71

With arms expanded, Bernard rows his state,
And left-legg'd Jacob seems to emulate.
Full in the middle way there stood a lake,
Which Curl's Corinna chanc'd that morn to make:
(Such was her wont, at early dawn to drop
Her evening cates before his neighbour's shop ;)
Here fortun'd Curl to slide; loud shout the band,
And "Bernard! Bernard!" rings through all the
Strand.

Obscene with filth the miscreant lies bewray'd,
Fall'n in the plash his wickedness had laid:
Then first (if poets aught of truth declare)
The caitiff vaticide conceiv'd a pray'r.

75

80

"Hear, Jove! whose name my bards and I adore, As much at least as any god's, or more; And him and his, if more devotion warms, Down with the Bible, up with the Pope's arms." A place there is betwixt earth, air, and seas, Where, from ambrosia, Jove retires for ease. There in his seat two spacious vents appear; On this he sits, to that he leans his car, And hears the various vows of fond mankind; Some beg an eastern, some a western wind: All vain petitions, mounting to the sky, With reams abundant this abode supply:

REMARKS.

85

90

v. 70. Curl's Corinna.] This name, it seems, was taken by one Mrs. Thomas, who procured some private letters of Mr. Pope, while almost a boy, to Mr. Cromwell, and sold them without the consent of either of those gentlemen to Curl, who printed them in 12mo, 1727. He discovered her to be the publisher, in his Key, p. 11. We only take this opportunity of mentioning the manner in which those letters got abroad, which the author was ashamed of as very trivial things, full not only of levities, but of wrong judgments of men and books, and only excusable from the youth and inexperience of the writer.

IMITATIONS.

v.67, 68. With arms expanded, Bernard rows his state, And left-legged Jacob seems to emulate.}

Milton, of the motion of the swan,

66 ------rows

His state with oary feet."

And Dryden of another's--- With two left legs...

W.

Amus'd he reads, and then returns the bills,
Sign'd with that ichor which from gods distils.
In office here fair Cloacina stands,
And ministers to Jove with purest hands.
Forth from the heap she pick'd her votary's pray'r,
And plac'd it next him, a distinction rare!
Oft had the goddess heard her servant's call,
From her black grottoes near the Temple-wall,
Listening delighted to the jest unclean
Of link-boys vile, and watermen obscene;
Where as he fished her nether realms for wit,
She oft had favour'd him, and favours yet.
Renew'd by ordure's sympathetic force,
As oil'd with magic juices for the course,
Vigorous he rises; from th' effluvia strong
Imbibes new life, and scours and stinks along;
Repasses Lintot, vindicates the race,
Nor heeds the brown dishonours of his face.

96

100

105

And now the victor stretch'd his eager hand Where the tall nothing stood, or seem'd to stand; 110 A shapeless shade, it melted from his sight, Like forms in clouds, or visions of the night. To seize his papers, Curl, was next thy care; His papers light, fly diverse, toss'd in air; Songs, sonnets, epigrams, the winds uplift, And whisk 'em back to Evans, Young, and Swift. Th' embroider'd suit at least he decm'd his prey, That suit an unpaid tailor snatch'd away. No rag, no scrap, of all the beau, or wit, That once so flutter'd, and that once so writ.

115

120

Heav'n rings with laughter: of the laughter vain,

Dulness, good queen, repeats the jest again.
Three wicked imps, of her own Grub-street choir,
She deck'd like Congreve, Addison, and Prior:

REMARKS.

v.116. Evans, Young, und Swift.] Some of those writings, epigrams, or jests, he had owned.

W.

v. 124. like Congreve, Addison, and Prior.] These authors being such whose names will reach posterity, we shall not give any account of them, but proceed to those of whom it is necessary.--Bezaleel Morris was author of some satires on the translators of

Mears, Warner, Wilkins, run: delusive thought! 125
Breval, Bond, Bezaleel, the varlets caught,
Curl stretches after Gay, but Gay is gone;
He grasps an empty Joseph for a John:
So Proteus, bunted in a nobler shape,
Became, when seiz'd, a puppy, or an ape.

150

To him the goddess: "Son! thy grief lay down,
And turn this whole illusion on the town.
As the sage dame, experienc'd in her trade,
By names of toasts retails each batter'd jade;
(Whence hapless Monsieur much complains at Paris
Of wrongs from Duchesses and Lady Maries;)
Be thine, my stationer! this magic gift;
Cook shall be Prior; and Concanen, Swift:
So shall each hostile name become our own,
And we, too, boast our Garth and Addison.

With that she gave him (piteous of his case,
Yet smiling at his rueful length of face)
A shaggy tap'stry, worthy to be spread
On Codrus' old, or Dunton's modern bed;

REMARKS.

136

140

Homer, with many other things printed in newspapers." Bond writ a satire against Mr. P.---Capt. Breval was author of The Confederates, an ingenious dramatic performance, to expose Mr. P. Mr. Gay, Dr. Arbuthnot, and some ladies of quality," says Curl, Key, p. 11. W.

v. 125. Mears, Warner, Wilkins.] Booksellers, and printers of much anonymous stuff.

