'I must confess I do want eloquence,And never scarce did learn my Accidence;For having got frompossumtoposset,I there was gravell'd, could no further get.'
He wrote fourscore books in the reign of James I. and Charles I., and afterwards (like Edward Ward) kept an ale-house in Long-Acre. He died in 1654.—P.]
349 (return)[ 'Benlowes:' a country gentleman, famous for his own bad poetry, and for patronising bad poets, as may be seen from many dedications of Quarles and others to him. Some of these anagrammed his name, Benlowes, into Benevolus; to verify which, he spent his whole estate upon them.—P.]
350 (return)[ 'And Shadwell nods the poppy:' Shadwell took opium for many years, and died of too large a dose, in the year 1692.—P.]
351 (return)[ 'Old Bavius sits:' Bavius was an ancient poet, celebrated by Virgil for the like cause as Bayes by our author, though not in so Christian-like a manner: for heathenishly it is declared by Virgil of Bavius, that he ought to be hated and detested for his evil works;qui Bavium non odit; whereas we have often had occasion to observe our poet's great good nature and mercifulness through the whole course of this poem. Scribl.—P.]
352 (return)[ 'Brown and Mears:' booksellers, printers for anybody.—The allegory of the souls of the dull coming forth in the form of books, dressed in calf's leather, and being let abroad in vast numbers by booksellers, is sufficiently intelligible.—P.]
353 (return)[ 'Ward in pillory:' John Ward of Hackney, Esq., member of parliament, being convicted of forgery, was first expelled the House, and then sentenced to the pillory on the 17th of February 1727. Mr Curll (having likewise stood there) looks upon the mention of such a gentleman in a satire as a great act of barbarity. Key to the Dunc., 3d edit. p. 16. And another author reasons thus upon it: Durgen., 8vo, pp. 11, 12, 'How unworthy is it of Christian charity to animate the rabble to abuse a worthy man in such a situation? What could move the poet thus to mention a brave sufferer, a gallant prisoner, exposed to the view of all mankind? It was laying aside his senses, it was committing a crime, for which the law is deficient not to punish him! nay, a crime which man can scarce forgive or time efface! Nothing surely could have induced him to it but being bribed by a great lady,' &c. (to whom this brave, honest, worthy gentleman was guilty of no offence but forgery, proved in open court). But it is evident this verse could not be meant of him, it being notorious that no eggs were thrown at that gentleman. Perhaps, therefore, it might be intended of Mr Edward Ward, the poet, when he stood there.—P.]
354 (return)[ 'Settle:' Elkanah Settle was once a writer in vogue, as well as Cibber, both for dramatic poetry and politics.—P.]
355 (return)[ 'Monarch:' Chi Ho-am-ti, Emperor of China, the same who built the great wall between China and Tartary, destroyed all the books and learned men of that empire.—P.]
356 (return)[ 'Physic of the soul:' the caliph, Omar I., having conquered Egypt, caused his general to burn the Ptolemaean library, on the gates of which was this inscription, [Greek: PSYCHES IATREION], the Physic of the soul.—P.]
357 (return)[ 'Happy!—had Easter never been:' wars in England anciently, about the right time of celebrating Easter.—P.]
358 (return)[ 'Jacob, the scourge of grammar, mark with awe:' this gentleman is son of a considerable maltster of Romsey in Southamptonshire, and bred to the law under a very eminent attorney; who, between his more laborious studies, has diverted himself with poetry. He is a great admirer of poets and their works, which has occasioned him to try his genius that way. He has wrote in prose the Lives of the Poets, Essays, and a great many law-books, The Accomplished Conveyancer, Modern Justice, &c.' Giles Jacob of himself, Lives of Poets, vol. i. He very grossly, and unprovoked, abused in that book the author's friend, Mr Gay.—P.]
