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And high-born Howard, more majestic sire,
With fool of quality completes the quire.
Thou, Cibber! thou, his laurel shalt support,
Folly, my son, has still a friend at court.
Lift up your gates, ye princes, see him come!
Sound, sound yė viols, be the cat-call dumb!
Bring, bring the madding bay, the drunken vine;
The creeping, dirty, courtly ivy join.

And thou! his aid-de-camp, lead on my sons,
Light-arm'd with points, antitheses, and puns.
Let Bawdry, Billingsgate, my daughters dear,
Support his front, and oaths bring up the rear:
And under his, and under Archer's wing,

300

Gaming and Grub-street skulk behind the king. 310

REMARKS.

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.

Ver. 309, 310. under Archer's wing,-Gaming, &c.] When the statute against gaming was drawn up, it was represented, 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 indig nation, prohibited. It is reported the same practice is yet continued wherever the court resides, and the hazard table there open to all the professed game. sters 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'erDonne to Queen Eliz

flow.

'O! when shall rise a monarch all our own, And I, a nursing-mother, rock the throne; 'Twixt prince and people close the curtain draw, Shade him from light, and cover him from law; Fatten the courtier, starve the learned band, And suckle armies, and dry-nurse the land: Till senates nod to lullabies divine,

And all be sleep, as at an ode of thine.'

320

She ceas'd. Then swells the chapel-royal throat: God save king Cibber! mounts in ev'ry 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 dropt the name of God; Back to the Devil the last echoes roll,

And Coll! each butcher roars at Hockley-hole.

REMARKS.

Ver. 319. chapel-royal]. The voices and instru ments used in the service of the chapel-royal being also employed 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 not so happy; for being convicted, and set in the pillory, she was (to the lasting shame of all her great friends and votaries) 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 made this epigram:

When laureates make odes, do you ask of what sort? Do you ask if they're good, or are evil? [court, You may judge-from the Devil they come to the And go from the court to the devil.

So when Jove's block descended from on high
As sings thy great forefather Ogilby)

Loud thunder to its bottom shook the bog,

329

And the hoarse nation croak'd, God save king Log!'

REMARKS.

Ver. 328-Ogilby-God save king Log!] See Ogilby's Esop'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 pa tient 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 up all our humanity and forgiveness toward 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 made on their constant conduct and constant fate, in the following epigram:

Ye little wits, that gleam'd a-while,

When Pope vouchsaf'd a ray,
Alas! depriv'd of his kind smile,
How soon ye fade away!

To compass Phœbus' 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.

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BOOK THE SECOND.

ARGUMENT

The king being proclaimed, the solemnity is graced with public games and sports of various kinds; not instituted by the hero, as by Æneas in Virgil, but for greater honour by the goddess in person (in like manner as the games Pythia, Isthmia, &c. were anciently said to be ordained by the gods, and as Thetis herself appearing, according to Ho mer, Odyss. xxiv. proposed the prizes in honour of her son Achilles). Hither flock the poets and critics, attended, as is but just, with their patrons and booksellers. The goddess is first pleased, for her disport, to propose games to the booksellers, and setteth up the phantom of a poet, which they contend to overtake. The races described, with their divers accidents. Next, the game for a poetess. Then follow the exercises for the poets, of tickling, vociferating, diving. The first holds forth the arts and practices of dedicators, the se cond of disputants and fustian poets, the third of profound, dark, and dirty party writers. Lastly, for the critics, the goddess proposes (with great propriety) an exercise, not of their parts, but their patience, in hearing the works of two voluminous authors, one in verse, and the other in prose, deliberately read, without sleeping: the various ef fects of which, with the several degrees and man.

1.2

ners of their operation, are here set forth; till the whole number, not of critics only, but of spectators, actors, and all present, fall fast asleep; which naturally and necessarily ends the games.

H

BOOK II.

IGH on a gorgeous seat, that far out-shone Henley's gilt tub, or Fleckno's Irish throne, Or that where on her Curlls the public pours, All bounteous, fragrant grains and golden showers,

REMARKS.

Two things there are, upon the supposition of which the very basis of all verbal criticism is founded and supported: The first, that an author could never fail to use the best word on every occasion; the second, that a critic cannot choose but know which that is. This being granted, whenever any word doth not fully content us, we take upon us to conclude, first, that the author could never have used it; and, secondly, that he must have used that very one, which we conjecture, in its stead.

We cannot, therefore, enough admire the learned Scriblerus, for his alteration of the text in the last two verses of the preceding book, which in all the former editions stood thus:

Hoarse thunder to its bottom shook the bog,

And the loud nation croak'd 'God save king Log!' He has, with great judgement, transposed these two epithets; putting hoarse to the nation, and loud to the thunder; and this being evidently the true reading, he vouchsafed not so much as to mention the former; for which assertion of the just right of a critic he merits the acknowledgement of all sound commentators.

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