, a pickpocket, a highwayman, or a
knight of the post are spoken of, how much our hate to those characters
is lessened, if they add a needy thief, a poor pickpocket, a hungry
highwayman, a starving knight of the post, &c.--P.
[329] 'In naked majesty Oldmixon stands:' Mr John Oldmixon, next to Sir
Dennis the most ancient critic of our nation.--P.
[330] 'Next Smedley dived:' the person here mentioned, an Irishman, was
author and publisher of many scurrilous pieces, a weekly Whitehall
journal, in the year 1722, in the name of Sir James Baker; and
particularly whole volumes of Billingsgate against Dr Swift and Mr Pope,
called Gulliveriana and Alexandriana, printed in octavo, 1728.--P.
[331] 'Aaron Hill:' see life.
[332] 'With each a sickly brother at his back: sons of a day, &c:' these
were daily papers, a number of which, to lessen the expense, were
printed one on the back of another.--P.
[333] 'Osborne:' a name assumed by the eldest and gravest of these
writers, who at last, being ashamed of his pupils, gave his paper over,
and in his age remained silent.--P.
[334] 'Gazetteers:' temporary journals, the ephemerals of the then
press, the spawn of the minister of the hour, 'born and dying with the
_foul_ breath that made them.'
[335] 'William Arnall:' bred an attorney, was a perfect genius in this
sort of work. He began under twenty with furious party-papers; then
succeeded Concanen in the 'British Journal.' At the first publication of
the 'Dunciad,' he prevailed on the author not to give him his due place
in it, by a letter professing his detestation of such practices as his
predecessor's. But since, by the most unexampled insolence, and personal
abuse of several great men, the poet's particular friends, he most amply
deserved a niche in the temple of infamy: witness a paper, called the
'Free Briton;' a dedication entitled, 'To the genuine blunderer,' 1732,
and many others. He wrote for hire, and valued himself upon it; not
indeed without cause, it appearing that he received 'for Free Britons,
and other writings, in the space of four years, no less than ten
thousand nine hundred and ninety-seven pounds, six shillings, and eight
pence, out of the Treasury.' But frequently, through his fury or folly,
he exceeded all the bounds of his commission, and obliged his honourable
patron to disavow his scurrilities.--P.
[336] 'The plunging prelate:' Bishop Sherlock.
[337] 'And Milbourn:' Luke Milbourn, a clergyman, the fairest of
critics, who, when he wrote against Mr Dryden's Virgil, did him justice
in printing at the same time his own translations of him, which were
intolerable.--P.
[338] 'Lud's famed gates:' 'King Lud, repairing the city, called it
after his own name, Lud's Town; the strong gate which he built in the
west part he likewise, for his own honour, named Ludgate. In the year
1260, this gate was beautified with images of Lud and other kings. Those
images in the reign of Edward VI. had their heads smitten off, and were
otherwise defaced by unadvised folks. Queen Mary did set new heads upon
their old bodies again. The 28th of Queen Elizabeth, the same gate was
clean taken down, and newly and beautifully builded, with images of Lud
and others, as afore.' Stowe's Survey of London.--P.
[339] 'Thrice Budgell aim'd to speak:' famous for his speeches on many
occasions about the South Sea Scheme, &c. 'He is a very ingenious
gentleman, and hath written some excellent Epilogues to Plays, and one
small piece on Love, which is very pretty.' Jacob, Lives of Poets, vol.
ii. p. 289. But this gentleman since made himself much more eminent, and
personally well known to the greatest statesmen of all parties, as well
as to all the courts of law in this nation.--P.
[340] 'Toland and Tindal:' two persons, not so happy as to be obscure,
who wrote against the religion of their country. Toland, the author of
the Atheist's liturgy, called 'Pantheisticon,' was a spy, in pay to Lord
Oxford. Tindal was author of the 'Rights of the Christian Church,' and
'Christianity as Old as the Creation.' He also wrote an abusive pamphlet
against Earl S----, which was suppressed, while yet in MS., by an
eminent person, then out of the ministry, to whom he showed it,
expecting his approbation: this doctor afterwards published the same
piece, _mutatis mutandis_, against that very person.--P.
[341] 'Christ's no kingdom here:' this is said by Curll, Key to Dunc.,
to allude to a sermon of a reverend Bishop (Hoadley).--P.
