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To where Fleet-ditch with disemboguing

streams

Rolls the large tribute of dead dogs to Thames, The king of dykes!1 than whom no sluice of mud

With deeper sable blots the silver flood.

"Here strip, my children! here at once leap in, Here prove who best can dash through thick

and thin,

276

And who the most in love of dirt excel,
Or dark dexterity of groping well.
Who flings most filth, and wide pollutes around
The stream, be his the Weekly Journals bound;3
A pig of lead to him who dives the best ;
A peck of coals a-piece shall glad the rest."

281

Mayor's day: The first book passed in that night; the next morning the games begin in the Strand, thence along Fleet street (places inhabited by Booksellers), then they proceed by Bridewell towards Fleet-ditch, and, lastly, through Ludgate to the City and the Temple of the Goddess.-P.

1 "Fluviorum rex Eridanus,

quo non alius, per pinguia culta,

In mare purpureum violentior influit amnis."

Virg.-P.

2 The three chief qualifications of Party-writers: to stick at nothing, to delight in flinging dirt, and to slander in the dark by guess.-P.

3 Papers of news and scandal intermixed, on different sides and parties, and frequently shifting from one side to the other, called the London Journal, British Journal, Daily Journal, &c., the concealed writers of which, for some time, were Oldmixon, Roome, Arnall, Concanen, and others: persons never seen by our author.-P.

Our indulgent Poet, whenever he has spoken of any dirty or low work, constantly puts us in mind of the Poverty of the offenders, as the only extenuation of such practices. Let any one but remark, when a

In naked majesty Oldmixon stands,'
And Milo-like surveys his arms and hands;

Thief, a Pickpocket, an Highwayman, or a Knight of the post are spoken of, how much our hate to those characters is lessened, if they add a needy Thief, a poor Pickpocket, an hungry Highwayman, a starving Knight of the post, &c.-P.

1 Mr. John Oldmixon, next to Mr. Dennis, the most ancient Critic of our Nation; an unjust censurer of Mr. Addison in his prose Essay on Criticism, whom, also, in his imitation of Bouhours (called the Arts of Logic and Rhetoric), he misrepresents in plain matter of fact; for, in page 45, he cites the Spectator as abusing Dr. Swift by name, where there is not the least hint of it; and in page 304, is so injurious as to suggest that Mr. Addison himself writ that Tatler, No. 43, which says of his own Simile, that ""Tis as great as ever entered into the mind of man. "In Poetry he was not so happy as laborious, and therefore characterized by the Tatler, No. 62, by the name of Omicron, the Unborn Poet."-Curl, Key, p. 13. "He writ Dramatic works, and a volume of Poetry, consisting of heroic Epistles, &c., some whereof are very well done," saith that great Judge, Mr. Jacob, in his Lives of Poets, vol. ii. p. 303.

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In his Essay on Criticism, and the Arts of Logic and Rhetoric, he frequently reflects on our author. But the top of his character was a Perverter of History, in that scandalous one of the Stuarts, in folio, and his Critical History of England, two volumes, octavo. Being employed by Bishop Kennet in publishing the Historians in his Collection, he falsified Daniel's Chronicle in numberless places. Yet this very man, in the Preface to the first of these books, advanced a particular fact to charge three eminent persons of falsifying the Lord Clarendon's History : which fact has been disproved by Dr. Atterbury, late Bishop of Rochester, then the only survivor of them; and the particular part he pretended to be falsified, produced since, after almost ninety years, in that noble author's original manuscript. He was all his life a virulent Party-writer for hire, and received his reward in a small place, which he enjoyed to his death.-P.

Then sighing, thus, "And am I now three

score?1

285

Ah why, ye Gods! should two and two make

four?

He said, and climbed a stranded lighter's height,

Shot to the black abyss, and plunged downright.

The Senior's judgment all the crowd admire, Who but to sink the deeper, rose the higher. 290 Next Smedley dived: slow circles dimpled

o'er

The quaking mud, that closed, and oped no

more.

All look, all sigh, and call on Smedley lost; 3 “Smedley" in vain resounds through all the coast.

Then * essayed; scarce vanished out of

sight,

He buoys up instant, and returns to light :

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295

Fletque Milon senior, cum spectat inanes Herculeis similes, fluidos pendere lacertos."