359 (return)[ 'Horneck and Roome:' these two were virulent party-writers, worthily coupled together, and one would think prophetically, since, after the publishing of this piece, the former dying, the latter succeeded him in honour and employment. The first was Philip Horneck, author of a Billingsgate paper called The High German Doctor. Edward Roome was son of an undertaker for funerals in Fleet Street, and wrote some of the papers called Pasquin, where by malicious innuendos he endeavoured to represent our author guilty of malevolent practices with a great man then under prosecution of Parliament. Of this man was made the following epigram:
'You ask why Roome diverts you with his jokes,Yet if he writes, is dull as other folks?You wonder at it. This, sir, is the case,The jest is lost unless he prints his face.'
Popple was the author of some vile plays and pamphlets. He published abuses on our author in a paper called the Prompter.—P.]
360 (return)[ 'Goode:' an ill-natured critic, who wrote a satire on our author, called The Mock Aesop, and many anonymous libels in newspapers for hire.—P.]
361 (return)[ 'Ralph:' James Ralph, a name inserted after the first editions, not known to our author till he writ a swearing-piece called Sawney, very abusive of Dr Swift, Mr Gay, and himself. These lines allude to a thing of his, entitled Night, a Poem. This low writer attended his own works with panegyrics in the journals, and once in particular praised himself highly above Mr Addison, in wretched remarks upon that author's account of English Poets, printed in a London journal, September 1728. He was wholly illiterate, and knew no language, not even French. Being advised to read the rules of dramatic poetry before he began a play, he smiled and replied, 'Shakspeare wrote without rules.' He ended at last in the common sink of all such writers, a political newspaper, to which he was recommended by his friend Arnall, and received a small pittance for pay.—P. B. Franklin seems to have thought that his friend Ralph was alluded to here. See his Autobiography.]
362 (return)[ 'Behold yon pair:' one of these was author of a weekly paper called The Grumbler, as the other was concerned in another called Pasquin, in which Mr Pope was abused with the Duke of Buckingham and Bishop of Rochester. They also joined in a piece against his first undertaking to translate the Iliad, entitled Homerides, by Sir Iliad Doggrel, printed 1715.—P.]
363 (return)[ 'Wormius hight:' let not this name, purely fictitious, be conceited to mean the learned Olaus Wormius; much less (as it was unwarrantably foisted into the surreptitious editions) our own antiquary, Mr Thomas Hearne, who had no way aggrieved our poet, but, on the contrary, published many curious tracts which he hath to his great contentment perused.—P.]
364 (return)[ 'Lo! Henley stands,' &c.: J. Henley, the orator; he preached on the Sundays upon theological matters, and on the Wednesdays upon all other sciences. Each auditor paid one shilling. He declaimed some years against the greatest persons, and occasionally did our author that honour.—P.]
365 (return)[ 'Sherlock, Hare, Gibson:' bishops of Salisbury, Chichester, and London, whose Sermons and Pastoral Letters did honour to their country as well as stations.—P.]
366 (return)[ Of Toland and Tindal, see book ii. Thomas Woolston was an impious madman, who wrote in a most insolent style against the miracles of the Gospel, in the year 1726, &c.—P.]
367 (return)[ 'A sable sorcerer:' Dr Faustus, the subject of a set of farces, which, lasted in vogue two or three seasons, in which both playhouses strove to outdo each other for some years.—P.]
368 (return)[ 'Hell rises, Heaven descends, and dance on earth:' this monstrous absurdity was actually represented in Tibbald's Rape of Proserpine.—P.]
369 (return)[ 'Lo! one vast egg:' in another of these farces, Harlequin is hatched upon the stage, out of a large egg.—P.]
370 (return)[ 'Immortal Rich:' Mr John Rich, master of the Theatre Royal in Covent Garden, was the first that excelled this way.—P.]
371 (return)[ Booth and Cibber were joint managers of the Theatre in Drury Lane.—P.]
372 (return)[ 'Though long my party:' Settle, like most party-writers, was very uncertain in his political principles. He was employed to hold the pen in the character of a popish successor, but afterwards printed his narrative on the other side. He had managed the ceremony of a famous pope-burning on Nov. 17, 1680, then became a trooper in King James's army, at Hounslow Heath. After the Revolution he kept a booth at Bartholomew Fair, where, in the droll called St George for England, he acted in his old age in a dragon of green leather of his own invention; he was at last taken into the Charter-house, and there died, aged sixty years.—P.]