[342] 'Centlivre:' Mrs Susanna Centlivre, wife to Mr Centlivre, Yeoman
of the Mouth to his Majesty. She wrote many plays, and a song (says Mr
Jacob, vol. i. p. 32) before she was seven years old. She also wrote a
ballad against Mr Pope's Homer, before he began it.--P.
[343] 'Motteux:' translator of Don Quixote.
[344] 'Boyer the state, and Law the stage gave o'er:' A. Boyer, a
voluminous compiler of annals, political collections, &c.--William Law,
A.M., wrote with great zeal against the stage; Mr Dennis answered with
as great.--P. William Law was an extraordinary man. His 'Serious Call'
made Dr Johnson religious. He became mystical in his views.
[345] 'Morgan:' a writer against religion.
[346] 'Mandeville:' the famous author of the 'Fable of the Bees.'
[347] 'Norton:' Norton Defoe, natural offspring of the famous Daniel. He
edited the 'Flying Post,' and was a detractor of Pope.
[348] 'Taylor:' John Taylor, the water-poet, an honest man, who owns he
learned not so much as the Accidence--a rare example of modesty in a
poet!
'I must confess I do want eloquence,
And never scarce did learn my Accidence;
For having got from _possum_ to _posset_,
I there was gravell'd, could no further get.'
He wrote fourscore books in the reign of James I. and Charles I., and
afterwards (like Edward Ward) kept an ale-house in Long-Acre. He died in
1654.--P.
[349] 'Benlowes:' a country gentleman, famous for his own bad poetry,
and for patronising bad poets, as may be seen from many dedications of
Quarles and others to him. Some of these anagrammed his name, Benlowes,
into Benevolus; to verify which, he spent his whole estate upon
them.--P.
[350] 'And Shadwell nods the poppy:' Shadwell took opium for many years,
and died of too large a dose, in the year 1692.--P.
[351] 'Old Bavius sits:' Bavius was an ancient poet, celebrated by
Virgil for the like cause as Bayes by our author, though not in so
Christian-like a manner: for heathenishly it is declared by Virgil of
Bavius, that he ought to be hated and detested for his evil works; _qui
Bavium non odit_; whereas we have often had occasion to observe our
poet's great good nature and mercifulness through the whole course of
this poem. Scribl.--P.
[352] 'Brown and Mears:' booksellers, printers for anybody.--The
allegory of the souls of the dull coming forth in the form of books,
dressed in calf's leather, and being let abroad in vast numbers by
booksellers, is sufficiently intelligible.--P.
[353] 'Ward in pillory:' John Ward of Hackney, Esq., member of
parliament, being convicted of forgery, was first expelled the House,
and then sentenced to the pillory on the 17th of February 1727. Mr Curll
(having likewise stood there) looks upon the mention of such a gentleman
in a satire as a great act of barbarity. Key to the Dunc., 3d edit. p.
16. And another author reasons thus upon it: Durgen., 8vo, pp. 11, 12,
'How unworthy is it of Christian charity to animate the rabble to abuse
a worthy man in such a situation? What could move the poet thus to
mention a brave sufferer, a gallant prisoner, exposed to the view of all
mankind? It was laying aside his senses, it was committing a crime, for
which the law is deficient not to punish him! nay, a crime which man can
scarce forgive or time efface! Nothing surely could have induced him to
it but being bribed by a great lady,' &c. (to whom this brave, honest,
worthy gentleman was guilty of no offence but forgery, proved in open
court). But it is evident this verse could not be meant of him, it being
notorious that no eggs were thrown at that gentleman. Perhaps,
therefore, it might be intended of Mr Edward Ward, the poet, when he
stood there.--P.
[354] 'Settle:' Elkanah Settle was once a writer in vogue, as well as
Cibber, both for dramatic poetry and politics.--P.
[355] 'Monarch:' Chi Ho-am-ti, Emperor of China, the same who built the
great wall between China and Tartary, destroyed all the books and
learned men of that empire.--P.
[356] 'Physic of the soul:' the caliph, Omar I., having conquered Egypt,
caused his general to burn the Ptolemaean library, on the gates of which
was this inscription, [Greek: PSYCHES IATREION], the Physic of the
soul.--P.
