CHARACTERS. MACER: A CHARACTER.' WHEN Simple Macer, now of high renown, 1 Macer was intended to be a character of Ambrose Philips. The lines first appeared in the Miscellanies, 1727. 2 Ambrose Philips seems to have been notorious for his red stockings. Pope, in his 'Account of the Condition of E. Curll,' assigns this charac teristic as the mark by which he may be identified among Curll's authors: "At a Blacksmith's shop in the Friars, a Pindarick writer in red stockings." 3 In the Miscellanies there is the following note. He requested by public advertisements the aid of the ingenious, to make up a Miscellany in 1713. Mr. Peter Cunningham produces an advertisement from the 5 10 London Gazette of 4th January, 1714-15, which shows conclusively that "Macer" was intended for A. Philips. "There is now preparing for the Press a collection of original Poems and Translations by the most Eminent Hands, to be published by Mr. Philips. Such gentlemen, therefore, who are willing to appear in this Miscellany, are desired to communicate the same, directed to Jacob Tonson, bookseller in the Strand." + Philips' borrowed play was "The Distrest Mother," taken from Racine's Andromaque. John Crowne, a dramatist in the latter half of the seventeenth century, was notorious plagiarism. ог Now he begs verse, and what he gets commends, So some coarse country wench, almost decay'd, 15 20 25 UMBRA.' CLOSE to the best known author Umbra sits, "Who's here?" cries Umbra: "only Johnson,"-" Oh! But cries as soon, "Dear Dick, I must be gone, " 1 First published in the Miscellanies, 1727. Characters of the Times," which Pope included in the collection of "Libels" against him, which he bound in four volumes, says that "Umbra" was Walter Carey, for whom see Second Versi fication of Donne, 177, and note. 10 5 Poor Umbra left in this abandoned pickle, Know, sense, like charity, begins at home. 15 SYLVIA. A FRAGMENT.' SYLVIA, my heart in wondrous wise alarmed, Now deep in Taylor and the Book of Martyrs, But Frail feverish sex; their fit now chills, now burns: And a mere heathen in her carnal part, Is still a sad good Christian in her heart. 1 First published in the Miscellanies, 1727. It will be seen by comparing these lines with verses 45-68 of the Second Moral Essay, that the poet afterwards divided the character into two, and developed into the portraits of Calypso and Narcissa. 2 i.e., Durfey. 3 The Duke of Wharton and Francis Chartres, for whom see Moral Essay iii. 20. |