Ovid.-P.

2 The person here mentioned, an Irishman, was author and publisher of many scurrilous pieces, a weekly Whitehall Journal, in the year 1722, in the name of Sir James Baker; and particularly whole volumes of Billingsgate against Dr. Swift and Mr. Pope, called Gulliveriana and Alexandriana, printed in octavo, 1728.-P.

3 "Alcides wept in vain for Hylas lost,

Hylas, in vain, resounds through all the coast."

Lord Roscom. Translat. of Virgil, Ecl. vi.—P. A gentleman of genius and spirit, who was secretly dipped in some papers of this kind, on whom our poet bestows a panegyric instead of a satire, as deserving to be better employed than in party quarrels and personal invectives.-P. Aaron Hill, born 1685, died 1750, a voluminous dramatic writer.

He bears no token of the sabler streams,
And mounts far off among the Swans of
Thames.

300

True to the bottom see Concanen creep,1 A cold, long-winded native of the deep; If perseverance gain the Diver's prize, Not everlasting Blackmore this denies:" No noise, no stir, no motion canst thou make, The unconscious stream sleeps o'er thee like a lake.

306

Next plunged a feeble, but a desperate pack, With each a sickly brother at his back: Sons of a Day!3 just buoyant on the flood, Then numbered with the puppies in the mud. Ask their names? I could as soon disclose

ye

1 Mathew Concanen, an Irishman, bred to the law. Smedley (one of his brethren in enmity to Swift), in his Metamorphosis of Scriblerus, p. 7, accuses him of "having boasted of what he had not written, but others had revised and done for him." He was author of several dull and dead scurrilities in the British and London Journals, and in a paper called the Speculatist. In a pamphlet, called a Supplement to the Profound, he dealt very unfairly with our Poet, not only frequently imputing to him Mr. Broome's verses (for which he might indeed seem in some degree accountable, having corrected what that gentleman did), but those of the Duke of Buckingham and others: To this rare piece, somebody humorously caused him to take for his motto, De profundis clamavi. He was since a hired scribbler in the Daily Courant, where he poured forth much Billingsgate against the Lord Bolingbroke, and others; after which this man was surprisingly promoted to administer Justice and Law in Jamaica.-P.

2.66

'Nec bonus Eurytion prælato invidit honori," &c. Virg. Æn.-P.

3 These were daily Papers, a number of which, to lessen the expense, were printed one on the back of another.-P. W.

311

The names of these blind puppies as of those. Fast by, like Niobe (her children gone)1 Sits Mother Osborne, stupefied to stone! And Monumental brass this record bears, "These are,-ah no! these were, the Gazet"" teers!

3

Not so bold Arnall; with a weight of skull, Furious he dives, precipitately dull. 316 Whirlpools and storms his circling arm invest, With all the might of gravitation blest. No crab more active in the dirty dance, Downward to climb, and backward to advance. He brings up half the bottom on his head, 321

See the story in Ovid, Met. vii., where the miserable Petrifaction of this old Lady is pathetically described.-P. W.

2 A name assumed by the eldest and gravest of these writers, who at last, being ashamed of his pupils, gave his paper over, and in his age remained silent.-P. W.

3 William Arnall, bred an Attorney, was a perfect Genius in this sort of work. He began under twenty with furious Party-papers; then succeeded Concanen in the British Journal. At the first publication of the Dunciad, he prevailed on the Author not to give him his due place in it, by a letter professing his detestation of such practices as his Predecessor's. But since, by the most unexampled insolence, and personal abuse of several great men, the Poet's particular friends, he most amply deserved a niche in the Temple of Infamy: Witness a paper, called the Free Briton; a Dedication, intituled, To the Genuine Blunderer, 1732, and many others. He writ for hire, and valued himself upon it; not, indeed, without cause, it appearing by the aforesaid Report that he received for Free Britons, and other writings, in the space of four years, no less than ten thousand nine hundred and ninety-seven pounds, six shillings and eightpence out of the Treasury." But frequently, through his fury or folly, he exceeded all the bounds of his commission, and obliged his honourable Patron to disavow his scurrilities.-P.

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