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King's College, Westminster, August 3, 1716. "Sir,-You are desired to acquaint the public that a certain bookseller near Temple Bar, not taking warning by the frequent drubs that he has undergone for his often pirating other men's copies, did lately, without the consent of Mr. John Barber, present captain of Westminster school, publish the scraps of a funeral oration, spoken by him over the corpse of the Rev. Dr. South. And being on Thursday last fortunately nabbed within the limits of Dean's Yard, by the king's scholars there, he met with a college salutation; for he was first presented with the ceremony of the blanket, in which, when the skeleton had been well shook, he was carried in triumph to the school; and after receiving a grammatical construction for his false concords, he was reconducted to Dean's Yard, and on his knees asking pardon of the aforesaid Mr. Barber for his offence, he was kicked out of the Yard, and left to the huzzas of the rabble. I am, Sir, yours, &c.

TYBURN.

"T.A."]

Ver. 41. 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.

[Shakspeare has alluded, in Love's Labour Lost, to the gallows at Tyburn, and it existed as early as the time of Henry IV. A few years before the date of the Dunciad, Jack Sheppard was executed there, in the presence, it is said, of about 200,000 persons. The last execution that took place at Tyburn was in 1783.]

JOURNALS, MAGAZINES, &c.

Ver. 42. Hence Journals, Medleys, Mercuries, Magazines.]
Miscellanies in prose and verse, in which at some times

New-born nonsense first is taught to cry;

at others dead-born Dulness appears in a thousand shapes. These were thrown out weekly and monthly by every miserable scribbler, or picked up piecemeal and stolen from anybody, under the title of papers, essays, queries, verses, epigrams, riddles, &c., equally the disgrace of human wit, morality, and decency. [Edit. 1743.]

Magazines. The common name of those upstart collections in prose and verse; where Dulness assumes all the various shapes of folly to draw in and cajole the rabble. The eruption of every miserable scribbler; the dirty scum of every stagnant newspaper; the rags of worn-out nonsense and scandal, picked up from every dunghill; under the title of "Essays, Reflections,

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 commenced 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
Like Cimon triumph'd both on land and wave:

(Pomps without guilt, of bloodless swords and maces,
Glad chains, warm furs, broad banners, and broad faces)
Now night descending, the proud scene was o'er,

But lived in Settle's numbers one day more.

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 segetes, glad, for making glad, &c.

SCRIBLERUS.

3 A beautiful manner of speaking, usual with poets in praise of poetry, in which kind nothing is finer than those lines of Mr. Addison:—

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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:

Yet run for ever by the Muses' skill,

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;
But it produced such base, rough, crabbed, hedge-
Rhymes, as e'en set the hearers' ears on edge:
Written by William Prynne, Esquire, the
Year of our Lord, six hundred thirty-three.

Brave Jersey Muse! and he's for his high style

Call'd to this day the Homer of the isle."

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

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