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DEAN SMEDLEY.

Ver. 291. 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.

[In the early editions this episode was applied to E-, or Eusden, the Laureate. Jonathan Smedley, a stanch Whig, and Dean of Clogher, in Ireland, was a more formidable personage. His lines on Swift's instalment as Dean of St. Patrick's, cut as deeply as any of the attacks in the Dunciad, though inflicted with a coarser weapon. The following character of Swift, by Smedley, is admitted by Sir Walter Scott to possess considerable point and vivacity, as well as a distorted resemblance to the Dean's character:

66 THE DEVIL'S LAST GAME.

"Said Old Nick to St. Michael, you use me but ill,
To suppress all my force, and restrain all my skill:
Let me loose at religion, I'll show my good parts,
And try if your doctrine can balance my arts.
'Tis a match! cried the angel, and drew off his guard,
And the devil slipp'd from him to play a court card.
The first help he sought was a qualified mind,
That had compass and void for the use he design'd.
There occurred a pert nothing, a stick of Church timber,
Who had stiffness of will, but his morals were limber;
To whom wit served for reason, and passion for zeal;
Who had teeth like a viper, and tail like an eel;
Wore the malice of hell with heavenly grace,

Of humour enchanting, and easy of face;

His tongue flow'd with honey, his eyes flash'd delight,
He despised what was wrong, and abused what was right:
Had a knack to laugh luckily; never thought twice;
And with coarseness of heart had a taste that was nice.
Nature form'd him malignant, but, whetting him fast,
He was edged for decay, and too brittle to last.
He would quarrel with virtue because 'twas his foe's,
And was hardly a friend to the vice which he chose:
He could love nothing grave, nothing pleasant forbear;
He was always in jest, but most when in prayer!
'Lord be praised,' quoth the devil, 'a fig for all grace!'
So he breathed a new brogue o'er the bronze of his face;
Lent him pride above hope, and conceit above spleen,
Slipp'd him into Church service, and call'd him a DEAN!"]

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AARON HILL.

Ver. 295. Then * essayed.] A gentleman of genius and spirit, who was secretly dipped in some papers of this kind, on whom our poet bestows a panegyric instead of a satire, as deserving to be better employed than in party-quarrels and personal invectives.

[In the life of Pope we have given an account of the poet's quarrel with Aaron Hill, arising out of this passage in the Dunciad. Hill was a smooth and elegant versifier, a man of benevolent and amiable character, but vain. and fantastic in many of his pursuits, and, latterly, a gross flatterer of Richardson, the novelist, to whom he seems to have been indebted for more substantial favours than a mere exchange of praise. He was of good family, fortune, and connections: horn in 1685, the son of George Hill, Esq., of Malmesbury Abbey, Wiltshire, and educated at Westminster School. When a mere youth, he set off to Constantinople to visit his relation, Lord Paget, and he afterwards made the tour of Europe. In 1709, he was manager of Drury Lane Theatre, and to the end of his life he was engaged in theatrical speculations. Having written a poem (Camillus) in vindication of the Earl of Peterborough, the noble lord appointed him his secretary, but Hill was then deep in the affairs of the stage, and also newly married, and, consequently, did not go abroad with Peterborough. They seem afterwards to have meditated an expedition to the West Indies, but it also fell through. In 1718, he wrote a poem in praise of the Czar Peter, entitled The Northern Star, for which he was rewarded with a gold medal from the Empress Catharine, who wished him to undertake the life of the Czar. The death of Catharine, it is said, put an end to the projected memoir. Hill was the author of many tragedies, but only one can be said to have been successful, a translation of Voltaire's Zara, in which Mrs. T. Cibber, the excellent tragic actress, made her first appearance, on the stage. Ever restless, and projecting new schemes, theatrical and commercial, Hill dissipated his fortune. His literary works were unsuccessful, but he confidently appealed to posterity:

"Yet while from life my setting prospects fly,

Fain would my mind's weak offspring shun to die;
Fain would their hope some light through time explore,
The name's kind passport when the man's no more."

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Alas! the passage in the Dunciad has been his sole passport to posterity. He died February 5, 1750, "in the very minute of the earthquake," says Davies, "the shock of which, though speechless, he appeared to feel."

Hill is seen to advantage in his correspondence with Pope, and, both in prose and verse, he praised him so highly as a poet, that one is mortified to find him afterwards writing to Richardson in the following strain :—

"Mr. Pope, as you with equal keenness and propriety express it, is gone out. I told a friend of his, who sent me the first news of it, that I was very sorry for his death, because I doubted whether he would live to recover the accident. Indeed, it gives me no surprise, to find you thinking he was in

the wane of his popularity. It arose, originally, but from meditated little personal assiduities, and a certain bladdery swell of management. He did not blush to have the cunning to blow himself up by help of dull unconscious instruments, whenever he would seem to sail, as if his own wind moved him.

