case into the Court, and the will was set aside. With this stain on his character, Budgell fought on for some time, but he became still deeper involved in law-suits, his debts accumulated, and at last he dreaded an execution in his house. This prompted the alternative of suicide. He took a boat at Somerset Stairs, having previously filled his pockets with stones, and, as the waterman was "shooting the bridge," he threw himself overboard.]

MRS. CENTLIVRE.

Ver. 411. At last Centlivre felt her voice to fail.] Mrs. Susanna Centlivre, wife to Mr. Centlivre, Yeoman of the Mouth to his Majesty. She writ many plays, and a song (says Mr. Jacob, vol. i. p. 32,) before she was seven years old. She also writ a ballad against Mr. Pope's Homer, before he began it.

[Some of Mrs. Centlivre's comedies are still popular. The Busy Body and The Wonder a Woman Keeps a Secret, are excellent acting plays. Most of her productions, however, are stained with the licentiousness of the times. The history of this woman is singular. Her father was a gentleman of Holbeach, in Lincolnshire, who fled to Ireland about the time of the Restoration, to escape persecution for his religious opinions as a Dissenter. Both her parents died before she was twelve years of age. She travelled to London on foot to seek her fortune-was some time under the protection of Anthony Hammond, father of the poet, but married in her sixteenth year to a nephew of Sir Stephen Fox. This gentleman did not live more than a twelvemonth, when, shortly afterwards, she was married again to a Mr. Carrol, an officer in the army, who was killed in a duel about a year and a-half after their marriage. She now took to dramatic writing as a means of subsistence, and from 1700 to 1705 produced six comedies, to one of which (the Gamester) Rowe, the poet, contributed a prologue. She next tried the stage, and while performing the part of Alexander the Great at Windsor, she captivated the heart of the "Yeoman of the Mouth," or principal cook to Queen Anne, who proposed marriage, and was accepted. She lived happily with this important official for about eighteen years, producing during that time some of her best plays. She died December 1, 1723. As Mrs. Centlivre was intimate with Rowe, Budgell, Steele, and the other Whig authors who supported Tickell's Homer, she had been induced to join in the attempt to depreciate Pope's fitness for the translation.]

MOTTEUX.

Ver. 412. Motteux himself unfinished left his tale. [Peter Anthony Motteux, the excellent translator of Don Quixote, and author of a number of forgotten dramatic pieces. He was a merchant, and held a situation in the Post Office. Dryden addressed an epistle, To my Friend, Mr. Motteux,

He died in 1718.

on his Trajedy called Beauty in Distress, in which he compliments him highly on his mastery of the English language; a circumstance certainly remarkable in a Frenchman, though long resident in England.].

BOYER AND LAW.

Ver. 413. 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: their books were printed in 1726. Mr. Law affirmed, that "the playhouse is the temple of the devil: the peculiar pleasure of the devil; where all they who go, yield to the devil; where all the laughter is a laughter among devils, and all who are there are hearing music in the very porch of hell." To which Mr. Dennis replied, that "There is every jot as much difference between a true play, and one made by a poetaster, as between two religious books, the Bible and the Alcoran." Then he demonstrates, that "All those who had

ABEL BOYER.

written against the stage were Jacobites and non-jurors; and did it always at a time when something was to be done for the Pretender. Mr. Collier published his Short View when France declared for the Chevalier; and his Dissuasive just at the great storm, when the devastation which that hurricane wrought had amazed and astonished the minds of men, and made them obnoxious to melancholy and desponding thoughts. Mr. Law took the

t

opportunity to attack the stage upon the great preparations he heard were making abroad, and which the Jacobites flattered themselves were designed in their favour. And as for Mr. Bedford's Serious Remonstrance, though I know nothing of the time of publishing it, yet I dare to lay odds it was either upon the Duke d'Aumont's being at Somerset-house, or upon the late rebellion."-DENNIS, Stage Defended against Mr. Law, p. ult.

[Abel Boyer, was, like Motteux, a French refugee. He published a History of King William, in 3 vols; Annals of Queen Anne, in 11 vols; State Trials, &c. He died at Chelsea in 1729.-William Law has received a better immortality than that of the Dunciad, by the praises of Dr. Johnson, and Gibbon the historian, and by his excellent devotional works, the Serious Call to a Devout Life, Practical Treatise on Christianity, The Spirit of Prayer, &c. He was in reality a very powerful and masculine writer. His death took place in 1761.]

