In eldest time, ere mortals writ or read, Still her old empire to restore she tries, Oh thou! whatever title please thine ear- One cell there is, conceal'd from vulgar eye, Keen, hollow winds howl through the bleak recess, 20 And new-year odes, and all the Grub-street race. Close to those walls where Folly holds her throne, And laughs to think Monroe would take her down, 30 Where o'er the gates, by his famed father's hand, Great Cibber's brazen, brainless brothers stand; REMARKS. where Bartholomew fair was kept, whose shows, machines, and dramatical entertainments, formerly agreeable only to the taste of the rabble, were by the hero of this poem, and others of equal genius, brought to the theatres of Coventgarden, Lincoln's inn-fields, and the Hay-market, to be the reigning pleasures of the court and town. This happened in the reigns of King George I. and II. See Book iii. Ver. 4. By Dulness, Jove, and Fate :] i. e. by their judgments, their interests, and their inclinations. Where, in nice balance, truth with gold she weighs, Here she beholds the chaos dark and deep, REMARKS. Ver. 34. Poverty and poetry.] I cannot here omit a reVer. 15. Laborious, heavy, busy, bold, &c.] I wonder mark that will greatly endear our author to every one, who the learned Scriblerus has omitted to advertise the reader, shall attentively observe that humanity and candour, which at the opening of this poem, that Dulness here is not to be every where appears in him towards those unhappy objects. taken contractedly for mere stupidity, but in the enlarged of the ridicule of all mankind, the bad poets. He there i5sense of the word, for all slowness of apprehension, short-putes all scandalous rhymes, scurrilous weekly papers, base ness of sight, or imperfect sense of things. It includes (as flatteries, wretched clégies, songs, and verses (even from we see by the poet's own words) labour, industry, and some those sung at court, to ballads in the street,) not so much to degrees of activity and boldness; a ruling principle not malice or servility as to dulness, and not so much to defress inert, but turning topsy-turvy the understan ing, and induas to necessity. And thus, at the very commencement of cing an anarchy or confused state of mind. This remark his satire, makes an apology for all that are to be satirized. ought to be carried along with the reader throughout the Ver. 40. Curli's chaste press, and Lintot's rubric pest) work; and without this caution he will be apt to mistake Two booksellers, of whom see Book ii. The former was the importance of many of the characters, as well as of the fined by the Court of King's Bench for publishing obscure design of the poet. Hence it is that some have complained books; the latter usually adorned his shop with titles in red he chooses too mean a subject, and imagined he employs letters. himself like Domitian, in killing flies; whereas those who Ver. 41. Hence hymning Tyburn's elegiac lines.] It is an have the true key will find he sports with nobler quarry, and ancient English custom for the malefactors to sing a psala embraces a larger compass; or (as one saith on a like oc-at their execution at Tyburn; and no less customary to casion,) 'Will see his work, like Jacob's ladder rise, Its foot in dirt, its head amid the skies.' Bentl. Ver. 17. Still her old empire to restore.] This restoration makes the completion of the poem. Vide Book iv. Ver. 22. Laugh and shake in Rabelais' easy chair.] The imagery is exquisite; and the equivoque in the last words, gives a peculiar elegance to the whole expression. The easy chair suits his age: Rabelais' easy chair marks his character; and he filled and possessed it as the right heir and successor of that original genius. Ver. 23. Or praise the court, or magnify mankind.] Ironice, alluding to Gulliver's representations of both. The next line relates to the papers of the Draper against the cur rency of Wood's copper coin in Ireland, which, upon the great discontent of the people, his majesty was most graciously plor sed to recall. print elegies on their deaths, at the same time, or before. Ver. 43. Sepulchral lies, is a just satire on the flatteries and falsehoods admitted to be inscribed on the walls of churches, in epitaphs, which occasioned the following epigram: 'Friend! in your epitaphs, I'm grieved So very much is said; One half will never be believed, The other never read.' Ver. 44. New-year odes.] Made by the poet-laureate for the time being, to be sung at court on every new year's day, the words of which are happily drowned in the voices and instruments. The new-year odes of the hero of th work were of a cast distinguished