In each she marks her image full exprest, But chief in Bays's monster-breeding breast; REMARKS. Nahum Tate was poet laureate, a cold writer, of no invention; but sometimes translated tolerably when befriended by Mr. Dryden. In his second part of Absalom and Achitophel are above two hundred admirable lines together of that great hand, which strongly shine through the insipidity of the rest. Something parallel may be observed of another author here mentioned. Ver.106. And all the mighty mad in Dennis rage.] Mr. Theobald, in the Censor, vol. ii. N. 33, calls The modern Mr. Dennis by the name of Furius. Furius is to be looked upon more as an object of pity, than of that which he daily provokes, laughter and contempt. Did we really know how much this poor man' [I wish that reflection on poverty had been spared] suffers by being contradicted, or, which is the same thing in effect, by hearing another praised; we should, in compassion, sometimes attend to him with a silent nod, and let him go away with the triumphs of his ill-nature.-Poor Furius, (again) when any of his contemporaries are spoken well of, quitting the ground of the present dispute, steps back a thousand years to call in the succour of the ancients. His very panegyric is spiteful, and he uses it for the same reason as some ladies do their commendations of a dead beauty, who would never have had their good word, but that a living one happened to be mentioned in their company. His applause is not the tribute of his heart, but the sacrifice of his revenge,' &c. Indeed, his pieces against our poet are somewhat of an angry cha racter, and as they are now scarce extant, a taste of his style may be satisfactory to the curious. young, squab, short gentleman, whose outward form, though it should be that of downright mons 'A Bays, form'd by nature stage and town to bless, And act, and be, a coxcomb with success. REMARKS. 110 key, would not differ so much from human shape as his unthinking immaterial part does from human understanding.--He is as stupid and as venomous as a hunch-back'd toad. A book through which folly and ignorance, those brethren so lame and inpotent, do ridiculously look big and very dull, and strut and hobble, cheek by jowl, with their arms on kimbo, being led and supported, and bully back'd by that blind Hector, Impudence.' Reflect. on the Essay on Criticism, p. 26, 29, 30. I It would be unjust not to add his reasons for this fury, they are so strong and so coercive. regard him,' saith he, as an enemy, not so much to me, as to my king, to my country, to my religion, and to that liberty which has been the sole felicity of my life. A vagary of fortune, who is sometimes pleased to be frolieksome, and the epidemic madness of the times, have given him reputation, and 'repu. tation,' as Hobbes says, 'is power,' and that has made him dangerous. Therefore I look on it as my duty to king George, whose faithful subject I am; to my country, of which I have appeared a constant lover; to the laws, under whose protection I have so long lived; and to the liberty of my country, more dear to me than life, of which I have now for forty years been a constant assertor, &c. I look upon it as my duty, I say, to do--you shall see what to pull the lion's skin from this little ass, which popular error has thrown round him; and to show that this author, who has been lately so much in vogue, has neither sense in his thoughts, nor English in his expressions.' Dennis, Rem. on Hom. Pref. p. %, 91, &c. Besides these public-spirited reasons, Mr. D. bad a private one; which, by his manner of expressing Dulness with transport eyes the lively dunce, REMARKS. it in p. 92, appears to have been equally strong. He was even in bodily fear of his life, from the machi nations of the said Mr. P. The story,' says he, is too long to be told, but who would be acquainted with it, may hear it from Mr. Curll, my bookseller. However, what my reason has suggested to me, that I have with a just confidence said, in defiance of his two clandestine weapons, his slander and his poison. Which last words of his book plainly discover Mr. D.'s suspicion was that of being poisoned, in like manner as Mr. Curll had been before him: of which fact, see a full and true account of the horrid and barbarous revenge, by poison, on the body of Edmund Curll, printed in 1716, the year antecedent to that wherein these remarks of Mr. Dennis were published. But what puts it beyond all question, is a passage in a very warm treatise, in which Mr. D. was also concerned, price two-pence, called, A true character of Mr. Pope and his Writ ings, printed for S. Popping, 1716; in the tenth page, whereof he is said to have insulted people on those calamities and diseases which he himself gave them, by administering poison to them;' and is called (p. 4.) a lurking waylaying coward, and a stabber in the dark.' Which (with many other things most lively set forth in that piece) must have rendered him a terror, not to Mr. Dennis only, but to all Christian people. This charitable warning only provoked our incorrigible poet to write the following epigram: Should Dennis publish you had stabb'd your brother, Lampoon'd your monarch, or debauch'd your mo ther; Say, what revenge on Dennis can be had? Now (shame to fortune!) an ill run at play REMARKS. On one so poor you cannot take the law; For the rest; Mr. John Dennis was the son of a saddler, in London, born in 1657. He paid court to Mr. Dryden; and having obtained some correspondence with Mr. Wycherley and Mr. Congreve, he immediately obliged the public with their letters. He made himself known to the government by many admirable schemes and projects; which the ministry, for reasons best known to themselves, constantly kept private. For his character, as a writer, it is given us as follows: Mr. Dennis is excellent at Pindaric writings, perfectly regular in all his performances, and a person of sound learning. That he is master of a great deal of penetration and judgemeut, his criticisms (particularly on Prince Arthur) do sufficiently demonstrate.' From the same ac count it also appears that he writ plays more to get reputation than money.' Dennis of himself. See Giles Jacob's Lives of Dram. Poets, p. 68, 69, com. pared with p. 286. Ver. 109. Bays, form'd by nature, &c.] It is hoped the poet here hath done full justice to his hero's character, which it were a great mistake to imagine was wholly sunk in stupidity: he is allowed to have supported it with a wonderful mixture of vivacity. This character is heightened according to his own desire, in a letter he wrote to our author. • Pert and dull at least you might have allowed me. What! am I only to be dull, and dull still, and again, and for ever! He then solemnly appealed to his own conscience, that he could not think himself so, nor believe that our poet did; but that he spake worse Swearing and supperless the hero sat, Blasphem'd his gods, the dice, and damn'd his fate. REMARKS. of him than he could possibly think; and concluded it must be merely to show his wit, or for some profit or lucre to himself.' Life of C. C. chap. vii. and Letter to Mr. P. page 15, 40, 53. And to show his claim to what the poet was so unwilling to allow him, of being pert as well as dull, he declares he will have the last word; which occasioned the following epigram: Quoth Cibber to Pepe, Though in verse you foreclose, I'll have the last word; for, by G-, I'll write prose.' Poor Colly, thy reasoning is none of the strongest, For know, the last word is the word that lasts longest. Ver. 115. Supperless the hero sat,] It is amazing how the sense of this hath been mistaken by all the former commentators, who most idly suppose it to imply, that the hero of the poem wanted a supper. In truth, a great absurdity. Not that we are ignorant that the hero of Homer's Odyssey is frequently in that circumstance, and, therefore, it can no way derogate from the grandeur of epic poem to represent such hero under a calamity, to which the greatest not only of critics and poets, but of kings and warriors, have been subject. But much more refined, I will venture to say, is the meaning of our author: it was to give us obliquely a curious precept, or what Bossu calls a disguised sentence, that Temperance is the life of study.' The language of poesy brings all into action; and to represent a critic encompassed with books but without a supper, is a picture which lively expresseth how much the true critic prefers the diet of the mind to that of the body, one of which he always castigates, and often totally neglects, for the greater improvement of the other. SCRIBL |