MORGAN AND MANDEVILLE.

Ver. 414. Morgan1 and Mandeville could prate no more. 1 A writer against religion, distinguished no otherwise from the rabble of his tribe than by the pompousness of his title; for, having stolen his morality from Tindal, and his philosophy from Spinoza, he calls himself, by the courtesy of England, a moral philosopher.

[Morgan was a Dissenting Minister in Bristol, author of the Moral Philosopher, 1737.-Bernard Mandeville was a Dutchman by birth, but settled in England when young, and practised as a physician until his death, in 1733. His principal work, the Fable of the Bees, or Private Vices made Public, Benefits, was doubly distinguished in being presented by the Grand Jury of Middlesex as immoral and pernicious, and in being answered by Pope's friend, Bishop Berkeley. "Frugality, according to Mandeville," is like honesty a mean starving virtue, fit only for small societies of good, peaceable men, who are contented to be poor so that they may be easy; but, in a large stirring nation, you may soon have enough of it. 'Tis an idle dreaming virtue, that employs no hands, and therefore very useless in a trading country, where there are vast numbers that, one way or other, must be all set to work. Prodigality has a thousand inventions to keep people from sitting still:" and this doctrine he enforces in language forcible and picturesque, and with a vast amount of misplaced and mischievous ingenuity. Indeed, Mandeville is scarcely inferior to Swift as a master of English, and his views of human nature and society were not more elevated.]

BOOK III.

TAYLOR, THE WATER POET.

Ver. 19. Taylor, their better Charon, lends an oar.] John Taylor, the Waterpoet, 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 gravel'd, could no farther get."

He wrote fourscore books in the reign of James I. and Charles I., and afterwards (like Edward Ward) kept an alehouse in Long Acre. He died in 1654.

[Pope misquotes Taylor. He copied the above lines from Winstanley, and probably never looked into Taylor. In the edition of his works, 1630, towards the end of what he calls Taylor's Motto, a bead-roll of what he has, what he wants, and what he cares for, the Water-poet says:

66

I care to get good bookes, and I take heed

And care what I doe either write or read;

Though some through ignorance, and some through spite,
Have said that I can neither read nor write.
But though my lines no scholarship proclaim,
Yet I at learning have a kind of ayme;
And I have gather'd much good observations,
From many humane and divine translations;
I was well enter'd (forty winters since)
As far as possum in my accidence;
And, reading out from possum to posset,
There I was mined, and could no farther get;
Which, when I think upon, with mind dejected,
I grieve to think how learning I neglected."]

JOHN WARD OF HACKNEY.

Ver. 34. As thick as eggs at 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. Curl (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., 3rd edit., p. 16. And another author reasons thus upon it :-(Durgen, 8vo. p. 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.

ELKANAH SETTLE.

Ver. 37. The band and suit which Settle wore.] Elkanah Settle was once a writer in vogue, as well as Cibber, both for dramatic poetry and politics. Mr. Dennis tells us that "he was a formidable rival to Mr. Dryden, and that in the University of Cambridge there were those who gave him the preference." Mr. Welsted goes yet further in his behalf: "Poor Settle was formerly the mighty rival of Dryden; nay, for many years, bore his reputation above him.” Pref. to his Poems, 8vo. p. 31. And Mr. Milbourn cried out, "How little was Dryden able, even when his blood run high, to defend himself against Mr. Settle!" Notes on Dryd. Virg. p. 175. These are comfortable opinions, and no wonder some authors indulge them.

He was author or publisher of many noted pamphlets in the time of King Charles II. He answered all Dryden's political poems; and, being cried up on one side, succeeded not a little in his tragedy of the Empress of Morocco (the first that was ever printed with cuts). "Upon this he grew insolent, the wits wrote against his play, he replied, and the town judged he had the better. In short, Settle was then thought a very formidable rival to Mr. Dryden; and not only the town but the University of Cambridge was divided which to prefer; and in both places the younger sort inclined to Elkanah." DENNIS, Pref. to Rem. on Hom.

[Settle's first tragedy, Cambyses, King of Persia, was, according to Dennis, acted for three successive weeks. His Empress of Morocco had a run of a month, and was acted at Whitehall, before the King, by the gentlemen and ladies of the Court, the prologue being written by Lord Rochester, and spoken by Lady Betty Howard. Rochester was the great patron of Settle, that he might mortify Dryden, and Dryden's friend, the Earl of Mulgrave.]