from all that precelet him, and made a conspicuous part of his character as a writer, which doubtless induced our author to mention then here so particularly. Ver. 26. Mourn not, my Swift, at aught our realm ac- Ver. 45. In clouded majesty here Dulness shone.] See quires. Ironice iterum. The politics of England and Ire-this cloud removed or rolled back, or gathered up to her land were at this time by some thought to be opposite, or head, Book iv. ver. 17, 18. It is worth while to compare interfering with each other. Dr. Swift of course was in the this description of the majesty of Dulness in a state of pears interest of the latter, our author of the former. Ver. 31. By his famed father's hand.] Mr. Caius Gabriel Cibber, father of the poet-laureate. The two statues of he lunatics over th gates of Bedlam-hospital were done by him, and (as the son justly says of them) are no ill monuments of his fame as an artist. and tranquillity, with that more busy scene where she mounts the throne in triumph, and is not so much supported by her own virtues, as by the princely consciousness of ha ving destroyed all other. Ver, 57. Genial Jacob] Tonson. The famous race of book sellers of that name Here one poor word a hundred clenches makes, And ductile Dulness new meanders takes, There motley images her fancy strike, Figures ill-pair'd, and similes unlike. She sees a mob of metaphors advance, Pleased with the madness of the mazy dance; How tragedy and comedy embrace; How farce and epic get a jumbled race; How Time himself stands still at her command, Realms shift their place, and ocean turns to land; Here gay description Egypt glads with showers Or gives to Zembla fruits, to Barca flowers; Glittering with ice here hoary hills are seen, There painted valleys of eternal green, In cold December fragrant chaplets blow, And heavy harvests nod beneath the snow. 80 All these, and more, the cloud-compelling queen Beholds through fogs, that magnify the scene. She, tinsel'd o'er in robes of varying hues, With self-applause her wild creation views; Sees momentary monsters rise and fall, And with her own fools' colours gilds them all. "Twas on the day, when ** rich and grave, Like Cimon triumph'd both on land and wave: (Pomps without guilt, of bloodless swords and maces, Glad chains, warm furs, broad banners, and broad faces,) 90 Now night descending, the proud scene was o'er, REMARKS. 100 of poetry. 'Eusden, a laurel'd bard by fortune rais'd, Mr. Oldmixon, in his Arts of Logic and Rhetoric, p. 413, 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. Cib ber: and is further strengthened in the following epigram made on that occasion: In merry Old England it once was a rule But now we're so frugal, I'd have you to know it, 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 Absolam 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. Ver. 106. And all the mighty mad in Dennis rage.] Mr. Theobald, in the Censor, vol. ii. No. 33, calls Mr. Dennis by the name of Furius. The modern Furius is to be lookeď upon more as 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 nod, and let him go away with the triumphs of his ill-nature. should, in compassion sometimes attend to him with a silent -Poor Furius, (again) when any of his contemporaries are spoken well of, quitting the ground of the present dispute, ancients. His very panegyric is spiteful, and he uses it for steps back a thousand years to call in the succour of the Ver. 90. But lived, in Settle's numbers, one day more.] A beautiful manner of speaking, usual with poets, in praise Ibid. But lived, in Settle's numbers, one day more.] Set- the same reason as some ladies do their commendation of a tle was poet to the city of London. His office was to com- that a living one happened to be mentioned in their com dead beauty, who would never have their good word, but pose yearly panegyrics upon the lord mayors, and verses to be spoken in the pageants: but that part of the shows being pany. His applause is not the tribute of his heart, but the at length frogally abolished, the employment of City-poet sacrifice of his revenge,' &c. Indeed, his pieces against our ceased; so that upon Settle's demise, there was no successor poet are somewhat of an angry character, and as they are to that place. Ver. 98. John Heywood, whose interludes were printed in the time of Henry VIII. Ver. 103. Old Pryn in restless Daniel.] The first edition had it, 'She saw in Norton all his father shine:" now scarce extant, a taste of this 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 the human shape as his unthinking immaterial part does from human understanding.