[357] 'Happy!--had Easter never been:' wars in England anciently, about
the right time of celebrating Easter.--P.
[358] 'Jacob, the scourge of grammar, mark with awe:' this gentleman is
son of a considerable maltster of Romsey in Southamptonshire, and bred
to the law under a very eminent attorney; who, between his more
laborious studies, has diverted himself with poetry. He is a great
admirer of poets and their works, which has occasioned him to try his
genius that way. He has wrote in prose the Lives of the Poets, Essays,
and a great many law-books, The Accomplished Conveyancer, Modern
Justice, &c.' Giles Jacob of himself, Lives of Poets, vol. i. He very
grossly, and unprovoked, abused in that book the author's friend, Mr
Gay.--P.
[359] 'Horneck and Roome:' these two were virulent party-writers,
worthily coupled together, and one would think prophetically, since,
after the publishing of this piece, the former dying, the latter
succeeded him in honour and employment. The first was Philip Horneck,
author of a Billingsgate paper called The High German Doctor. Edward
Roome was son of an undertaker for funerals in Fleet Street, and wrote
some of the papers called Pasquin, where by malicious innuendos he
endeavoured to represent our author guilty of malevolent practices with
a great man then under prosecution of Parliament. Of this man was made
the following epigram:
'You ask why Roome diverts you with his jokes,
Yet if he writes, is dull as other folks?
You wonder at it. This, sir, is the case,
The jest is lost unless he prints his face.'
Popple was the author of some vile plays and pamphlets. He published
abuses on our author in a paper called the Prompter.--P.
[360] 'Goode:' an ill-natured critic, who wrote a satire on our author,
called The Mock Aesop, and many anonymous libels in newspapers for
hire.--P.
[361] 'Ralph:' James Ralph, a name inserted after the first editions,
not known to our author till he writ a swearing-piece called Sawney,
very abusive of Dr Swift, Mr Gay, and himself. These lines allude to a
thing of his, entitled Night, a Poem. This low writer attended his own
works with panegyrics in the journals, and once in particular praised
himself highly above Mr Addison, in wretched remarks upon that author's
account of English Poets, printed in a London journal, September 1728.
He was wholly illiterate, and knew no language, not even French. Being
advised to read the rules of dramatic poetry before he began a play, he
smiled and replied, 'Shakspeare wrote without rules.' He ended at last
in the common sink of all such writers, a political newspaper, to which
he was recommended by his friend Arnall, and received a small pittance
for pay.--P. B. Franklin seems to have thought that his friend Ralph was
alluded to here. See his Autobiography.
[362] 'Behold yon pair:' one of these was author of a weekly paper
called The Grumbler, as the other was concerned in another called
Pasquin, in which Mr Pope was abused with the Duke of Buckingham and
Bishop of Rochester. They also joined in a piece against his first
undertaking to translate the Iliad, entitled Homerides, by Sir Iliad
Doggrel, printed 1715.--P.
[363] 'Wormius hight:' let not this name, purely fictitious, be
conceited to mean the learned Olaus Wormius; much less (as it was
unwarrantably foisted into the surreptitious editions) our own
antiquary, Mr Thomas Hearne, who had no way aggrieved our poet, but, on
the contrary, published many curious tracts which he hath to his great
contentment perused.--P.
[364] 'Lo! Henley stands,' &c.: J. Henley, the orator; he preached on
the Sundays upon theological matters, and on the Wednesdays upon all
other sciences. Each auditor paid one shilling. He declaimed some years
against the greatest persons, and occasionally did our author that
honour.--P.
[365] 'Sherlock, Hare, Gibson:' bishops of Salisbury, Chichester, and
London, whose Sermons and Pastoral Letters did honour to their country
as well as stations.--P.
[366] Of Toland and Tindal, see book ii. Thomas Woolston was an impious
madman, who wrote in a most insolent style against the miracles of the
Gospel, in the year 1726, &c.--P.
[367] 'A sable sorcerer:' Dr Faustus, the subject of a set of farces,
which, lasted in vogue two or three seasons, in which both playhouses
strove to outdo each other for some years.--P.
[368] 'Hell rises, Heaven descends, and dance on earth:' this monstrous
absurdity was actually represented in Tibbald's Rape of Proserpine.--P.