373 (return)[ 'Polypheme:' he translated the Italian Opera of Polifemo, but unfortunately lost the whole gist of the story. The Cyclops asks Ulysses his name who tells him his name is Noman. After his eye is put out, he roars and calls the brother Cyclops to his aid: they inquire who has hurt him? he answers Noman; whereupon they all go away again. Our ingenious translator made Ulysses answer, 'I take no name,' whereby all that followed became unintelligible. Hence it appears that Mr Gibber (who values himself on subscribing to the English translation of Homer's Iliad) had not that merit with respect to the Odyssey, or he might have been better instructed in the Greek Punology.—P.]
374 (return)[ 'Faustus, Pluto,' &c.: names of miserable farces, which it was the custom to act at the end of the best tragedies, to spoil the digestion of the audience.—P.]
375 (return)[ 'Ensure it but from fire:' in Tibbald's farce of Proserpine, a corn-field was set on fire; whereupon the other play-house had a barn burned down for the recreation of the spectators. They also rivalled each other in showing the burnings of hell fire, in Dr Faustus.—P.]
376 (return)[ 'Another Æschylus appears:' it is reported of Æschylus, that when his tragedy of the Furies was acted, the audience were so terrified that the children fell into fits, and the big-bellied women miscarried.—P.]
377 (return)[ 'On poets' tombs see Benson's titles writ:' W——-m Benson (surveyor of the buildings to his Majesty King George I.) gave in a report to the Lords, that their house and the painted-chamber adjoining were in immediate danger of falling. Whereupon the Lords met in a committee to appoint some other place to sit in, while the house should be taken down. But it being proposed to cause some other builders first to inspect it, they found it in very good condition. The Lords, upon this, were going upon an address to the king against Benson for such a misrepresentation; but the Earl of Sunderland, then secretary, gave them an assurance that his Majesty would remove him, which was done accordingly. In favour of this man, the famous Sir Christopher Wren, who had been architect to the Crown for above fifty years, who built most of the churches in London, laid the first stone of St Paul's, and lived to finish it, had been displaced from his employment at the age of nearly ninety years.—P.]
378 (return)[ 'Ambrose Philips:' 'he was,' saith Mr Jacob, 'one of the wits at Button's, and a justice of the peace.'—P.]
379 (return)[ 'While Jones' and Boyle's united labours fall:' at the time when this poem was written, the banqueting-house of Whitehall, the church and piazza of Covent Garden, and the palace and chapel of Somerset House, the works of the famous Inigo Jones, had been for many years so neglected as to be in danger of ruin. The portico of Covent Garden church had been just then restored and beautified at the expense of the Earl of Burlington, who, at the same time, by his publication of the designs of that great master and Palladio, as well as by many noble buildings of his own, revived the true taste of architecture in this kingdom.—P.]
380 (return)[ 'Mad Máthesis:' alluding to the strange conclusions some mathematicians have deduced from their principles, concerning the real quantity of matter, the reality of space, &c.—P. W.]
381 (return)[ 'Pure space:' i.e. pure and defaecated from matter. 'Ecstatic stare:' the action of men who look about with full assurance of seeing what does not exist, such as those who expect to find space a real being.—W.]
382 (return)[ 'Running round the circle, finds it square:' regards the wild and fruitless attempts of squaring the circle.—P. W.]
383 (return)[ 'Nor couldst thou,' &c.: this noble person in the year 1737, when the act aforesaid was brought into the House of Lords, opposed it in an excellent speech (says Mr Cibber), 'with a lively spirit, and uncommon eloquence.' This speech had the honour to be answered by the said Mr Cibber, with a lively spirit also, and in a manner very uncommon, in the 8th chapter of his Life and Manners.—P.]
384 (return)[ 'Harlot form:' the attitude given to this phantom represents the nature and genius of the Italian Opera; its affected airs, its effeminate sounds, and the practice of patching up these operas with favourite songs, incoherently put together. These things were supported by the subscriptions of the nobility. This circumstance, that Opera should prepare for the opening of the grand sessions, was prophesied of in book iii. ver. 304,
'Already Opera prepares the way,The sure forerunner of her gentle sway.'