-He is as stupid and as venomous as a hunchback'd tond. A book through which folly and ignorance, a great mistake! for Daniel de Foe had parts, but Norton those brethren so lame and impotent, do ridiculously look de Foe was a wretched writer, and never attempted poetry. big and very dull, and strut and hobble, cheek by jowl, Much more justly is Daniel himself, made successor to W. with their arms on kimbo, being led and supported, and Pryn, both of whom wrote verses as well as Politics; as ap-bully-hack'd by that blind Hector, Impudence. Reflect. on pears by the poem de Jure Divino, &c. of De Foe, and by the Essay on Criticism, p. 26, 29, 30. Ꮓ Bays, form'd by nature stage and town to bless, REMARKS. Swearing and supperless the hero sat, 120 110 Blasphemed his gods, the dice, and damn'd his fate; 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 frolicsome, 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 asserter, &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 populer error has thrown around him; and to show that this author, who has been lately so much in vogue, has neither sense in his thoughts, nor English in his expression.' Dennis, Rem. on Hom. Pref. p. 2, 91, &c. There hapless Shakspeare, yet of Tibbald sore, REMARKS. 120 Quoth Cibber to Pope, "Though in verse you foreclose, am I only to be dull, and dull still, and again, and for ever?" Besides these public-spirited reasons, Mr. D. had a pri- He then solemnly appealed to his own conscience, that 'he vate one; which, by his manner of expressing it in p. 92, could not think himself so, nor believe that our poet did; appears to have been equally strong. He was even in bodily but that he spake worse of him than he could possibly think: fear of his life, from the machinations of the said Mr. P. and concluded it must be merely to show his wit, or for some The story,' says he, 'is too long to be told, but who would profit or lucre to himself." Life of C. C. chap. vn. and Letbe acquainted with it, may hear it from Mr. Curll, my book-ter to Mr. P. page 15, 40, 53. And to show his claim to seller. However, what my reason has suggested to me, what the poet was so unwilling to allow him, of being pert that I have with a just confidence said, in defiance of his as well as dull, he declares he will have the last word; which two clandestine weapons, his slander and his poison. occasioned the following epigram: Which last words of his book plainly discover Mr. D's suspicion was that of being poisoned, in like manner as Mr. Curll had been before him: of which fact, see a full and true account of the horrid and barbarous revenge, by poison,! on the body of Edmund Curil, printed in 1716, the year antecedent to that wherein these remarks of Mr. Dennis were published. But what puts it beyond all question, is a pas-mentators, who most idly suppose it to imply, that the hero sage 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 administering 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, of the poem wanted a supper. In truth, a great absurdity. Not that we are ignorant that the hero of Homer's Odyssey is frequently in that circumstance, and, therefore, it can no way derogate from the grandeur of epic poem to represent such hero under a calamity, to which the greatest, not only of critics and poets, but of kings and warriors, have beca subject. But much more refined, I will venture to say, is the meaning of our author: it was to give us obliquely a curious precept, or what Bossu calls a disguised sentence, that Temperance is the life of study.' The language of poesy brings all into action; and to represent a critic encou passed with books but without a supper, is a picture which lively expresseth how much the true critic prefers the diet of the mind to that of the body, one of which he always castigates, and often totally neglects, for the greater improvement of the other. Scribl. But since the discovery of the true hero of the poem, may we not add, that nothing was so natural, after so great a loss of money at dice, or of reputation by his play, as that the poet should have no great stomach to eat a supper? Besides, how well has the poet consulted his heroic character, in adding that he has swore all the time? Bentl Ver. 131. Poor Fletcher's half-eat scenes.] A great number of them taken out to patch up his plays. 