3

shows being at length frugally abolished, the employment of City Poet ceased; so that upon Settle's demise there was no successor to that place.-POPE [1729].

1 John Heywood, whose Interludes were printed in the time of Henry VIII.-POPE [1729].

See Editor's note.

2 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. Pryn, 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' cars on edge:

Written by William Prynn Esqui-re, 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.-POPE [1729].

See Editor's note.

3 Laurence Eusden, poet laureate.

100

Mr. Jacob gives a catalogue of some few only of his works, which were very numerous. Mr. Cook, in his Battle of Poets, saith of him,

Eusden, a laurel'd Bard, by fortune rais'd, By very few was read, by fewer prais'd.

Mr. Oldmixon, in his Arts of Logic and Rhetoric, pp. 413, 414, affirms : "That of all the Galimatia's 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 prophecied 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 cry'd, Who shall have it,

But I, the true Laureate, to whom the King gave it?

Apollo beg'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.

Of Blackmore, see Book ii. Of Philips, Book i. v. 262, and Book iii. prope fin.-POPE [1729 and 1743].

See Editor's note.

1 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.-POPE [1729].

2 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; that poetical rage and enthusiasm, with which Mr. D. hath, in his time, been highly possessed; and of those extraordinary hints and motions whereof he himself SO feelingly treats in his preface to the Rem. on Pr. Arth. [See notes on Book ii. ver. 268.]

Mr. Theobald, in the Censor, vol. ii..

105

N. 33, calls Mr. Dennis by the name of Furius. "The modern Furius is to be looked upon as more an object of pity, than of that which he daily provokes, laughter and contempt. Did we really know how much this poor man [I wish that reflection on poverty had been spared] "suffers by being contradicted, or, which is the same thing in effect, by hearing another praised; we should, in compassion, sometimes attend to him with a silent nod, and let him go away with the triumphs of his ill nature. Poor Furius [again] when any of his contemporaries are spoken well of, quitting the ground of the present dispute, steps back a thousand years to call in the succour of the ancients. His very panegyric is spiteful, and he uses it for the same reason as some ladies do their commendations of a dead beauty, who would never have had their good word, but that a living one happened to be mentioned in their company. His applause is not the tribute of his heart, but the sacrifice of his revenge," &c. Indeed his pieces against our poet are somewhat of an angry character, and as they are now scarce extant, a taste of his style may be satisfactory to the curious. "A young, squab, short gentleman, whose outward form, though it should be that of downright monkey, would not differ so much from human shape as his unthinking immaterial part does from human understanding. -He is as stupid and as venomous as a hunch-back'd toad.-A book through which folly and ignorance, those brethren so lame and impotent, do ridiculously look very big and very dull, and strut and hobble, cheek by jowl, with their arms on kimbo, being led and supported, and bullyback'd by that blind Hector, Impu

denco."-Reflect. on the Essay on Criticism, pp. 26, 29, 30.

It would be unjust not to add his reasons for this fury, they are so strong and so coercive: "I regard him (saith he) as an enemy, not so much to me, as to my king, to my country, to my religion, and to that liberty which has been the sole felicity of my life. A vagary of Fortune, who is sometimes pleased to be frolick some, and the epidemic madness of the times have given him reputation, and reputation (as Hobbes says) is power, and that has made him dangerous. Therefore I look on it as my duty to King George, whose faithful subject I am; to my country, of which I have appeared a constant lover; to the laws, under whose protection I have so long lived; and to the liberty of my country, more dear to me than life, of which I have now for forty years been a constant assertor, &c. I look upon it as my duty, I say, to do-you shall see what to pull the lion's skin from this little ass, which popular error has thrown round him; and to shew that this author, who has been lately so much in vogue, has neither sense in his thoughts, nor English in his expressions."-Dennis, Rem. on Hom. Pref. pp. 2, 91, &c.

Besides these public - spirited reasons, Mr. D. had a private one; which, by his manner of expressing it in p. 92, appears to have been equally strong. He was even in bodily fear of his life from the machinations of the said Mr. P. "The story (says he) is too long to be told, but who would be acquainted with it, may hear it from Mr. Curl, my bookseller. However, what my reason has suggested to me, that I have with a just confidence said, in defiance of his two clandestine wea

pons, his slander and his poison." Which last words of his book plainly discover Mr. D.'s suspicion was that of being poisoned, in like manner as Mr. Curl had been before him of which fact see A Full and True Account of a Horrid and Barbarous Revenge, by Poison, on the Body of Edmund Curl, printed in 1716, the year antecedent to that wherein these remarks of Mr. Dennis were pub lished. But what puts it beyond all question, is a passage in a very warm treatise, in which Mr. D. was also concerned, price two pence, called A True Character of Mr. Pope and his Writings, printed for S. Popping, 1716; in the tenth page whereof he is said "to have insulted people on those calamities and diseases which he himself gave them, by administring poison to them;" and is called (p. 4) "a lurking way-laying coward, and a stabber in the dark.' Which (with many other things most lively set forth in that piece) must have rendered him a terror, not to Mr. Dennis only, but to all Christian people. This charitable warning only provoked our incorrigible poet to write the following epigram:

Should Dennis publish, you had stabb'd your Brother,

Lampoon'd your Monarch, or debauch'd your Mother;

Say, what revenge on Dennis can be had? Too dull for laughter, for reply too mad: On one so poor you cannot take the Law; On one so old your sword you scorn to draw:

Uncag'd then let the harmless monster rage,

Secure in dulness, madness, want, and age,

For the rest; Mr. John Dennis was the son of a saddler in London, born in 1657. He paid court to Mr. Dryden and having obtained some correspondence with Mr. Wycherly and Mr. Congreve, he immediately obliged the public with their