"In fact, if anything was fine or truly powerful in Mr. Pope, it was chiefly centred in expression, and that rarely, when not grafted on some other writer's conceptions. His own sentiments were low and narrow, because always interested; darkly touched, because conceived imperfectly; and sour and acrid, because writ in envy. He had a turn for verse, without a soul for poetry, *** But rest his memory in peace! It will very rarely be disturbed by the time he himself is ashes. It is pleasant to observe the justice of forced fame; she lets down those, at once, who get themselves pushed upwards, and lifts none above the fear of falling, but a few who never teased her." Truly, Aaron Hill merited a place in the Dunciad.]

CONCANEN.

Ver. 299. See Concanen creep.] Matthew 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 Profund, 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 humorously 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 was surprisingly promoted to administer justice and law in Jamaica.

[The interest of the Duke of Newcastle procured for Concanen, in 1732, the appointment of Attorney-General in India, which he filled with integrity and honour for nearly seventeen years. He acquired an ample fortune, and was on his voyage home, with the hope of enjoying it, when he died, January 22, 1749. Concanen was associated with Theobald and with Warburton in criticising Pope's Shakspeare.]

WILLIAM ARNALL.

Ver. 315. Not so bold 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 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, intituled To the Genuine Blunderer, 1732, and many others. He writ for hire, and valued himself upon it; not indeed without cause, it appearing by the aforesaid Report, 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 eightpence out of the Treasury."

[Arnall was much in the confidence of Sir Robert Walpole, and was employed on various secret missions. He was shrewd, sensible, and an able party writer, but vain and extravagant. "What he got," says Coxe," he spent as fast as it came, and many of his letters to Sir Robert show great poverty and distress. They are full of earnest petitions for preferment, money, &c. He had a silver inkstand, which he was proud of displaying, and boasted it was a present from his friend Walpole. His distress at last, brought on by his own imprudence, induced him, it is supposed, to commit suicide." This occurred in 1741, when Arnall was only twenty-six years of age.]

LUKE MILBOURNE.

Ver. 349. And Milbourne, chief, deputed by the rest.] Luke Milbourne, 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. His manner of writing has a great resemblance with that of the gentlemen of the Dunciåd against our author, as will be seen in the parallel of Mr. Dryden and him. Append.

[The Rev. Luke Milbourne actually made the suicidal attempt mentioned by Pope. He published Notes on Dryden's Virgil, in a Letter to a Friend, and after much irrelevant criticism, added a specimen of his own ability as a translator. "That Mr. Dryden," he said, "might be satisfied that I'd offer no foul play, nor find faults in him without giving him an opportunity of retaliation, I have subjoined another metaphrase or translation of the First and Fourth Pastoral, which I desire may be read with his by the original." Milbourne died in 1720.]

BISHOP HOADLEY.

Ver. 370. My H-ley's periods.1

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400. Yet silent bow'd to Christ's no kingdom here.2

1 [In the early editions it was "Henley's periods." Pope afterwards reduced it as above, wishing probably that the satire should be transferred to Bishop Hoadley, whose "periods of a mile" he alludes to in his Satires of Dr. Donne Versified.]

2 This is said by Curll, Key to Dunc., to allude to a sermon of a reverend bishop.

[The allusion is palpable. The sermon by Hoadley on the Nature of the Kingdom or Church of Christ occasioned a long and vehement polemical war, known as the Bangorian controversy, from Hoadley being at that time Bishop of Bangor. The sermon was preached before the king in 1717, and published by the royal command. Hoadley's Low Church principles, which recommended him at Court, were directly opposed to Atterbury's High Church and Tory opinions, and there was a fierce dispute between them. Hoadley was a formidable antagonist. He was a bettter reasoner, though a worse writer than Atterbury, and he was warmly attached to the civil and religions liberties of England, which Atterbury would have laid at the feet of the imbecile and bigoted house of Stuart. This zeal for constitutional government and the right of private judgment exposed Hoadley to the satire of Swift and Pope. It is but right to state, that Hoadley, along with Wake, left the House of Lords, and never voted in any division upon Atterbury's affair, having been engaged in controversy with him.]

EUSTACE BUDGELL.

Ver. 397. Thrice Budgell aimed 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.

[Poor Budgell committed suicide May 4, 1737. He was the son of Dr. Budgell, of St. Thomas, near Exeter, was a gentleman commoner of Christ Church, Oxford, and a relation of Addison, his mother being Addison's cousin-german. With these advantages Budgell began the world under favourable auspices. He accompanied Addison to Ireland as clerk, and afterwards rose to be Under-Secretary of State. He was elected a member of the Irish Parliament, and distinguished himself both as a speaker and man of business. At the same time he wrote several able papers in the Spectator. The death of Addison deprived Budgell of a powerful friend, and the darker shades of his character-his litigious disposition, his infidel opinions, and ungovernable temper-alienated from him other friends. He lost thousands of pounds in his attempts to obtain a seat in the English House of Commons, and in speculations in the South Sea scheme. Thus reduced, his only means of subsistence was literary employment, and he wrote various poetical pieces, political pamphlets, and miscellaneous productions. At length his friend, Dr. Tindal, died, and by his will a sum of 2,100l. was left to Mr. Budgell. The bequest was so disproportionate to Tindal's means, and so injurious to his nephew, Nicholas Tindal, the translator of Rapin, that the latter carried the

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