[369] 'Lo! one vast egg:' in another of these farces, Harlequin is
hatched upon the stage, out of a large egg.--P.
[370] 'Immortal Rich:' Mr John Rich, master of the Theatre Royal in
Covent Garden, was the first that excelled this way.--P.
[371] Booth and Cibber were joint managers of the Theatre in Drury
Lane.--P.
[372] 'Though long my party:' Settle, like most party-writers, was very
uncertain in his political principles. He was employed to hold the pen
in the character of a popish successor, but afterwards printed his
narrative on the other side. He had managed the ceremony of a famous
pope-burning on Nov. 17, 1680, then became a trooper in King James's
army, at Hounslow Heath. After the Revolution he kept a booth at
Bartholomew Fair, where, in the droll called St George for England, he
acted in his old age in a dragon of green leather of his own invention;
he was at last taken into the Charter-house, and there died, aged sixty
years.--P.
[373] 'Polypheme:' he translated the Italian Opera of Polifemo, but
unfortunately lost the whole gist of the story. The Cyclops asks Ulysses
his name who tells him his name is Noman. After his eye is put out, he
roars and calls the brother Cyclops to his aid: they inquire who has
hurt him? he answers Noman; whereupon they all go away again. Our
ingenious translator made Ulysses answer, 'I take no name,' whereby all
that followed became unintelligible. Hence it appears that Mr Gibber
(who values himself on subscribing to the English translation of Homer's
Iliad) had not that merit with respect to the Odyssey, or he might have
been better instructed in the Greek Punology.--P.
[374] 'Faustus, Pluto,' &c.: names of miserable farces, which it was the
custom to act at the end of the best tragedies, to spoil the digestion
of the audience.--P.
[375] 'Ensure it but from fire:' in Tibbald's farce of Proserpine, a
corn-field was set on fire; whereupon the other play-house had a barn
burned down for the recreation of the spectators. They also rivalled
each other in showing the burnings of hell fire, in Dr Faustus.--P.
[376] 'Another Æschylus appears:' it is reported of Æschylus, that when
his tragedy of the Furies was acted, the audience were so terrified that
the children fell into fits, and the big-bellied women miscarried.--P.
[377] 'On poets' tombs see Benson's titles writ:' W-----m Benson
(surveyor of the buildings to his Majesty King George I.) gave in a
report to the Lords, that their house and the painted-chamber adjoining
were in immediate danger of falling. Whereupon the Lords met in a
committee to appoint some other place to sit in, while the house should
be taken down. But it being proposed to cause some other builders first
to inspect it, they found it in very good condition. The Lords, upon
this, were going upon an address to the king against Benson for such a
misrepresentation; but the Earl of Sunderland, then secretary, gave them
an assurance that his Majesty would remove him, which was done
accordingly. In favour of this man, the famous Sir Christopher Wren, who
had been architect to the Crown for above fifty years, who built most of
the churches in London, laid the first stone of St Paul's, and lived to
finish it, had been displaced from his employment at the age of nearly
ninety years.--P.
[378] 'Ambrose Philips:' 'he was,' saith Mr Jacob, 'one of the wits at
Button's, and a justice of the peace.'--P.
[379] 'While Jones' and Boyle's united labours fall:' at the time when
this poem was written, the banqueting-house of Whitehall, the church and
piazza of Covent Garden, and the palace and chapel of Somerset House,
the works of the famous Inigo Jones, had been for many years so
neglected as to be in danger of ruin. The portico of Covent Garden
church had been just then restored and beautified at the expense of the
Earl of Burlington, who, at the same time, by his publication of the
designs of that great master and Palladio, as well as by many noble
buildings of his own, revived the true taste of architecture in this
kingdom.--P.
[380] 'Mad Máthesis:' alluding to the strange conclusions some
mathematicians have deduced from their principles, concerning the real
quantity of matter, the reality of space, &c.--P. W.
[381] 'Pure space:' i.e. pure and defaecated from matter. 'Ecstatic
stare:' the action of men who look about with full assurance of seeing
what does not exist, such as those who expect to find space a real
being.--W.
[382] 'Running round the circle, finds it square:' regards the wild and
fruitless attempts of squaring the circle.--P. W.