385 (return)[ 'Division reign:' alluding to the false taste of playing tricks in music with numberless divisions, to the neglect of that harmony which conforms to the sense, and applies to the passions. Mr Handel had introduced a great number of hands, and more variety of instruments into the orchestra, and employed even drums and cannon to make a fuller chorus; which proved so much too manly for the fine gentlemen of his age, that he was obliged to remove his music into Ireland. After which they were reduced, for want of composers, to practise the patch-work above mentioned.—P. W.]
386 (return)[ 'Chromatic:' that species of the ancient music called the Chromatic was a variation and embellishment, in odd irregularities, of the diatonic kind. They say it was invented about the time of Alexander, and that the Spartans forbad the use of it, as languid and effeminate.—W.]
387 (return)[ 'Wake the dull church, and lull the ranting stage:' i.e. dissipate the devotion of the one by light and wanton airs; and subdue the pathos of the other by recitative and sing-song.—W.]
388 (return)[ 'Narcissus:' Lord Hervey.]
389 (return)[ 'Bold Benson:' this man endeavoured to raise himself to fame by erecting monuments, striking coins, setting up heads, and procuring translations of Milton; and afterwards by as great passion for Arthur Johnston, a Scotch physician's version of the Psalms, of which he printed many fine editions. See more of him, book iii. v. 325.—P. W.]
390 (return)[ 'The decent knight:' Sir Thomas Hanmer, who was about to publish a very pompous edition of a great author, at his own expense.—P. W.]
391 (return)[ 'So by each bard an alderman,' &c.: alluding to the monument of Butler erected by Alderman Barber.]
392 (return)[ 'The Samian letter:' the letter Y, used by Pythagoras as an emblem of the different roads of Virtue and Vice.]
'Et tibi quae Samios diduxit litera ramos.'—Pers. P. W.]
393 (return)[ 'House or Hall:' Westminster Hall and the House of Commons.—W.]
394 (return)[ 'Master-piece of man:' viz., an epigram. The famous Dr South declared a perfect epigram to be as difficult a performance as an epic poem. And the critics say, 'An epic poem is the greatest work human nature is capable of.'—P. W.]
395 (return)[ 'Gentle James:' Wilson tells us that this king, James I., took upon himself to teach the Latin tongue to Carr, Earl of Somerset; and that Gondomar, the Spanish ambassador, would speak false Latin to him, on purpose to give him the pleasure of correcting it, whereby he wrought himself into his good graces.—P. W. See Fortunes of Nigel.]
396 (return)[ 'Locke:' in the year 1703 there was a meeting of the heads of the University of Oxford to censure Mr Locke's Essay on Human Understanding, and to forbid the reading it. See his Letters in the last edit.—P. W.]
397 (return)[ 'Crousaz:' see Life.]
398 (return)[ 'The streams:' the River Cam, running by the walls of these colleges, which are particularly famous for their skill in disputation.—P. W.]
399 (return)[ 'Sleeps in port:' viz., 'now retired into harbour, after the tempests that had long agitated his society.' So Scriblerus. But the learned Scipio Maffei understands it of a certain wine called port, from Oporto a city of Portugal, of which this professor invited him to drink abundantly. Scip. Maff.,De Compotationibus Academicis.—P. W.]
400 (return)[ 'Letter:' alluding to those grammarians, such as Palamedes and Simonides, who invented single letters. But Aristarchus, who had found out a double one, was therefore worthy of double honour.—Scribl. W.]
401 (return)[ 'Digamma:' alludes to the boasted restoration of the Aeolic digamma, in his long-projected edition of Homer. He calls it something more than letter, from the enormous figure it would make among the other letters, being one gamma set upon the shoulders of another.—P. W.]
402 (return)[ 'Cicero:' grammatical disputes about the manner of pronouncing Cicero's name in Greek.—W.]
403 (return)[ 'Freind—Alsop:' Dr Robert Freind, master of Westminster school, and canon of Christ-church—Dr Anthony Alsop, a happy imitator of the Horatian style.—P. W.]
