X And high-born Howard,' more majestic sire, come ! 300 Sound, sound ye Viols; be the Cat-call dumb! The creeping, dirty, courtly Ivy join.2 sons, 305 Light-armed with Points, Antitheses, and Puns. rear: And under his, and under Archer's wing, 310 New Rehearsal, printed in 1714; in a third, entitled the Complete Art of English Poetry, in two volumes; and others.-P. 1 Hon. Edward Howard, author of the British Princes, and a great number of wonderful pieces, celebrated by the late Earls of Dorset and Rochester, Duke of Buckingham, Mr. Waller, &c.-P. 2 Quorum Imagines lambunt, Hederæ sequaces."-Pers.-P. W. 3 When the Statute against Gaming was drawn up, it was represented, that the King, by ancient custom, plays at Hazard one night in the year; and therefore à clause was inserted, with an exception as to that particular. Under this pretence, the Groom-porter had a room appropriated to Gaming all the summer the Court was at Kensington, which his Majesty accidentally being acquainted of, with a just indignation prohibited. It is reported the same practice is yet continued wherever the Court resides, and the 1 "O! when shall rise a Monarch all our own,' And I, a Nursing-mother, rock the throne; 'Twixt Prince and People close the Curtain draw, Shade him from Light, and cover him from Law; Fatten the Courtier, starve the learned band, 315 And suckle Armies, and dry-nurse the land: Till Senates nod to Lullabies divine, And all be sleep, as at an Ode of thine." She ceased. Then swells the Chapel-royal throat: 2 "God save King Cibber!" mounts in every note. 320 Familiar White's, "God save King Colley!" cries; "God save King Colley!" Drury-lane replies: To Needham's quick the voice triumphal rode, But pious Needham dropped the name of God:3 Hazard Table there open to all the professed gamesters in town. "Greatest and justest Sov'reign! know you this? Alas! no more than Thames' calm head can know Whose meads his arms drown, or whose corn o'erflow." Donne to Queen Eliz.-P. W. 1 1 Boileau, Lutrin, Chant. II. : "Helas! qu'est devenu ce tems, cet heureux tems, Où les Rois s'honoroient du nom de Fainéans," &c. -P. W. 2 The voices and instruments used in the service of the Chapel-royal being also employed in the performance of the Birth-day and New-year Odes.-P. W. 3 A Matron of great fame, and very religious in her way; whose constant prayer it was, that she might get enough by her profession to leave it off in time, and make her peace with God." But her fate was not so happy; for, being convicted and set in the pillory, she was (to the lasting shame of all her great 325 Back to the Devil the last echoes roll,1 And "Coll!" each butcher roars at Hockleyhole. So when Jove's block descended from on high (As sings thy great forefather Ogilby) Loud thunder to its bottom shook the bog, And the hoarse nation croaked, King Log! "2 "God save 330 Friends and Votaries) so ill-used by the populace, that put an end to her days.-P. W. it The Devil Tavern, in Fleet-street, where these Odes are usually rehearsed before they are performed at Court.-P. 2 See Ogilby's Esop's Fables, where, in the story of the Frogs and their King, this excellent hemistic is to be found. Our author manifests here, and elsewhere, a prodigious tenderness for the bad writers. We see he selects the only good passage, perhaps, in all that ever Ogilby writ; which shows how candid and patient a reader he must have been. What can be more kind and affectionate than these words in the preface to his Poems, where he labours to call up all our humanity and forgiveness towards these unlucky men by the most moderate representation of their case that has ever been given by any author? "Much may be said to extenuate the fault of bad poets: What we call a genius is hard to be distinguished, by a man himself, from a prevalent inclination and if it be never so great, he can at first discover it no other way than by that strong propensity which renders him the more liable to be mistaken. He has no other method but to make the experiment by writing, and so appealing to the judgment of others and if he happens to write ill (which is certainly no sin in itself) he is immediately made the object of ridicule! I wish we had the humanity to reflect that even the worst authors might endeavour to please us, and in that endeavour, deserve something at our hands. We have no cause to quarrel with them but for their obstinacy in persisting, and even that may admit of alleviating circumstances. For their particular friends may be either ignorant, or unsincere; and the rest of the world too well-bred to shock them with a truth which generally their booksellers are the first that inform them of. But how much all indulgence is lost upon these people may appear from the just reflection made on their constant conduct, and constant fate, in the following Epigram : "Ye little Wits, that gleamed awhile, "To compass Phoebus' car about, Each lends his cloud, to put him out, That reared him to the skies. "Alas! those skies are not your sphere; There He shall ever burn: Weep, weep, and fall! for Earth ye were, Two things there are, upon the supposition of which the very basis of all verbal criticism is founded and supported: the first, that an Author could never fail to use the best word on every occasion; the second, that a critic cannot choose but know which that is. This being granted, whenever any word doth not fully content us, we take upon us to conclude, first, that the author could never have used it; and, secondly, that he must have used that very one which we conjecture in its stead. We cannot, therefore, enough admire the learned Scriblerus for his alteration of the text in the two last verses of the preceding book, which in all the former editions stood thus: "Hoarse thunder to its bottom shook the bog, And the loud nation croaked, God save King Log!" He has, with great judgment, transposed these two epithets; putting hoarse to the nation, and loud to the thunder and this being evidently the true reading, he vouchsafed not so much as to mention the former; for which assertion of the just right of a Critic, he merits the acknowledgment of all sound Commentators.-P. |