[383] 'Nor couldst thou,' &c.: this noble person in the year 1737, when
the act aforesaid was brought into the House of Lords, opposed it in an
excellent speech (says Mr Cibber), 'with a lively spirit, and uncommon
eloquence.' This speech had the honour to be answered by the said Mr
Cibber, with a lively spirit also, and in a manner very uncommon, in the
8th chapter of his Life and Manners.--P.
[384] 'Harlot form:' the attitude given to this phantom represents the
nature and genius of the Italian Opera; its affected airs, its
effeminate sounds, and the practice of patching up these operas with
favourite songs, incoherently put together. These things were supported
by the subscriptions of the nobility. This circumstance, that Opera
should prepare for the opening of the grand sessions, was prophesied of
in book iii. ver. 304,
'Already Opera prepares the way,
The sure forerunner of her gentle sway.'
P. W.
[385] 'Division reign:' alluding to the false taste of playing tricks in
music with numberless divisions, to the neglect of that harmony which
conforms to the sense, and applies to the passions. Mr Handel had
introduced a great number of hands, and more variety of instruments into
the orchestra, and employed even drums and cannon to make a fuller
chorus; which proved so much too manly for the fine gentlemen of his
age, that he was obliged to remove his music into Ireland. After which
they were reduced, for want of composers, to practise the patch-work
above mentioned.--P. W.
[386] 'Chromatic:' that species of the ancient music called the
Chromatic was a variation and embellishment, in odd irregularities, of
the diatonic kind. They say it was invented about the time of Alexander,
and that the Spartans forbad the use of it, as languid and
effeminate.--W.
[387] 'Wake the dull church, and lull the ranting stage:' i.e. dissipate
the devotion of the one by light and wanton airs; and subdue the pathos
of the other by recitative and sing-song.--W.
[388] 'Narcissus:' Lord Hervey.
[389] 'Bold Benson:' this man endeavoured to raise himself to fame by
erecting monuments, striking coins, setting up heads, and procuring
translations of Milton; and afterwards by as great passion for Arthur
Johnston, a Scotch physician's version of the Psalms, of which he
printed many fine editions. See more of him, book iii. v. 325.--P. W.
[390] 'The decent knight:' Sir Thomas Hanmer, who was about to publish a
very pompous edition of a great author, at his own expense.--P. W.
[391] 'So by each bard an alderman,' &c.: alluding to the monument of
Butler erected by Alderman Barber.
[392] 'The Samian letter:' the letter Y, used by Pythagoras as an emblem
of the different roads of Virtue and Vice.
'Et tibi quae Samios diduxit litera ramos.'--Pers. P. W.
[393] 'House or Hall:' Westminster Hall and the House of Commons.--W.
[394] 'Master-piece of man:' viz., an epigram. The famous Dr South
declared a perfect epigram to be as difficult a performance as an epic
poem. And the critics say, 'An epic poem is the greatest work human
nature is capable of.'--P. W.
[395] 'Gentle James:' Wilson tells us that this king, James I., took
upon himself to teach the Latin tongue to Carr, Earl of Somerset; and
that Gondomar, the Spanish ambassador, would speak false Latin to him,
on purpose to give him the pleasure of correcting it, whereby he wrought
himself into his good graces.--P. W. See Fortunes of Nigel.
[396] 'Locke:' in the year 1703 there was a meeting of the heads of the
University of Oxford to censure Mr Locke's Essay on Human Understanding,
and to forbid the reading it. See his Letters in the last edit.--P. W.
[397] 'Crousaz:' see Life.
[398] 'The streams:' the River Cam, running by the walls of these
colleges, which are particularly famous for their skill in
disputation.--P. W.
[399] 'Sleeps in port:' viz., 'now retired into harbour, after the
tempests that had long agitated his society.' So Scriblerus. But the
learned Scipio Maffei understands it of a certain wine called port, from
Oporto a city of Portugal, of which this professor invited him to drink
abundantly. Scip. Maff., _De Compotationibus Academicis_.--P. W.
[400] 'Letter:' alluding to those grammarians, such as Palamedes and
Simonides, who invented single letters. But Aristarchus, who had found
out a double one, was therefore worthy of double honour.--Scribl. W.
