The rest on outside merit but presume, And 'scape the martyrdom of jakes and fire: A Gothic library! of Greece and Rome 140 Well purged, and worthy Settle, Banks, and Broome. REMARKS. blotted a line.' Ben Jonson honestly wished he had blotted a thousand; and Shakspeare would certainly have wished the same, if he had lived to see the alterations in his works, which not the actors only (and especially the daring hero of this poem) have made on the stage, but the presumptuous critics of our days in their editions. Ver. 135. The rest on outside merit, &c.] This library is divided into three parts; the first consists of those authors from whom he stole, and whose works he mangled; the second of such as fitted the shelves, or were gilded for show, or adorned with pictures: the third class our author calls solid learning, old bodies of divinity, old commentaries, old English printers, or, old English translations; all very voluminous, and fit to erect altars to Dulness. Ver. 141. Ogilby the great:] 'John Ogilby was one, who, from a late initiation into literature, made such a progress as might well style him the prodigy of his time! sending into the world so many large volumes! His translations of Homer and Virgil done to the life, and with such excellent sculptures: and (what added great grace to his works) he printed them all on special good paper, and in a very good letter.' Winstanley, Lives of Poets. Ver. 142. There, stamp'd with arms, Newcastle shines complete:] The dutchess of Newcastle was one who busied herself in the ravishing delights of poetry; leaving to posterity in print three ample volumes of her studious endeavours.' Winstanley, ibid. Langbane reckons up eight folios of her grace's, which were usually adorned with gilded covers, and had her coat of arms upon them. Ver. 146. Worthy Settle, Banks, and Broome.] The poet has mentioned these three authors in particular, as they are parallel to our here in his three capacities; 1. SetLe was his brother laureate; only indeed upon half-pay, for 149 But, high above, more solid learning shone, The classics of an age that heard of none; There Caxton slept, with Wynkyn at his side, One clasp'd in wood, and one in strong cow-hide; There, saved by spice, like mummies, many a year, Dry bodies of divinity appear: De Lyra there a dreadful front extends, And here the groaning shelves Philemon bends. REMARKS. the city instead of the court; but equally famous for unie telligible flights in his poems on public occasions, such as shows, birth-days, &c. 2. Banks was his rival in tragedy though inore successful in one of his tragedies, the Earl of Essex, which is yet alive: Anna Boleyn, the Queen of Scots, and Cyrus the Great, are dead and gone. These he dressed in a sort of beggar's velvet, or a happy mixture of the thick fustian and thin prosaic; exactly imitated in Perolla and Isidora, Cæsar in Egypt, and the Heroic Daughter 3. Broome was a serving man of Ben Jonson, who once picked up a comedy from his letters, or from some cast scenes of his master, not entirely contemptible. Ver. 147. More solid learning.] Some have objected. that books of this sort suit not so well the library of our Bays, which they imagined consisted of novels, plays, and obscene books; but they are to consider that he furnished his shelves only for ornament, and read these books no more than the dry bodies of divinity, which, no doubt, were purchased by his father when he designed him for the gown. See the note on ver. 200. Ver. 149. Caxton] A printer in the time of Edw. IV. Richard III. and Hen. VII.; Wynkyn de Word, his successor, in that of Hen. VII. and VIII. The former translated into prose Virgil's Eneis, as a history; of which he speaks, in his proeme, in a very singular manner, as of a book hardly known. Tibbald quotes a rare passage from him in Mist's Journal of March 16, 1728, concerning a straunge and marvallous beaste, called Sagittayre, which ho would have Shakspeare to mean rather than Teucer, the archer celebrated by Homer. Ver. 153. Nich de Lyra, or Harpsfield, a very voluminous commentator, whose works, in five vast folios, were printed in 1472. Ver. 154. Philemon Holland, doctor in physic. He translated so many books, that a man would think he had done nothing else; insomuch that he might be called translator general of his age. The books alone of his turning into English are sufficient to make a country gentleman a com Plete library. Winstanley. Of