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. Wycherley and Mr. Congreve, he immediately obliged the public) Ver. 132. The frippery.] When I fitied up an old play with their letters. He made himself known to the govern- it was as a good housewife will mead old linen, when sle ment by many admirable schemes and projects, which the has not better employment.' Life, p. 217, 8vo. ministry, for reasons best known to themselves, constantly Ver. 133. Hapless Shakspeare, &c.] It is not to be kept private. For his character as a writer, it is given us as doubted but Bays was a subscriber to Tibbald's Shakspeare follows: Mr. Dennis is excellent at Pindaric writings, per- He was frequently liberal in this way; and, as he tells us, fectly regular in all his performances, and a person of soundsubscribed to Mr. Pope's Homer out of pure generosity and learning. That he is master of a great deal of penetration civility; but when Mr. Pope did so to his Non-juror, he conand judgment, his criticisms (particularly on Prince Arthur)cluded it could be nothing but a joke.' Letter to Mr. P. p. 24. do sufficiently demonstrate. From the same account it This Tibbald, or Theobald, published an edition of Shakalso appears that be writ plays more to get reputation than money. Dennis of himself. See Giles Jacob's Lives of Dram. Poets, p. 68, 69, compared with p. 286. speare, of which he was so prond himself as to say, in one of Mist's Journals, June 8, 'That to expose any errors in it was impracticable.' And to another, April 27, That what ever care might for the future be taken by any other editor, he would still give about five hundred emendations, that shall escape them all.' Ver. 109. Bays, form'd by nature, &c.]. It is hoped the poet here hath done full justice to his hero's character, which it were a great mistake to imagine was wholly sunk in stupidity; he is allowed to have supported it with a won- Ver. 134. Wish'd he had blotted.] It was a ridiculous derful mixture of vivacity. This character is heightened according to his own desire, in a letter he wrote to our author: 'Pert and dull at least you might have allowed me. What praise which the players gave to Shakspeare, that he never blotted a line.' Ben Jonson honestly wished he had blotted a thousand; and Shakspeare would certainly have wished The rest on outside merit but presume, Of these, twelve volumes, twelve of amplest size, A hecatomb of pure unsullied lays That altar crowns: a folio common-place 140 Founds the whole pile, of all, his works the base: 160 149 Well purged, and worthy Settle, Banks, and Broome. De Lyra there a dreadful front extends, And here the groaning shelves Philemon bends. REMARKS. 170 O thou! of business the directing soul; To this our head like bias to the bowl, Which, as more ponderous, made its aim more true Obliquely waddling to the mark in view: O! ever gracious to perplex'd mankind, Still spread a healing mist before the mind; And, lest we err by wit's wild dancing light, Secure us kindly in our native night. the same, if he had lived to see the alterations in his works, Or, if to wit a coxcomb make pretence, which not the actors only (and especially the daring hero of Guard the sure barrier between that and sense; this poem) have made on the stage, but the presumptuous Or quite unravel all the reasoning thread, erities of our days in their editions. Ver. 135. The rest on outside merit, &c.] This library And hang some curious cobweb in its stead' is divided into three parts; the first consists of those authors As forced from wind-guns, lead itself can fly, from whom he stole, and whose works he mangled; the se- And ponderous slugs cut swiftly through the sky: cond of such as fitted the shelves, or were gilded for show, or adorned with pictures: the third class our author calls As clocks to weight their nimble motions owe, solid learning, oid bodies of divinity, old commentaries, old The wheels above urged by the load below: English printers, or, old English translations; all very volu-Me Emptiness and Dulness could inspire, minous, and fit to erect altars to Dulness. Ver. 141. Ogilby the great:] John Ogilby was one, And were my elasticity and fire. who, from a late initiation into literature, made such a pro- Some demon stole my pen (forgive the offence) gress as might well style him the prodigy of his time! sending into the world so many large volumes! His translations of Homer and Virgil done to the life, and with such excellent sculptures: and (what added great grace to his works) he printed them all on special good paper, and in a very good letter. Winstanley, Lives of Poets. And once betray'd me into common sense: 189 190 Ver. 142. There, stamp'd with arms, Newcastle shines complete:] The dutchess of Newcastle was one who busied herself in the ravishing delights of poetry; leaving to posterity in print three ample volumes of her studious en-| Geavours.' Winstanley, ibid. Langbane reckons up eight folios of her grace's, which