404 (return)[ 'Manilius or Solinus:' some critics having had it in their choice to comment either on Virgil or Manilius, Pliny or Solinus, have chosen the worse author, the more freely to display their critical capacity.—P. W.]
405 (return)[ 'Suidas, Gellius, Stobaeus:' the first a dictionary-writer, a collector of impertinent facts and barbarous words; the second a minute critic; the third an author, who gave his common-place book to the public, where we happen to find much mince-meat of old books.—P. W.]
406 (return)[ 'Divinity:' a word much affected by the learned Aristarchus in common conversation, to signify genius or natural acumen. But this passage has a further view: [Greek: Nous] was the Platonic term for mind, or the first cause, and that system of divinity is here hinted at which terminates in blind nature without a [Greek: Nous].—P. W.]
407 (return)[ 'Petrify a genius:' those who have no genius, employed in works of imagination; those who have, in abstract sciences.—P. W.]
408 (return)[ 'And hew the block off:' a notion of Aristotle, that there was originally in every block of marble a statue, which would appear on the removal of the superfluous parts.—P. W.]
409 (return)[ 'Ajax' spectre:' see Homer Odyss. xi., where the ghost of Ajax turns sullenly from Ulysses the traveller, who had succeeded against him in the dispute for the arms of Achilles.—Scribl. W.]
410 (return)[ 'The first came forwards:' this forwardness or pertness is the certain consequence, when the children of Dulness are spoiled by too great fondness of their parent.—W.]
411 (return)[ 'As if he saw St James's:' reflecting on the disrespectful and indecent behaviour of several forward young persons in the presence, so offensive to all serious men, and to none more than the good Scriblerus.—P. W.]
412 (return)[ 'Lily-silver'd vales:' Tube roses.—P.]
413 (return)[ 'Lion of the deeps:' the winged Lion, the arms of Venice.—P. W.]
414 (return)[ 'Greatly-daring dined:' it being, indeed, no small risk to eat through those extraordinary compositions, whose disguised ingredients are generally unknown to the guests, and highly inflammatory and unwholesome.—P. W.]
415 (return)[ 'Jansen, Fleetwood, Cibber:' three very eminent persons, all managers of plays; who, though not governors by profession, had, each in his way, concerned themselves in the education of youth, and regulated their wits, their morals, or their finances, at that period of their age which is the most important—their entrance into the polite world.—P. W.]
416 (return)[ 'Paridel:' the poet seems to speak of this young gentleman with great affection. The name is taken from Spenser, who gives it to a wandering courtly squire, that travelled about for the same reason for which many young squires are now fond of travelling, and especially to Paris.—P. W.]
417 (return)[ 'Annius:' the name taken from Annius the Monk of Viterbo, famous for many impositions and forgeries of ancient manuscripts and inscriptions, which he was prompted to by mere vanity, but our Annius had a more substantial motive. Annius, Sir Andrew Fontaine.—P. W.]
418 (return)[ 'Still to cheat:' some read skill, but that is frivolous, for Annius hath that skill already; or if he had not, skill were not wanting to cheat such persons.—Bentl. P. W.]
419 (return)[ 'Hunt the Athenian fowl:' the owl stamped on the reverse on the ancient money of Athens.—P. W.]
420 (return)[ 'Attys and Cecrops:' the first king of Athens, of whom it is hard to suppose any coins are extant; but not so improbable as what follows, that there should be any of Mahomet, who forbad all images, and the story of whose pigeon was a monkish fable. Nevertheless, one of these Annius's made a counterfeit medal of that impostor, now in the collection of a learned nobleman.—P. W.]
421 (return)[ 'Mummius:' this name is not merely an allusion to the mummies he was so fond of, but probably referred to the Roman General of that name, who burned Corinth, and committed the curious statues to the captain of a ship, assuring him, 'that if any were lost or broken, he should procure others to be made in their stead,' by which it should seem (whatever may be pretended) that Mummius was no virtuoso.-P. W.]
