216

What tho' my Name stood rubric on the walls, Or plaster'd posts, with claps, in capitals? Or smoking forth, a hundred hawkers load, On wings of winds came flying all abroad? I sought no homage from the race that write; I kept, like Asian Monarchs, from their sight: 220 Poems I heeded (now be-rhym'd so long)

No more than thou, great GEORGE! a birth-day song.

I ne'er with wits or witlings pass'd my days,

To spread about the itch of verse and praise;
Nor like a puppy, daggled through the town, 225
To fetch and carry sing-song up and down;
Nor at Rehearsals sweat, and mouth'd, and cry'd,
With handkerchief and orange at my side;
But sick of fops, and poetry, and prate,
To Bufo left the whole Castalian state.
Proud as Apollo on his forked hill,
Sate full-blown Bufo puff'd by ev'ry quill;

230

NOTES.

Ibid. ATTICUS] It was a great falsehood, which some of the libels reported, that this Character was written after the Gentleman's death; which see refuted in the Testimonies prefixed to the Dunciad. But the occasion of writing it was such as he would not make public out of regard to his memory: and all that could farther be done was to omit the name, in the Edition of his Works. P.

Ver. 218. On wings of winds came flying all abroad?] Hopkins, in the civth Psalm.

Ver. 232. puff'd by ev'ry quill;] By Addison, in his Account of Poets; by Steele, in a dedication to the Spectator; by Tickell, to his Homer, The ridicule on the Hind and Panther was the best of Halifax's compositions.

Fed with soft Dedication all day long,
Horace and he went hand in hand in song.
His Library (where busts of Poets dead
And a true Pindar stood without a head)
Receiv'd of wits an undistinguish'd race,
Who first his judgment ask'd, and then a place :
Much they extoll'd his pictures, much his seat,
And flatter'd ev'ry day, and some days eat:
Till grown more frugal in his riper days,

235

240

He paid some bards with port, and some with praise, To some a dry rehearsal was assign'd,

And others (harder still) he paid in kind.

Dryden alone (what wonder?) came not nigh, 245 Dryden alone escap'd this judging eye:

VARIATIONS.

After Ver. 234 in the MS.

To Bards reciting he vouchsaf'd a nod,
And snuff'd their incense like a gracious god.

NOTES.

Ver. 236. a true Pindar stood without a head] Ridicules the affectation of Antiquaries, who frequently exhibit the headless Trunks and Terms of Statues, for Plato, Homer, Pindar, &c. Vide. Fulv. Ursin. &c.

Ver. 245. Dryden alone] Our Poet, with true gratitude, has seized every opportunity of shewing his reverence for his great master, Dryden; whom Swift as constantly depreciated and maligned. "I do affirm," says he severely, but with exquisite irony indeed, in the dedication of the Tale of a Tub to Prince Posterity, upon the word of a sincere man, that there is now actually in being a certain poet, called John Dryden, whose translation of Virgil was lately printed in a large folio, well bound, and, if diligent search were made, for aught I know, is yet to be seen." And he attacks him again in the Battle of Books. Shaftesbury is also very fond of petulantly carping at Dryden : "To see the incorrigibleness of our poets in their pedantic

But still the Great have kindness in reserve,
He help'd to bury whom he help'd to starve.

NOTES.

manner," says he, vol. iii. p. 276, “their vanity, defiance of criticism; their rhodomontade, and poetical bravado; we need only turn to our famous poet-laureat, the very Mr. Bays himself, in one of his latest and most-valued pieces, Don Sebastian, writ many years after the ingenious author of the Rehearsal had drawn his picture." I remember to have heard my father say, that Mr. Elijah Fenton, who was his intimate friend, and had been his master, informed him, that Dryden, upon seeing some of Swift's earliest verses, said to him, " Young man, you will never be a poet :" And that this was the cause of Swift's rooted aversion to Dryden, mentioned above. Baucis and Philemon was so much and so often altered, at the instigation of Addison, who mentioned this circumstance to my father at Magdalen College, that not above eight lines remain as they originally stood. Shaftesbury's resentment was excited by the admirable poem of Absalom and Achitophel; and particularly by four lines in it that related to Lord Ashley, his father:

"And all to leave, what with his toil he won,
To that unfeather'd, two-legg'd thing, a son,
Got while his soul did huddled notions try,
And born a shapeless lump, like anarchy."