were usually adorned with gild-nous commentator, whose works, in five vast folios, were ed covers, and had her coat of arms upon them. printed in 1472. REMARKS. Ver. 154. Philemon Holland, doctor in physic. He translated so many books, that a man would think he had done nothing else; insomuch that he might be called translator general of his age. The books alone of his turning into English are sufficient to make a country gentleman a complete library. Winstanley. Ver. 146. Worthy Settle, Banks, and Broome.] The poet has mentioned these three authors in particular, as they are parallel to our hero in his three capacities; 1. Setthe was his brother laureate; only indeed upon half-pay, for the city instead of the court; but equally famous for unintelligible flights in his poems on public occasions, such as shows, birth-days, &c. 2. Banks was his rival in tragedy Ver. 167. E'er since sir Fopling's periwig.] The first (baugh more successful) in one of his tragedies, the Ear! visible cause of the passion of the town for our hero, was a of Essex, which is yet alive: Anna Boleyn, the Queen of fair flaxen full-bottomed periwig, which, he tells us, he wore Scots, and Cyrus the Great, are dead and gone. These he in his first play of the Fool in Fashion. It attracted, in a dressed in a sort of beggar's velvet, or a happy mixture of particular manner, the friendship of Col. Brett, who wanted the thick fustian and thin prosaic; exactly imitated in Pe- to purchase it. Whatever contempt,' says he, 'philosorolla and Isidora, Cæsar in Egypt, and the Heroic Daughter.phers may have for a fine periwig, my friend, who was not 3. Broome was a serving man of Ben Jonson, who once to despise the world, but to live in it, knew very well, that picked up a comedy from his letters, or from some cast so material an article of dress upon the head of a man of scenes of his master, not entirely contemptible. sense, if it became him, could never fail of drawing to him Ver. 147. More solid learning.] Some have objected, a more partial regard and benevolence, than could possibly that books of this sort suit not so well the library of our be hoped for in an ill-made one. This, perhaps, may soften Bays, which they imagined consisted of novels, plays, and the grave censure which so youthful a purchase might obscene books; but they are to consider that he furnished otherwise have laid upon him." In a word, he made his athis shelves only for ornament, and read these books no more tack upon this periwig, as your young fellows generally do than the dry bodies of divinity, which, no doubt, were pur-upon a lady of pleasure, first by a few familiar praises of chased by his father when he designed him for the gown. her person, and then a civil inquiry into the price of it; and See the note on ver 200. we finished our bargain that night over a bottle.' See Life Ver. 149. Caxton] A printer in the time of Edw. IV. 8vo. p. 303. This remarkable periwig usually made its enRichard III. and Hen. VII.; Wynk vn de Work, his suc- trance upon the stage in a sedan, brought in by two chair. cessor, in that of Hen. VII. and VIII. The former trans-men, with infinite approbation of the audience. Iated into prose Virgil's Eneis, as a history; of which he Ver. 178, 179. Guard the sure barrier-Or quite unravel Speaks, in his proeme, in a very singular manner, as of a &c.] For wit or reasoning are never greatly hurtful to dul book hardly known. Tibbald quotes a rare passage from ness, but when the first is founded in truth, and the other in him in Mist's Journal of March 16, 1728, concerning a usefulness. strange and marvallous beaste, called Sagittayre, which hel Ver. 181. As, forced from wind-guns, &c.] The thought would have Shakspeare to mean rather than Teucer, the of these four verses is founded in a poem of our author's of archer celebrated by Homer. a very early date (namely, written at fourteen years old, and Ver. 153. Nich de Lyra, or Harpsfield, a very volumi Isoon after printed,) to the author of a poem called Successio Did the dead letter unsuccessful prove? Hold-to the minister I more incline; To serve his cause, O queen! is serving thine. This gray-goose weapon must have made her stard. Cibberian forehead, and Cibberian brain. What can I now ? my Fletcher cast aside, REMARKS. This brazen brightness, to the 'squire so dear; 210 Ver. 198. Gray-goose weapon.] Alluding to the old English weapon, the arrow of the long-bow, which was fletched with the feathers of the gray-goose. Ver. 199. My Fletcher] A familiar manner of speaking, used by modern critics, of a favourite author. Bays might as justly speak this of Fletcher, as a French