Then *essay'd; scarce vanish'd out of sight, He buoys up instant, and returns to light; REMARKS. 295 Curl, Key, p. 13. "He writ dramatic works, and a "volume of poetry, consisting of Heroic epistles, &c. some whereof are very well done," said that great judge, Mr. Jacob, in his Lives of Poets, vol. II. p. 303. In his Essay on Criticism, and the Arts of Logic and Rhetoric, he frequently reflects on our Author. But the top of his character was a perverter of history, in that scandalous one of the Stuarts, in folio, and his Critical History of England, two volumes, octavo. Being employed by Bishop Kennet, in publishing the historians in his collection, he falsified Daniel's Chronicle in numberless places. Yet this very man, in the preface to the first of these books, advanced a particular fact to charge three eminent persons of falsifying the Lord Clarendon's History; which fact has been disproved by Dr. Atterbury, late Bishop of Rochester, then the only survivor of them; and the particular part he pretended to be falsified produced since, after almost ninety years, in that noble author's original manuscript. He was all his life a virulent partywriter for hire, and received his reward in a small place, which he enjoyed to his death. v. 291. Next Smedley div'd.] In the surreptitious editions, this whole episode was applied to an initial letter E---, by whom if they meant the Laureate, nothing was more absurd, no part agreeing with his character. The allegory evidently demands a person dipped in scandal, and deeply immersed in dirty work ---whereas, Mr. Eusden's writings rarely offended, but by their length and multitude, and accordingly are taxed of nothing else in Book I. v. 102. But 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. Then essay'd.] A gentleman of genius and He bears no tokens of the sabler streams, And mounts far off among the swans of Thames. True to the bottom, see Concanen creep, A cold, long-winded, native of the deep; If perseverance gain the diver's prize, 300 No noise, no stir, no motion canst thou make, REMARKS. spirit, who was secretly dipt in some papers of this kind, on whom cur Poet bestows a panegyric instead of a satire, as deserving to be better employed than in party quarrels, and personal invectives. v. 299. Concanen.] Mathew Concanen, an Irishman, bred to the law. Smedley (one of his brethren in enmity to Swift) in his Metamorphosis of Scriblerus, p. 7. accuses him of " having boasted of what he had not written, but others had revised and done for him." He was author of several dull and dead scurrilities in the British and London Journals, and in a paper called the Speculatist. In a pamphlet, called a Supplement to the Profound, he dealt very unfairly with our Poet, not only frequently imputing to him Mr. Broome's verses (for which he might indeed seem, in some degree, accountable, having corrected what that gentleman did), but those of the Duke of Buckingham and others: to this rare piece, somebody humourously caused him to take for his motto, De profundis clamavi. He was since a hired scribbler in the Daily Courant, where he poured forth much Billingsgate against the Lord Bolingbroke and others; after which this man VARIATIONS. After ver. 298. in the first edit. followed these: He search'd for coral, but he gather'd weeds. IMITATIONS. .302. Not everlasting Blackmore.] * Nec bonus Eurytian praelato invidit honori," &c. Nij Virg An. Next plung'd a feeble, but a desperate pack, 305 310 Fast by, like Niobe (her children gone) Sits Mother Osborne, stupify'd to stone! And monumental brass this record bears, "These are, ah no! these were the Gazetteers!"' Not so bold Arnall; with a weight of scall Furious he drives, precipitately dull. 315 REMARKS. was surprizingly promoted to administer justice and law in Jamaica. v. 312. 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. v. 315. Arnall. 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 predecessors. 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 cailed The Free Briton; a Dedication intitled, To the Genuine Blunderer, 1732, and many others. He writ 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 56 Whirlpools and storms in circling arm invest, 320 The plunging Prelate, and his pond'rous Grace, With holy envy gave one layman place. When lo! a burst of thunder shook the flood, 325 Slow rose a form in majesty of Mud; Shaking the horrors of his sable brows, 330 First he relates how, sinking to the chin, Smit with his mien, the mud-nymphs suck'd him in ; REMARKS. "ninety-seven pounds, six shillings and eightpence "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. v. 323. The plunging Prelate, &c.] It having been invidiously insinuated, that by this title was meant a truly great prelate, as respectable for his defence of the present balance of power in the Civil constitution, as for his opposition to the scheme of no power at all, in the Religious, I owe so much to the memory of my deceased friend as to declare, that when, a little before his death, I informed him of this insinuation, he called IMITATIONS. v. 329. Greater he looks, and more than mortal stares.] Virg. Aen. VI. of the Sibyl. ❝ -----majorque videri, How young Lutetia, softer than the down, As Hylas fair was ravish'd long ago. 335 Then sung, how shown him by the Nut-brown maids Pours into Thames; and hence the mingled wave grave: Here brisker vapours o'er the Temple creep; REMARKS: 340 345 350 it vile and malicious; as any candid man, he said, might understand, by his having paid a willing_compliment to this very prelate in another part of the Poem, v. 349. 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 IMITATIONS. v. 347. Thence to the banks, &c.] "Tum canit errantem Permessi ad flumina Gallum, "Utque viro Phoebi chorus assurrexerit omnis; Ut Linus haec, illi divino carmine pastor, "Floribus atque apio crines ornatus amaro, "Dixerit, Hos tibi dant calamos, en aceie, Musae, Ascraeo quos ante seni"---&c. |