In the character which Dr. Johnson has given of Dryden, with his usual eloquence and energy, there is one sentence to which I cannot subscribe: "Dryden, standing in the highest place, was in no danger from his contemporaries." Where then was Milton? Dryden himself yielded the first place to Milton.

Ver. 248. help'd to bury] Mr. Dryden, after having lived in exigences, had a magnificent Funeral bestowed upon him by the contribution of several persons of Quality. P.

Ver. 248. help'd to starve.] Alluding to the subscription that was made for his funeral. Garth spoke an oration over him. His necessities obliged him to produce (besides many other poetical pieces) twenty-seven plays in twenty-five years. He got 251. for the copy, and 701. for his benefits generally. Dramatic poetry was certainly not his talent. His plays, a very few passages excepted, are insufferably unnatural. It is remarkable that he did not scruple to confess, that he could

May some choice patron bless each gray goose

quill!

May ev'ry Bavius have his Bufo still!

250

So when a Statesman wants a day's defence,
Or Envy holds a whole week's war with sense,
Or simple pride for flatt'ry makes demands,
May dunce by dunce be whistled off my hands!
Bless'd be the Great, for those they take away, 255
And those they left me; for they left me GAY;

NOTES.

When he

not relish the pathos and simplicity of Euripides. published his Fables, Tonson agreed to give him two hundred and sixty-eight pounds for ten thousand verses. And, to complete the full number of lines stipulated for, he gave the bookseller the epistle to his cousin, and the celebrated Music Ode. "Old Jacob Tonson used to say, that Dryden was a little jealous of rivals. He would compliment Crown when a play of his failed, but was very cold to him if he met with success. He sometimes used to say that Crown had some genius: but then he added always, that his father and Crown's mother were very well acquainted." Mr. Pope to Mr. Spence.

Ver. 251. So when a Statesman, &c.] Notwithstanding this ridicule on the public necessities of the Great, our Poet was candid enough to confess, that they are not always to be imputed to them, as their private distresses generally may. For (when uninfected by the neighbour of Party) he speaks of those necessities much more dispassionately. W.-In fact, neither great ministers, nor great princes, are either so good or so bad, as their flatterers and censurers represent them to be. This, however, ought not to prevent our keeping a jealous eye over every man in power.

Ver. 256. left me GAY;] The sweetness and simplicity of Gay's temper and manners much endeared him to all his acquaintance, and made them always speak of him with particular fondness and attachment. He wrote with neatness and terseness, æquali quadam mediocritate, but certainly without any elevation; frequently without any spirit. Trivia appears to be the

Left me to see neglected Genius bloom,
Neglected die, and tell it on his tomb:

NOTES.

best of his poems, in which are many strokes of genuine humour and pictures of London-life, which are now become curious, because our manners, as well as our dresses, have been so much altered and changed within a few years. His Fables, the most popular of all his works, have the fault of many modern fablewriters, the ascribing, to the different animals and objects introduced, speeches and actions inconsistent with their several natures. An elephant can have nothing to do in a bookseller's shop. They are greatly inferior to the Fables of La Fontaine, which is perhaps the most unrivalled work in the whole French language. The Beggars' Opera has surely been extolled beyond its merits. I could never perceive that fine vein of concealed satire supposed to run through it: and though I should not join with a bench of Westminister Justices in forbidding it to be represented on the stage, yet I think pickpockets, strumpets, and highwaymen, may be hardened in their vices by this piece and that Pope and Swift talked too highly of its moral good effects. One undesigned and accidental mischief attended its success: it was the parent of that most monstrous of all dramatic absurdities, the Comic Opera. The friendship of two such excellent personages as the Duke and Dutchess of Queensberry, did, in truth, compensate poor Gay's want of pension and preferment. They behaved to him constantly with that delicacy and sense of seeming equality, as never to suffer him for a moment to feel his state of dependance. Let every man of letters, who wishes for patronage, read D'Alembert's Essay on living with the Great, before he enters the house of a patron: and let him always remember the fate of Racine, who having drawn up, at Madame Maintenon's secret request, a memorial that strongly painted the distresses of the French nation, the weight of their taxes, and the expenses of the court, she could not resist the importunity of Lewis XIV. but shewed him her friend's paper, against whom the king immediately conceived a violent indignation, because a poet should dare to busy himself with politics. Racine had the weakness to take this anger so much to heart, that it brought on a low fever which hastened his death. The Dutchess of Queensberry would not so have betrayed her poetical friend Gay. I was informed by Mr. Spence, that Mr. Ad