[401] 'Digamma:' alludes to the boasted restoration of the Aeolic
digamma, in his long-projected edition of Homer. He calls it something
more than letter, from the enormous figure it would make among the other
letters, being one gamma set upon the shoulders of another.--P. W.
[402] 'Cicero:' grammatical disputes about the manner of pronouncing
Cicero's name in Greek.--W.
[403] 'Freind--Alsop:' Dr Robert Freind, master of Westminster school,
and canon of Christ-church--Dr Anthony Alsop, a happy imitator of the
Horatian style.--P. W.
[404] 'Manilius or Solinus:' some critics having had it in their choice
to comment either on Virgil or Manilius, Pliny or Solinus, have chosen
the worse author, the more freely to display their critical
capacity.--P. W.
[405] 'Suidas, Gellius, Stobaeus:' the first a dictionary-writer, a
collector of impertinent facts and barbarous words; the second a minute
critic; the third an author, who gave his common-place book to the
public, where we happen to find much mince-meat of old books.--P. W.
[406] 'Divinity:' a word much affected by the learned Aristarchus in
common conversation, to signify genius or natural acumen. But this
passage has a further view: [Greek: Nous] was the Platonic term for
mind, or the first cause, and that system of divinity is here hinted at
which terminates in blind nature without a [Greek: Nous].--P. W.
[407] 'Petrify a genius:' those who have no genius, employed in works of
imagination; those who have, in abstract sciences.--P. W.
[408] 'And hew the block off:' a notion of Aristotle, that there was
originally in every block of marble a statue, which would appear on the
removal of the superfluous parts.--P. W.
[409] 'Ajax' spectre:' see Homer Odyss. xi., where the ghost of Ajax
turns sullenly from Ulysses the traveller, who had succeeded against him
in the dispute for the arms of Achilles.--Scribl. W.
[410] 'The first came forwards:' this forwardness or pertness is the
certain consequence, when the children of Dulness are spoiled by too
great fondness of their parent.--W.
[411] 'As if he saw St James's:' reflecting on the disrespectful and
indecent behaviour of several forward young persons in the presence, so
offensive to all serious men, and to none more than the good
Scriblerus.--P. W.
[412] 'Lily-silver'd vales:' Tube roses.--P.
[413] 'Lion of the deeps:' the winged Lion, the arms of Venice.--P. W.
[414] 'Greatly-daring dined:' it being, indeed, no small risk to eat
through those extraordinary compositions, whose disguised ingredients
are generally unknown to the guests, and highly inflammatory and
unwholesome.--P. W.
[415] 'Jansen, Fleetwood, Cibber:' three very eminent persons, all
managers of plays; who, though not governors by profession, had, each in
his way, concerned themselves in the education of youth, and regulated
their wits, their morals, or their finances, at that period of their age
which is the most important--their entrance into the polite world.--P.
W.
[416] 'Paridel:' the poet seems to speak of this young gentleman with
great affection. The name is taken from Spenser, who gives it to a
wandering courtly squire, that travelled about for the same reason for
which many young squires are now fond of travelling, and especially to
Paris.--P. W.
[417] 'Annius:' the name taken from Annius the Monk of Viterbo, famous
for many impositions and forgeries of ancient manuscripts and
inscriptions, which he was prompted to by mere vanity, but our Annius
had a more substantial motive. Annius, Sir Andrew Fontaine.--P. W.
[418] 'Still to cheat:' some read skill, but that is frivolous, for
Annius hath that skill already; or if he had not, skill were not wanting
to cheat such persons.--Bentl. P. W.
[419] 'Hunt the Athenian fowl:' the owl stamped on the reverse on the
ancient money of Athens.--P. W.
[420] 'Attys and Cecrops:' the first king of Athens, of whom it is hard
to suppose any coins are extant; but not so improbable as what follows,
that there should be any of Mahomet, who forbad all images, and the
story of whose pigeon was a monkish fable. Nevertheless, one of these
Annius's made a counterfeit medal of that impostor, now in the
collection of a learned nobleman.--P. W.
[421] 'Mummius:' this name is not merely an allusion to the mummies he
was so fond of, but probably referred to the Roman General of that name,
who burned Corinth, and committed the curious statues to the captain of
a ship, assuring him, 'that if any were lost or broken, he should
Back to Full Books
|