Who flings most filth, and wide pollutes around REMARKS. the labourers' dinner: our author by one very proper both to the persons and the scene of his poem, which we may remember commenced in the evening of the lord-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 toward Fleet-ditch, and lastly through Ludgate to the city, and the temple of the goddess. Ver. 280. The Weekly Journals] 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. Ver. 283. In naked majesty Oldmixon stands,] 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 p. 45, he cites the Spectator as abusing Dr. Swift by name, where there is not the least hint of it; and in p. 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.' Curll, Key, p. 13. He writ dramatic works, and a volume of poetry, consisting of heroic epistles, &c. some whereof are very well done,' said the great judge, Mr. Jacob, in his Lives of Poets, vol. ii. p. 303. 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 falsifv Then sighing thus: And am I now threescore? Next Smedley dived; slow circles dimpled o'er REMARKS. 290 300 ing 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. Ver. 291. Next Smedley dived;] In the surreptitiou. editions, this whole episode was applied to an initial lette E-, by whom, if they meant the laureat, nothing was more absurd, no part agreeing with his character. The allegory evidently demands a person dipped in scandal, and deeply immersed in dirty work; whereas Mr. Eusden's writings rarely offended but by their length and multitude, and ac cordingly are taxed of nothing else in book i. ver. 102. But 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. Ver. 295. Then ** essay'd;] 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 partyquarrels and personal invectives. Ver. 299. Concanen] Mathew Concanen, an Irishman If perseverance gain the diver's prize, No noise, no stir, no motion canst thou make,. 4 These are,-ah no! these were the Gazetteers!' REMARKS. 310 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 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 aw in Jamaica. Ver. 306, 307. With each a sickly brother at his back: Sons of a day, &c.] These were daily papers, a number of which, to lessen the expence, were printed one on the back of another. Ver. 312. Osborne] 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. Ver. 314. Gazetteers!] We ought not to suppose that a modern critic here taxeth the poet with an anachronism, affirming these gazetteers not to have lived within the time of his poem, and challenging us to produce any such paper of that date. But we may with equal assurance assed Not so bold Arnall; with a weight of skull, Furious he dives, precipitately dull. REMARKS. these gazetteers not to have lived since, and challenge al the learned world to produce one such paper at this day. Surely therefore, where the point is su obscure, our author ought not to be censured too rashly. Scribl. Notwithstanding this affected ignorance of the good Scriblerus, the Daily Gazetteer was a title given very properly to certain papers, each of which lasted but a day. Into this, as a common sink, was received all the trash which had been before dispersed in several journals, and circulated at the public expense of the nation. The authors were the same obscure men; though sometimes relieved by occasional essays from statesmen, courtiers, bishops, deans, and doctors. The meaner sort were rewarded with money; others with places or benefices, from a hundred to a thousand a year. It appears from the Report of the Secret Committee for inquiring into the Conduct of R. earl of O-, 'That no less than fifty thousand seventy-seven pounds eighteen shillings were paid to authors and printers of newspapers, such as Free Britons, Daily Courants, Corn Cutter's Journals, Gazetteers, and other political papers, between Feb. 10, 1731, and Feb. 10, 1741.' Which shows the benevolence of one minister to have expended, for the current dulness of ten years in Britain, double the sum which gained Louis XIV. so much honour, in annual pensions to learned men all over Europe. In which, and in a much longer time, not a pension at court, nor preferment in the church or universities, of any consideration, was bestowed on any man distinguished for his learning separately from party-merit, or pamphlet-writing. It is worth a reflection, that of all the panegyrics bestowed by these writers on this great minister, not one is at this day extant or remembered, not even so much credit done to his personal character by all they have written, as by one' short occasional compliment of our author: 'Seen him I have; but in his happier hour Ver. 315. Arnall.] 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 ur Whirlpools and storms his circling arm invest, Downward to climb, and backward to advance, 320 Smit with his mien, the mud-nymphs suck'd him in : REMARKS. exampled 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 entitled, 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 eight pence, 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. Ver. 323. The plunging prelate, &c.] It having been invidiously insinuated that by this title was meant a truly great prelate, as respectable for his defence of the present balance of power in the civil constitution, as for his opposition to the scheme of no power at all, in the religious; I owe so much to the memory of my deceased friend as to declare, that when, a little before his death, I informed him of this insinuation, he called it vile and malicious, as any candid man, he said, might understand, by his having paid a willing compliment to this very prelate in another part of he poem. |