Then sighing thus, 'And am I now threescore? 285 Ah, why, ye gods! should two and two make four?' He said, and climb'd a stranded lighter's height, Shot to the black abyss, and plunged downright. The senior's judgment all the crowd admire, Who but to sink the deeper rose the higher. Next Smedly dived; slow circles dimpled o'er 291 The quaking mud, that closed and oped no more. REMARKS. 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 party writer for hire, and received his reward in a small place, which he enjoyed to his death. W. 291 Next Smedley dived.] In the surreptitious editions this whole episode was applied to an initial letter E-, by whom if they meant the laureat, 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. W. IMITATIONS. 285 Then sighing, thus, ' And am I now threescore? &c.] Fletque Milon senior, cum spectat inanes Herculeis similes, fluidos pendere lacertos.' OVID. 293 295 All look, all sigh, and call on Smedley lost; REMARKS. 302 299 295 Then ** essay'd] Supposed to mean Aaron Hill, though denied by Pope. 299 Concanen.] 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 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 ac countable, 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. W. IMITATIONS. 293 And call on Smedley lost, &c.] Alcides wept in vain for Hylas lost, : Hylas, in vain, resounds through all the coast.' 302 Not everlasting Blackmore.] 'Nec bonus Eurytion prælato invidit honori,' &c. VIRG. Æn. V. No noise, no stir, no motion canst thou make; 312 312 REMARKS. 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. W. 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 called The Free Britain; a Dedication entitled, 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 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 eight-pence 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. For W. Whirlpools and storms his circling arms invest, No crab more active in the dirty dance, Then sung, how shown him by the nut-brown maids Pours into Thames; and hence the mingled wave IMITATIONS. 329 Greater he looks, and more than mortal stares. VIRG. En. VI. of the Sibyl: majorque videri, Nec mortale sonans' Here, brisker vapours o'er the Temple creep; There, all from Paul's to Aldgate drink and sleep. Thence to the banks where reverend bards repose They led him soft: each reverend bard arose; [347 And Milbourn chief, deputed by the rest, 349 Gave him the cassock, surcingle, and vest. • Receive (he said) these robes which once were Dulness is sacred in a sound divine.' [mine, He ceased, and spread the robe; the crowd confess The reverend flamen in his lengthen'd dress. Around him wide a sable army stand, A low-born, cell-bred, selfish, servile band, Rolls the black troop, and overshades the street, REMARKS. 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 were intolerable. His manner of writing has a great resemblance with that of the gentlemen of the Dunciad against our author, as will be seen in the parallel of Mr. Dryden and him. W. IMITATIONS. 347 Thence to the banks, &c.] 'Tum canit errantem Permessi ad flumina Gallum, Ut Linus hæc illi divino carmine pastor, Floribus atque apio crines ornatus amaro, Dixerit, Hos tibi dant calamos, en accipe, Musæ, VIRG. Ecl. vI. |