these, twelve volumes, twelve of amplest size, Redeem'd from tapers and defrauded pies, Inspired he seizes: these an altar raise : That altar crowns: a folio common-place First in my care, and ever at my heart; To the last honours of the butt and bays: 170 To this our head like bias to the bowl, Or, if to wit a coxcomb make pretence, Guard the sure barrier between that and sense; REMARKS. The first Ver. 167. E'er since sir Fopling's periwig.' visible cause of the passion of the town for our hero, was a fair flaxen full-bottomed periwig, which, he tells us, he wore in his first play of the Fool in Fashion. It attracted, in a particular manner, the friendship of Col. Brett, who wanted to purchase it. 'Whatever contempt,' says he, 'philosophers may have for a fine periwig, my friend, who was not to despise the world, but to live in it, knew very well, that so material an article of dress upon the head of a man of sense, if it became him, could never fail of drawing to him a more partial regard and benevolence, than could possibly be hoped for in an ill-made one. This, perhaps, may soften the grave censure which so youthful a purchase might otherwise have laid upon him. In a word, he made his attack upon this periwig, as your young fellows generally do upon a lady of pleasure, first by a few familiar praises of her person, and then a civil inquiry into the price of it; and VOL. II. 14 Or quite unravel all the reasoning thread, Some demon stole my pen (forgive the offence) This, prose on stilts; that, poetry fall'n lame. 180 190 Did on the stage my fops appear confined! Yet sure, had Heaven decreed to save the state, This gray-goose weapon must have made her stand. REMARKS. 200 we finished our bargain that night over a bottle.' See Life, 8vo. p. 303. This remarkable periwig usually made its entrance upon the stage in a sedan, brought in by two chairmen, with infinite approbation of the audience. Ver. 178, 179. Guard the sure barrier-Or quite unravel, &c.] For wit or reasoning are never greatly hurtful to dulness, but when the first is founded in truth, and the other in usefulness. Ver. 181. As, forced from wind-guns, &c.] The thought of these four verses is founded in a poem of our author's of a very early date (namely, written at fourteen years old, and soon after printed,) to the author of a poem called Successio. Ver. 198. Gray-goose weapon.] Alluding to the old English weapon, the arrow of the long-bow, which was fletched with the feathers of the gray-goose. Ver. 199. My Fletcher] A familiar manner of speaking, used by inodern critics, of a favourite author. Bays might as justly speak this of Fletcher, as a French wit did of Tully, seeing his works in a library, Ah! mon cher Ciceron! Or tread the path by venturous heroes trod, REMARKS. je le connois bien: c'est le meme que Marc Tulle. But he had a better title to call Fletcher his own, having made so free with him. Ver. 200. Take up the Bible, once my better guide?] When, according to his father's intention, he had been a clergyman, or (as he thinks himself,) a bishop of the church of England. Hear his own words: At the time that the fate of King James, the prince of Orange, and myself, were on the anvil, Providence thought fit to postpone mine, till theirs were determined: but had my father carried me a month sooner to the university, who knows but that purer fountain might have washed my imperfections into a capacity of writing, instead of plays and annual odes, sermons, and pastoral letters ?-Apology for his Life, chap. iii. Ver. 203. At White's amidst the doctors] These doctors nad a modest and upright appearance, no air of overbear ing; but, like true masters of art, were only habited in black and white: they were justly styled subtiles and graves, but not always irrefragabiles, being sometimes examined, and by a nice distinction, divided and laid open. Scribl. This learned critic is to be understood allegorically. The doctors in this place mean no more than false dice, a cant phrase used among gamesters. So the meaning of these four sonorous lines is only this, 'Shall I play fair or foul?" Ver. 208. Ridpath-Mist.] George Ridpath, author of a Whig paper, called the Flying-post; Nathaniel Mist of a famous Tory journal. Ver. 21. Or rob Rome's ancient geese of all their glories,] Relates to the well-known story of the geese tha. saved the Capitol; of which Virgil, Æn. viii. 'Atque hic auratis volitans argenteus anser |