W.

v. 128. Joseph Gay.] A fictitious name put by Curl before several pamphlets, which made them pass with many for Mr. Gay's. The ambiguity of the word Joseph, which likewise signifies a loose upper coat, gives much pleasantry to the idea.

v. 138. Cook shall be Prior.] The man here specified writ a thing called The Battle of the Poets, in which Philips and Welsted were the heroes, and Swift and Pope utterly routed. He also published some malevolent things in the British, London, and Daily Journals, and at the same time wrote letters to Mr. Pope, protesting his innocence. His chief work was a translation of Hesiod, to which Theobald wrote notes and half notes, which he carefully owned. W. Ibid. and Concanen, Swift.] In the first edition of this poem there were only asterisks in this place; but the names were since inserted, merely to fill up the verse, and give ease to the ear of the

reader.

W.

v. 144. Dunton's modern bed.] John Dunton was a broken bookseller, and abusive scribbler: he writ Neck or Nothing, a vio lent satire on some ministers of state; a libel on the Duke of Devonshire, and the Bishop of Peterborough, &c. W.

Instructive work! whose wry-mouth'd portraiture
Display'd the fates her confessors endure.
Earless on high stood unabash'd De Foe,
And Tutchin flagrant from the scourge below:
There Ridpath, Roper, cudgell'd might he view:
The very worsted still look'd black and blue:
Himself among the storied chiefs he spies,
As, from the blanket, high in air be flies,

146

150

And "Oh! (he cried) what street, what lane but knows
Our purgings, pumpings, blanketings, and blows?
In every loom our labours shall be seen,
And the fresh vomit run for ever green!"
Sce in the circle next Eliza plac'd,

Two babes of love close clinging to her waist;

REMARKS.

155

v. 148. And Tutchin flagrant from the scourge.] John Tutchin, author of some vile verses, and of a weekly paper called The Ob. servator: he was sentenced to be whipped through several towns in the west of England, upon which he petitioned King James II. to be hanged. When that prince died in exile, he wrote an invective against his memory, occasioned by some humane elegies on his death. He lived to the time of Queen Anne.

v. 149. There Ridpath, Roper.] Authors of the Flying Post and Post-Boy, two scandalous papers on different sides, for which they equally and alternately deserved to be cudgelled, and were so. W.

v. 151. Himself among the storied chiefs he spies.] The history of Curl's being tossed in a blanket, and whipped by the scholars of Westminster, is well known. Of his purging and vomiting, sec a full and true account of a horrid revenge on the body of Edmund Curl, &c. in Swift and Pope's Miscellanies.

W.

v. 157. See in the circle next Eliza plac'd.] Eliza Haywood: this woman was authoress of those most scandalous books, called The Court of Carimania, and The New Utopia. For the two Babes of Love, see Curl, Key, p. 22. But whatever reflection he is pleased to throw upon this lady, surely it was what from him she little deserved, who had celebrated Curl's undertakings for reformation of manners, and declared herself" to be so perfectly acquainted with the sweetness of his disposition, and that tenderness with which he considered the errors of his fellow-creatures, that though she should find the little inadvertencies of her own life recorded in his papers, she was certain it would be done in such a manner as she could not

but approve." Mrs. Haywood's Hist. of Car. printed in the Female Dunciad, p. 18.

IMITATIONS.

W.

v. 156. And the fresh vomit run for ever green!] A farody of

these lines of a late noble author:

"His bleeding arm had furnished all the rooms,
And run for ever purple in the looms."

Fair as before her works she stands confess'd,

159

In flowers and pearls by bounteous Kirkall dress'd.
The Goddess then: "Who best can send on high
The salient spout, far streaming to the sky,
His be you Juno of majestic size,

With cow-like udders, and with ox-like eyes.
This China jordan let the chief o'ercome
Replenish, not ingloriously, at home."

Osborne and Curl accept the glorious strife; (Though this his son dissuades, and that his wife.) One on his manly confidence relie s,

One on his vigour and superior size.

First Osborne lean'd against his letter'd post;
It rose,
and labour'd to a curve at most.

REMARKS.

165

170

.160. Kirkall.] The name of an engraver. Some of this lady's works were printed in four volumes in 12mo, with her picture thus dressed up before them.

W.

v. 167. Osborne, Thomas.] A bookseller in Gray's-Inn, very well qualified by his impudence to act this part; therefore placed here instead of a less deserving predecessor. This man published adver tisements for a year together, pretending to sell Mr. Pope's subscription-books of Homer's Iliad, at half the price: of which books he had none, but cut to the size of them (which was quarto) the common books in folio, without copper-plates, on a worse paper, and never above half the value

Upon this advertisement the Gazetteer harangued thus, July 6, 1739: "How melancholy must it be to a writer to see his works hawked for sale in a manner so fatal to his fame! How, with ho nour to yourself, and justice to your subscribers, can this be done? What an ingratitude to be charged on the only honest poet that lived in 1738! and than whom virtue has not had a shriller trumpeter for many ages! That you were once generally admired and esteemed can be denied by none; but that you and your works are now despised, is verified by this fact:" which being utterly false, did not indeed much humble the author, but drew this just chastisement on the bookseller.

v. 163. yon Juno,

IMITATIONS.

With cow-like udders, and with ox-like eyes. In allusion to Homer's BowTIC, &c.

v. 165. This China jordan.]

W.

"Tertius Argolica hac galea contentus abito." Virg. Æn. VI. In the games of Homer, Iliad XXIII. there are set together as prizes, a lady and a kettle, as in this place Mrs. Haywood and a jordan. But there the preference in value is given to the kettle, at which Madam Dacier is justly displeased. Mrs. H. is here treated with distinction, and acknowledged to be the more valuable of the

two.