Tears gush'd again, as from pale Priam's eyes, Roused by the light, old Dulness heaved the head Then snatch'd a sheet of Thule from her bed; Sudden she flies, and whelms it o'er the pyre; Down sink the flames, and with a hiss expire. Her ample presence fills up all the place; A veil of fogs dilates her awful face: 200 Great in her charms! as when on shrieves and mayors She looks, and breathes herself into their airs. She bid him wait her to her sacred dome : Well pleased he enter'd, and confess'd his home The club of quidnuncs, or her own Guildhall : 27C How prologues into prefaces decay, And these to notes are fritter'd quite away; REMARKS. dislike to it could only arise from disaffection to the govern ment. He assures us, that when he had the honour to kiss his majesty's hand, upon presenting his dedication of it, he was graciously pleased out of his royal bounty, to order him two hundred pounds for it. And this, he doubts not, grieved Mr. P.' Ver. 258. Thule] An unfinished poem of that name, of which one sheet was printed many years ago, by Ambrose Phillips, a northern author. It is an usual method of putting out a fire, to cast wet sheets upon it. Some critics have been of opinion that this sheet was of the nature of the asbestos, which cannot be consumed by fire; but I rather think it an allegorical allusion to the coldness and heaviness of the writing. Ver. 269. Great mother] Magna mater here applied to Dulness. The quidnuncs, a name given to the ancien How index-learning turns no student pale, How, with less reading than makes felons 'scape, 280 Small thanks to France, and none to Rome or Greece, REMARKS. members of several political clubs, who were constantly inquiring quid nunc? What news? Ver. 286. Tibbald.] Lewis Tibbald (as pronounced) of Theobald (as written) was bred an attorney, and son to an attorney, says Mr. Jacob, of Sittenburn, in Kent. He was the author of some forgotten plays, translations, and other pieces. He was concerned in a paper called the Censor, and a translation of Ovid. There is a notorious idiot, one hight Wachum, who from an under-spur-leather to the law, is become an understrapper to the playhouse, who has lately burlesqued the Metamorphoses of Ovid by a vile transla tion, &c. This fellow is concerned in an impertinent paper called the Censor.'-Dennis, Rem. on Pope's Homer, p. 9, 10. Ibid. Ozell.] 'Mr. John Ozell, if we credit Mr. Jacob, did go to school in Leicestershire, where somebody left him something to live on, when he shall retire from business. He was designed to be sent to Cambridge, in order for priesthood; but he chose rather to be placed in an office of accounts, in the city, being qualified for the same by his skill in arithmetic, and writing the necessary hands. H has obliged the world with many translations of French plays.'--Jacob, Lives of Dram. Poets, p. 198. Mr. Jacob's character of Mr. Ozell seems vastly short of his merits, and he ought to have further justice done him, having since confuted all sarcasms on his learning and genius, by an advertisement of Sept. 20, 1729, in a paper called the Weekly Medley, &c. As to my learning, this envious wretch knew, and every body knows, that the whole bench of bishops, not long ago, were pleased to give me a purse of guineas, for discovering the erroneous translations of the Common-prayer in Portuguese, Spanish, French, Italian, &c. As for my genius, let Mr. Cleland show better verses in all Pope's works, than Ozell's version of Boileau's Lutrin, which the late lord Halifax was so pleased with, that he complimented him with leave to dedicate it to him, &c. Let him show better and truer poetry in the Rape of the Look, than in Ozell's Rape of the Bucket, (la Secchia The goddess then, o'er his anointed head, With mystic words the sacred opium shed; And lo! her bird (a monster of a fowl, Something betwixt a heidegger and owl) Perch'd on his crown. 'All hail! and hail again, My son! the promised land expects thy reign. Know, Eusden thirsts no more for sack or praise; He sleeps among the dull of ancient days; Safe, where no critics damn, nor duns molest, Where wretched Withers, Ward, and Gildon rest, And high-born Howard, more majestic sire, With Fool of Quality completes the quire. Thou Cibber! thou, his laurel shall support; Folly, my son, has still a friend at court. Lift up your gates, ye princes, see him come! Sound, sound ye viols, be the cat-call dumb! Bring, bring the madding bay, the drunken vine, The creeping, dirty, courtly ivy join. REMARKS. 290 300 rapita.) And Mr. Toland and Mr. Gildon publicly declared Ozell's translation of Homer to be, as it was prior, so likewise superior to Pope's.-Surely, surely, every man is free to deserve well of his country!'-John Özell. We cannot but subscribe to such reverend testimonies, as those of the bench of bishops, Mr. Toland, and Mr. Gildon Ver. 290. A heidegger] A strange bird from Switzerland, and not, as some have supposed, the name of an eminent person who was a man of parts, and, as was said of Petronius, arbiter elegantiarum. Ver. 296. Withers,] See on ver. 146. Ibid. Gildon] Charles Gildon, a writer of criticisms and libels in the last age, bred at St. Omer's with the Jesuits; but renouncing popery, he published Blount's books against the divinity of Christ, the Oracles of Reason, &c. He signa lized himself as a critic, having written some very bad plays; abused Mr. P. very scandalously in an anonymous pamphlet of the life of Mr. Wycherley, printed by Curll; in another called the New Rehearsal, printed in 1744; in a third, entitled the Complete Art of English Poetry, in two volumes: and others. Ver. 297. Howard] 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. And thou! his aid-de-camp, lead on my sons, And all be sleep, as at an ode of thine!' 320 She ceased. Then swells the chapel-royal throat: God save king Cibber! mounts in every note. 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 dropp'd the name of God; REMARKS. Ver. 309, 310. Under Archer's wing,-Gaming, &c 1 When the statute against gaming was drawn up, it was re presented, that the king, by ancient custom, plays at hazard one night in the year; and therefore a clause was inserted, with an exemption 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 with, with a just indignation prohibited. It is reported the same practice is yet continued wherever the court resides, and the hazard table there open to all the professed gamesters in town. 'Greatest and justest sovereign! 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. Ver. 319. Chapel-royal.] The voices and instruments used in the service of the chapel-royal being also employe in the performance of the birth-day and new-year odes. Ver. 324. But pious Needham.] 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 Back to the Devil the last echoes roll, And Coll! each butcher roars at Hockley-hole. So when Jove's block descended from on high, (As sings thy great forefather Ogilby) 330 Loud thunder to the bottom shook the bog, REMARKS. not so happy; for being convicted, and sex in the pillory, she was, (to the lasting shame of all her great friends and votaties) so ill used by the populace, that it put an end to her days. Ver. 325. Back to the Devil.] The Devil Tavern in Fleet street, where these odes are usually rehearsed before they are performed at court. Upon which a wit of those times makes this epigram: 'When laureates make odes, do you ask of what sort? Do you ask if they're good, or are evil? You may judge-from the Devil they come to the court, And go from the court to the devil.' Ver. 328.-Ogilby-God save king Log!] See Ogilby's Æsop's Fables, where, in the story of the Frogs and their King, this excellent hemistich 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 the words in the preface to his poems, where he labours to call upon 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? But how much all indulgence is lost upon these people may appear from the just reflection raade on their constant conduct and constant fate, in the following epigram: Ye little wits, that gleam'd awhile, When Pope vouchsafed a ray; To compass Phoebus' car about, Thus empty vapours rise, Each lends his cloud to put him out, That rear'd him to the skies. Alas! those skies are not your sphere; There he shall ever burn: Weep, weep, and fall! for earth ye were, And must to earth return.' Two things there are, upon the supposition of which the very basis of all verbal criticism is founded and supported |