422 (return)[ 'Cheops:' a king of Egypt, whose body was certainly to be known, as being buried alone in his pyramid, and is therefore more genuine than any of the Cleopatras. This royal mummy, being stolen by a wild Arab, was purchased by the consul of Alexandria, and transmitted to the Museum of Mummius; for proof of which he brings a passage in Sandys's Travels, where that accurate and learned voyager assures us that he saw the sepulchre empty, which agrees exactly (saith he) with the time of the theft above mentioned. But he omits to observe that Herodotus tells the same thing of it in his time.—P. W.]
423 (return)[ 'Speak'st thou of Syrian princes:' the strange story following, which may be taken for a fiction of the poet, is justified by a true relation in Spon's Voyages. Vaillant (who wrote the History of the Syrian Kings as it is to be found on medals) coming from the Levant, where he had been collecting various coins, and being pursued by a corsair of Sallee, swallowed down twenty gold medals. A sudden bourasque freed him from the rover, and he got to land with them in his belly. On his road to Avignon, he met two physicians, of whom he demanded assistance. One advised purgations, the other vomits. In this uncertainty he took neither, but pursued his way to Lyons, where he found his ancient friend, the famous physician and antiquary Dufour, to whom he related his adventure. Dufour first asked him whether the medals were of the higher empire? He assured him they were. Dufour was ravished with the hope of possessing such a treasure—he bargained with him on the spot for the most curious of them, and was to recover them at his own expense.—P. W.]
424 (return)[ 'Witness, great Ammon:' Jupiter Ammon is called to witness, as the father of Alexander, to whom those kings succeeded in the division of the Macedonian Empire, and whose horns they wore on their medals.—P. W.]
425 (return)[ 'Douglas:' a physician of great learning and no less taste; above all, curious in what related to Horace, of whom he collected every edition, translation, and comment, to the number of several hundred volumes.—P. W.]
426 (return)[ 'And named it Caroline:' it is a compliment which the florists usually pay to princes and great persons, to give their names to the most curious flowers of their raising. Some have been very jealous of vindicating this honour, but none more than that ambitions gardener, at Hammersmith, who caused his favourite to be painted on his sign, with this inscription—'This ismyQueen Caroline.'—P. W.]
427 (return)[ 'Moss:' of which the naturalists count I can't tell how many hundred species.—P. W.]
428 (return)[ 'Wilkins' wings:' one of the first projectors of the Royal Society, who, among many enlarged and useful notions, entertained the extravagant hope of a possibility to fly to the moon; which has put some volatile geniuses upon making wings for that purpose.—P. W.]
429 (return)[ 'Moral evidence:' alluding to a ridiculous and absurd way of some mathematicians in calculating the gradual decay of moral evidence by mathematical proportions; according to which calculation, in about fifty years it will be no longer probable that Julius Caesar was in Gaul, or died in the senate-house.—P. W.]
430 (return)[ 'The high priori road:' those who, from the effects in this visible world, deduce the eternal power and Godhead of the First Cause, though they cannot attain to an adequate idea of the Deity, yet discover so much of him as enables them to see the end of their creation, and the means of their happiness; whereas they who take this high priori road (such as Hobbes, Spinoza, Descartes, and some better reasoners) for one that goes right, ten lose themselves in mists, or ramble after visions, which deprive them of all right of their end, and mislead them in the choice of the means.—P. W.]
431 (return)[ 'Make Nature still:' this relates to such as, being ashamed to assert a mere mechanic cause, and yet unwilling to forsake it entirely, have had recourse to a certain plastic nature, elastic fluid, subtile matter, &c.—P. W.]
433 (return)[ 'Bright image:' bright image was the title given by the later Platonists to that vision of nature which they had formed out of their own fancy, so bright that they called it [Greek: Autopton Agalma], or the self-seen image, i. e., seen by its own light. Thisignis fatuushas in these our times appeared again in the north; and the writings of Hutcheson, Geddes, and their followers, are full of its wonders. For in thislux borealis, this self-seen image, these second-sighted philosophers see everything else.—Scribl. W. Let it be either the Chance god of Epicurus, or the Fate of this goddess.—W.]
434 (return)[ 'Theocles:' thus this philosopher calls upon his friend, to partake with him in these visions: