Queries, Songs, Epigrams, Riddles, &c.," equally the disgrace of human wit, morality, and common sense. [Edit. 1751.] [Warburton probably imparted some of the acrid feeling which distinguishes this comment. Warton makes an exception in favour of The Gentleman's Magazine, but the whole statement is ridiculously overcharged. The Gentleman's Magazine-so distinguished for Johnson's early assistance to its pages, and for its antiquarian and biographical illustrations-was com menced in 1731, as the newspapers were then supposed to be too numerous for any one to read! "Upon calculating the number of newspapers, it is found that (besides divers written accounts) no less than two hundred half sheets per month are thrown from the press only in London, and about as many printed elsewhere in the three kingdoms; a considerable part of which constantly exhibit essays on various subjects for entertainment; and all the rest occasionally oblige their readers with matters of public concern."-Introd. to Gent. Mag. No. I.] EPITAPHS. Ver. 43. Sepulchral lies our holy walls to grace,] is a just satire on the flatteries and falsehoods admitted to be inscribed on the walls of churches in epitaphs. ["Which," says Warburton, " 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." The epigram is of very general application; but according to Warton, it alludes to the too long and sometimes fulsome epitaphs, written by Dr. Friend, Master of Westminster school, in pure Latinity, indeed, but full of antitheses. Pope directed that he should have no other epitaph but the words sibique obiit, and the time, added to the epitaph on his parents.] NEW-YEAR ODES. Ver. 44. And New-Year Odes, and all the Grub-street race.] 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 of the instruments. The new-year odes of the hero of this work were of a caste distinguished from all that preceded him, and made a conspicuous part of his character as a writer, which, doubtless, induced our author to mention them here so particularly. [It must be admitted, that of all who have worn the laureate crown, Colley Cibber wrote the most execrable Odes. They are not dull, but rampant with fustian and bombast. His New-year Odes were a work of supererogation which exposed him to unmerciful ridicule, particularly after the Dunciad had led the way. Their yearly appearance was generally a signal for the small wits to assail the laureate with parodies and lampoons. His ode for 1743 concludes as follows: CHORUS. "On thee, great GEORGE, mankind rely, To heal their griefs or swell their joy." And one of the parodies has it— CHORUS. "On thee, COLL, we each year rely, To make us laugh, who've cause to cry." PUNS UPON POPE. Ver. 63. Here one poor word an hundred clenches makes.] It may not be amiss to give an instance or two of these operations of Dulness out of the works of her sons, celebrated in the poem. A great critic formerly held these clenches in such abhorrence, that he declared "he that would pun would pick a pocket." Yet Mr. Dennis's works afford us notable examples in this kind: "Alexander Pope hath sent abroad into the world as many bulls as his namesake Pope Alexander.—Let us take the initial and final letters of his name, viz. A. P-E, and they give you the idea of an ape.-Pope comes from the Latin word popa, which signifies a little wart; or from poppysma, because he was continually popping out squibs of wit, or rather popysmata, or popysms.”— DENNIS On Hom. and Daily Journal, June 11, 1728. LORD MAYOR'S DAY. Ver. 85. 'Twas on the day, when * * * rich and grave,1 Glad chains,2 warm furs, broad banners, and broad faces) But lived in Settle's numbers one day more.4 1 Viz. a Lord's 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 ways agrees with the chronology of the poem.-BENT. 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. In the former editions thus: ""Twas on the day when Thorold, rich and grave." 2 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 Græcism, nay, of figurative speech itself; Lætas segeles, glad, for making glad, &c. SCRIBLERUS. 8 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 immortalized in song, That lost in silence and oblivion lie, Dumb are their fountains, and their channels dry: And in the smooth description murmur still." 4 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 show being at length frugally abolished, the employment of city poet ceased, so that upon Settle's demise there was no successor to that place. [The brief sketch of the Lord Mayor's day in the above lines is in Pope's felicitous picturesque style, but it seems a needless piece of finessing to have left out the mayor's name, which was in all the editions before 1743, with the note "Sir George Thorold, Lord Mayor of London in the year 1720."] JOHN HEYWOOD. Ver. 98. And sure succession down from Heywood's days.] John Heywood, whose interludes were printed in the time of Henry VIII. [An account of Heywood's interludes will be found in Mr. Collier's Annals of the Stage, and in his Life of Shakspeare. Those early dramatic performances occupy a sort of middle place between the moral plays and the modern dramas. They are coarse and farcical, but abound in native humour and character. "The Four P's," a popular piece, by Heywood, is founded on a dispute between a palmer, a pardoner, a poticary, and a pedlar, as to who shall tell the greatest lie. The palmer settles the knotty point by saying incidentally, that he never saw a woman out of patience in his life! This was admitted to be the most outrageous falsehood ever uttered, and the drama and the dispute end with the decision. The old dramatist was a court musician and professed wit or jester, as well as writer of interludes.] DE FOE AND PRYNNE. Ver. 103. She saw old Prynne in restless Daniel shine.] The first edition had it, "She saw in Norton all his father shine." A great mistake; for Daniel De Foe had parts, but Norton De Foe was a wretched writer, and never attempted poetry. Much more justly is Daniel himself made successor to W. Prynne, both of whom wrote verses as well as politics; as appears by the poem De jure divino, &c., of De Foe, and by these lines, in Cowley's Miscellanies, on the other: "One lately did not fear (Without the Muses' leave) to plant verse here; Brave Jersey Muse! and he's for his high style And both these authors had a resemblance in their fates as well as writings, having been alike sentenced to the pillory. [It is little creditable to Pope, that he should have mentioned without branding with his censure, the arbitrary and cruel edicts of the Star Chamber, by which Prynne suffered, or the party violence and intolerance which sent De Foe to the pillory, "That hieroglyphic state machine Condemn'd to punish fancy in." When not possessed by that spirit of satire which sometimes blinded him to genius and merit, and to all high and ennobling feelings, Pope could do justice to De Foe. He said to Spence-" The first part of Robinson Crusoe is very good. De Foe wrote a vast many things, and none bad, though none excellent, except this. There is something good in all he has written."] LAURENCE EUSDEN, PHILIPS, AND TATE. Ver. 104. And Eusden eke out Blackmore's endless line.] Laurence Eusden, poet laureate. Mr. Jacob gives a catalogue of some few only of his works, which were very numerous. Mr. Cooke, in his Battle of Poets, saith of him, "Eusden, a laurell'd bard, by fortune raised, By very few was read, by fewer praised." Mr. Oldmixon, in his Arts of Logic and Rhetoric, p. 413, 414, affirms, "That of all the galimatias he ever met with, none comes up to some verses of this poet, which have as much of the ridiculum and the fustian in them as can well be jumbled together; and are of that sort of nonsense, which so perfectly confounds all ideas, that there is no distinct one left in the mind." Farther he says of him, "That he hath prophesied his own poetry shall be sweeter than Catullus, Ovid, and Tibullus; but we have little hope of the accomplishment of it, from what he hath lately published." Upon which Mr. Oldmixon has not spared a reflection, "That the putting the laurel on the head of one who writ such verses, will give futurity a very lively idea of the judgment and justice of those who bestowed it."—Ibid. p. 417. But the well-known learning of that noble person, who was then Lord Chamberlain, might have screened him from this unmannerly reflection. Nor ought Mr. Oldmixon to complain, so long after, that the laurel would have better become his own brows, or any others'. It were more decent to acquiesce in the opinion of the Duke of Buckingham upon this matter: "In rush'd Eusden, and cried, Who shall have it But I, the true laureate, to whom the king gave it? Apollo begg'd pardon, and granted his claim, But vow'd that till then he ne'er heard of his name." Session of Poets. The same plea might also serve for his successor, Mr. Cibber, and is further strengthened in the following epigram, made on that occasion: "In merry old England it once was a rule, The king had his poet, and also his fool; But now we're so frugal, I'd have you to know it, That Cibber can serve both for fool and for poet." [Eusden succeeded Rowe as laureate in 1718. He was appointed through the influence of the Duke of Newcastle, who was then Lord Chamberlain, and he was some time chaplain to Lord Willoughby de Broke; he died rector of Coningsby, in Lincolnshire, in 1730.] Ver. 105. She saw slow Philips creep like Tate's poor page.] Of Blackmore, see book ii. Of Philips, book i. ver. 262, and book iii. prope fin. 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. [The allusion here is evidently to Addison's supposed assistance to Ambrose Philips.] DENNIS THE CRITIC. Ver. 106. And all the mighty mad in Dennis rage.] This is by no means to be understood literally, as if Mr. Dennis were really mad, according to the narrative of Dr. Norris, in Swift and Pope's Miscellanies, vol. iii. No-it is spoken of that excellent and divine madness, so often mentioned by Plato: |
