I sing. Say you, her instruments, the great! In eldest time, ere mortals writ or read, Still her old empire to restore she tries, O thou! whatever title please thine ear, Or thy grieved country's copper chains unbind; Mourn not, my Swift, at aught our realm acquires. 2 [A parody on a verse of Dryden, Æn. vii. 1044 :— "Famed as his sire, and as his mother fair."-Wakefield.] 3 [So Sloth, in the Dispensary, i. 116:— "With godhead born, but cursed that cannot die."-Ibid.] 4 The ancient golden age is by poets styled Saturnian; but in the chemical language Saturn is lead. 5 In the former editions thus, "Where wave the tatter'd ensigns of Rag-fair, A yawning ruin hangs and nods in air; Keen, hollow winds howl through the bleak recess, Emblem of music caused by emptiness; Here in one bed two shiv'ring sisters lie, The cave of Poverty and Poetry." Rag-fair is a place near the Tower of London, where old clothes and frippery are sold. Close to those walls 5 where Folly holds her throne, Keen, hollow winds howl through the bleak recess, Hence bards, like Proteus long in vain tied down, GABRIEL CIBBER. Hence miscellanies spring, the weekly boast Hence hymning Tyburn's elegiac lines,7 Hence journals, medleys, merc'ries, magazines: 40 6 [Dr. Monro, physician to Bethlehem Hospital. He died November 3, 1752.] 7 In the former edition, "Hence hymning Tyburn's elegiac lay, Hence the soft sing-song on Cecilia's day," [alludes 335 30 Sepulchral lies, our holy walls to grace, In clouded majesty here Dulness shone ; 45 10 50 alludes to the annual songs composed to music on St. Cecilia's Feast. "Genus unde Latinum, 8 Albanique patres, atque altæ moenia Romæ."-Virg. Æneid, i. "The moon Rising in clouded majesty."-Milton, book iv. 9 " Quem neque pauperies, neque mors, neque vincula terrent."-Hor. 10" This is an allusion to a text in Scripture, which shows, in Mr. Pope, a delight in profaneness," said Curll upon this place. But it is very familiar with Shakespear to allude to passages of Scripture. Out of a great number I will select a few, in which he not only alludes to, but quotes, the very text from Holy Writ. In 'All's Well that Ends Well,' 'I am no great Nebuchadnezzar, I have not much skill in grass.' Ibid. 'They are for the flowery way that leads to the broad gate and the great fire,' Matt. vii. 13. Prudence, whose glass presents th' approaching jail : Where, in nice balance, truth with gold she weighs, Here she beholds the chaos dark and deep,11 Where nameless somethings in their causes sleep, How hints, like spawn, scarce quick in embryo lie, Here one poor word an hundred clenches makes, In 'Much Ado about Nothing,' 'All, all, and moreover God saw him when he was hid in the garden,' Gen. iii. 8, (in a very jocose scene). In 'Love's Labour Lost,' he talks of Samson carrying the gates on his back; in the Merry Wives of Windsor,' of Goliath and the weaver's beam; and in 'Henry IV.,' Falstaff's soldiers are compared to Lazarus and the prodigal son. The first part of this note is Mr. Curll's, the rest is Mr. Theobald's, "Appendix to Shakespear Restored," p. 144. [Warton justly adds, "It seems to be rather an odd and a weak defence of using a phrase of Scripture lightly and profanely, to say that Shakespear did so."] 11 That is to say, unformed things, which are either made into poems or plays, as the booksellers or the players bid most. These lines allude to the following in Garth's Dispensary, cant. vi.,— "Within the chambers of the globe they spy, The beds where sleeping vegetables lie, Till the glad summons of a genial ray Unbinds the glebe, and calls them out to day." 12 ["Genial Jacob," was the celebrated bookseller, Jacob Tonson, secretary to the Kit-Cat Club, and who amassed a large fortune. He built Down Place, in Berkshire, a fine villa on the banks of the Thames, afterwards the property of the Duke of Argyll-and he had an estate, Ledbury, Herefordshire, where he died, March 18, 1736.] 13 [It was the custom, on the production of new plays, to appropriate the third, sixth, and ninth nights of their performance-if the piece ran so longto the benefit of the author. Goldsmith, for example, made between four and five hundred pounds by his "nights" of "She stoops to Conquer." Gay obtained £693 13s. 6d. as his share of the receipts from the " Beggar's Opera."] 14 A parody on a verse in Garth, cant. i. "How ductile matter new meanders takes." There motley images her fancy strike, 15 How farce and epic get a jumbled race; How Time himself stands still at her command, 65 17 All these, and more, the cloud-compelling queen 70 75 50 85 15 Alludes to the transgressions of the unities in the plays of such poets. For the miracles wrought upon Time and Place, and the mixture of Tragedy and Comedy, Farce and Epic, see Pluto and Proserpine, Penelope, &c., if yet extant. 16 In the Lower Egypt rain is of no use, the overflowing of the Nile being sufficient to impregnate the soil. These six verses represent the inconsist encies in the descriptions of poets, who heap together all glittering and gaudy images, though incompatible in one season, or in one scene. See the Guardian, No. 40, par. 6. See also Eusden's whole works, if to be found. It would not have been unpleasant to have given examples of all these species of bad writing from these authors, but that it is already done in our treatise of the Bathos.-Scriblerus. 17 From Homer's epithet of Jupiter, vepeλnyepéta Zevs. 18 [Sir George Thorold was Lord Mayor of London in the year 1720. See notes at the end of the poem.] |