wit did of Tully, seeing his works in a library, Ah! mon cher Ciceron! je le connois bien: c'est le meme que Marc Tulle. But he had a better title to call Fletcher his own, having made so free with him. Ver. 200. Take up the Bible, once my better guide?] When, according to his father's intention, he had been a clergyman, or (as he thinks himself,) a bishop of the church of England. Hear his own words: At the time that the fate of King James, the prince of Orange, and myself, were on the anvil, Providence thought fit to postpone mine, till theirs were determined; but had my father carried me a month sooner to the university, who knows but that purer fountain might have washed my imperfections into a capacity of writing, instead of plays and annual odes, sermons, and pastoral letters ?-Apology for his Life, chap. iii. Ver. 203. At White's amidst the doctors] These doctors had a modest and upright appearance, no air of overbear ing; but, like true masters of art, were only habited in black and white: they were justly styled subtiles and graves, but not always irrefragabiles, being sometimes examined, and by a nice distinction, divided and laid open. Scribl. O born in sin, and forth in folly brought! Works damn'd, or to be damn'd (your father's fault,) Go, purified by flames, ascend the sky, My better and more Christian progeny! REMARKS. 230 Not out of any preference or affection to the Tories. For Ver. 215. Gazetteers.] A band of ministerial writers, hired at the prices mentioned in the note on book ii. ver. 316, who, on the very day their patron quitted his post, laid down their paper, and declared they would never more meddle in politics. Ver. 218. Cibberian forehead.] So indeed all the MSS. read; but I make no scruple to pronounce them all wrong, the laureate being elsewhere celebrated by our poet for his great modesty-modest Cibber-Read, therefore, at my what is more, Homerical; the dog was the ancient, as the This is perfectly classical, and, peril, Cerberian forehead. bitch is the modern symbol of impudence: (Korts oppet' This learned critic is to be understood allegorically. The, says Achilles to Agamemnon:) which, when in a su doctors in this place mean no more than false dice, a cant perlative degree, may well be denominated from Cerberus, the phrase used among gamesters. So the meaning of these dog with three heads-But as to the latter part of this verse, four sonorous lines is only this, 'Shall I play fair or foul?' Cibberian brain, that is certainly the genuine reading. Ver. 208. Ridpath-Mist.] George Ridpath, author of a Whig paper, called the Flying-post; Nathaniel Mist of a famous Tory journal. Ver. 211. Or rob Rome's ancient geese of all their glories, Relates to the well-known story of the geese that saved the Capitol; of which Virgil, Æn. viii. Atque hic auratis volitans argenteus anser A passage I have always suspected. Who sees not the -argutos inter strepere anser olores.' Read it, therefore, adesse strepebat. And why auratis porticibus? does not the very verse preceding this inform us, 'Romuleoque recens horrebat regia culio,' Is this thatch in one line, and gold in another, consistent? I Bentl. Ver. 225. O born in sin, &c.] This is a tender and to sacrifice, agreeable to the nature of man in great afflic passionate apostrophe to his own works, which he is going tion: and reflecting, like a parent, on the many miserable fates to which they would otherwise be subject. It Ver. 228. My better and more christian progeny! may be observable, that my muse and my spouse were equally prolific! that the one was seldom the mother of a child, but in the same year the other made me the father of a play. I think we had a dozen of each sort between us of both which kinds, some died in their infancy, &c.' Life of C. C. p. 217, 8vo. edit. Ver. 131. Gratis-given Bland,-Sent with a pass,] It was a practice so to give the Daily Gazetteer and ministerial pamphlets (in which this B. was a writer,) and to send them post-free to all the towns in the kingdom. Ver. 233. With Ward, to ape and monkey climes.] 'Edward Ward, a very voluminous poet in Hudibrastic verse, but best known by the London Spy, in prose. He has of late years kept a public house in the city (but in a genteel way,) and with his wit, humour, and good liquor (ale,) afforded his guests a pleasurable entertainment, especially those of the high church-party.' Jacob, Lives of Poets, vol. ii. p. 225. Great numbers of his works were yearly sold into the Plautations.-Ward, in a book, called Apollo's Maggot, declared this secount to be a great falsity, protesting that his public-house was not in the city, but la Moorfields. |