This labour past, by Bridewell all descend (As morning-prayers and flagellation end), REMARKS. 270 saith he, has neither unity, nor integrity, nor morality, nor universality; and consequently he can have no fable, and no heroic poem: his narration is neither probable, delightful, nor wonderful; his characters have none of the necessary qualifications; the things contained in his narration are neither in their own nature delightful, nor numerous enough, nor rightly disposed, nor surprising, nor pathetic.' Nay, he proceeds so far as to say, sir Richard has no genius; first laying down that genius is caused by a furious joy and pride of soul, on the conception of an extraordinary hint. Many men,' says he, have their hints, without those motions of fury and pride of soul, because they want fire enough to agitate their spirits; and these we call cold writers. Others who have a great deal of fire, but have not excellent organs, feel the fore-mentioned motions, without the extraordinary hints; and these we call fustian writers.' But he declares that sir Richard had neither the hints nor the motions.'--Remarks on Pr. Arth, octavo, 1696. Preface. This gentleman in his first works abused the character of Mr. Dryden, and in his last, of Mr. Pope, accusing him in very high and sober terms of profaneness and immorality (Essay on Polite Writing, vol. ii. p. 370.) on a mere report from Edm. Curll, that he was author of a travestie on the first psalm. Mr. Dennis took up the same report, but with the addition of what sir Richard had neglected, an argument to prove it; which being very curious we shall here transcribe. It is he who burlesqued the psalms of David. It is apparent to me that psalm was burlesqued by a popish rhymester. Let rhyming persons who have been brought up protestants be otherwise what they will, let them be rakes, let them To where Fleet-ditch with disemboguing streams Rolls the large tribute of dead dogs to Thames, REMARKS. be scoundrels, let them be atheists, yet education has made an invincible impression on them in behalf of the sacred writings. But a popish rhymester has been brought up with a contempt for those sacred writings; now show me another popish rhymester but he.' This manner of argumentation is usual with Mr. Den dis; he has employed the same against sir Richard himself, in a like charge of impiety and irreligion. All Mr. Blackmore's celestial machines, as they cannot be defended so much as by common received opinion, so are they directly contrary to the doctrine of the church of England; for the visible descent of an angel must be a miracle. Now it is the doctrine of the church of England that miracles had ceased a long time before prince Arthur came into the world. Now if the doctrine of the church of Eng land be true, as we are obliged to believe, then are all the celestial machines in Prince Arthur unsufferable' as wanting not only human, but divine probability. But if the machines are sufferable, that is, if they have so much as divine probability, then it follows of necessity that the doctrine of the church is false. So I leave it to every impartial clergyman to consi. der,' &c.---Preface to the Remarks on Prince Arthur. Ver. 270. (As morning prayers and flagellation end)] It is between eleven and twelve in the morn ing, after church service, that the criminals are whipt in Bridewell. This is to mark punctually the time of the day: Homer does it by the circumstance of the judges rising from court, or of the labourers' din ner: our author by one very proper both to the per sons and the scene of his poem, which we may remember commenced in the evening of the lordmayor's day. The first book passed in that night; the next morning the games begin in the Strand, The king of dykes! than whom no sluice of mud With deeper sable blots the silver flood. Here strip, my children, here at once leap in, Here prove who best can dash through thick and thin, And who the most in love of dirt excel, Or dark dexterity of groping well. Who flings most filth, and wide pollutes around In naked majesty Oldmixon stands, And, Milo-like, surveys his arms and hands; REMARKS. thence along Fleet-street (places inhabited by booksellers), then they proceed by Bridewell toward Fleet-ditch, and lastly through Ludgate to the city, and the temple of the goddess. Ver. 280. the weekly Journals] Papers of news and scandal intermixed, on different sides and par ties, and frequently shifting from one side to the other, called the London Journal, British Journal, Daily Journal, &c. the concealed writers of which for some time were Oldinixon, Roome, Arnall, Concanen, and others; persons never seen by our author. Ver. 283. In naked majesty Oldmixon stands,] Mr. John Oldmixon, next to Mr. Dennis, the most ancient critic of our nation; an unjust censurer of Mr. Addison in his prose Essay on Criticism, whom also in his imitation of Bouhours (called the Arts of Logic and Rhetoric) he misrepresents in plain matter of fact; for in p. 45 he cites the Spectator as abusing Dr. Swift by name, where there is not the least hint of it; and in p. 304, is so injurious as to suggest that Mr. Addison himself writ that Tatler, No. 43, which says of his own simile, that 'Tis as great as ever entered into the mind of man.' In poetry he was not so happy as laborious, and, there. Then sighing thus: And am I now threescore ! REMARKS. fore, characterized by the Tatler, No. 62, by the name of Omicron the Unborn Poet.' Curll, Key, p. 13. 'He writ dramatic works, and a volume of poetry, consisting of heroic epistles, &c. some whereof were very well done,' said that great judge, Mr. Jacob, in his Lives of Poets, vol. ii. p. 303. In his Essay on Criticism, and the Arts of Logic and Rhetoric, he frequently reflects on our author. But the top of his character was a perverter of history, in that scandalous one of the Stuarts, in folio, and his Critical History of England, two volumes octavo. Being employed by bishop Kennet, in publishing the historians in his collection, he falsified Daniel's Chronicle in numberless places. Yet this very man, in the preface to the first of these books, advanced a particular fact to charge three eminent persons of falsifying the lord Clarendon's History; which fact has been disproved by Dr. Atterbury, late bishop of Rochester, then the only survivor of them; and the particular part he pretended to be falsified, produced since, after almost ninety years, in that noble author's original manuscript. He was all his life a virulent party-writer for hire, and received his reward in a small place, which he enjoyed to his death. Ver. 291. Next Smedley div'd;] In the surreptitious editions, this whole episode was applied to an initial letter E-, by whom if they meant the laureate, nothing was more absurd, no part agreeing with All look, all sigh, and call on Smedley lost; REMARKS. 300 his character. The allegory evidently demands a person dipped in scandal, and deeply immersed in dirty work; whereas Mr. Eusden's writings rarely offended but by their length and multitude, and accordingly are taxed of nothing else in book i. ver. 102. But the person here mentioned, an Irishman, was author and publisher of many scurrilous pieces, a weekly Whitehall Journal, in the year 1722, in the name of sir James Baker; and particularly whole volumes of Billingsgate against Dr. Swift and Mr. Pope, called Gulliveriana and Alexandriana, printed in octavo, 1728. Ver. 295. Then ** essay'd ;] A gentleman of genius and spirit, who was secretly dipped in some papers of this kind, on whom our poet bestows a panegyric instead of a satire, as deserving to be better employed than in party-quarrels, and personal invectives. Ver. 299. Concanen] Mathew Concanen, an Irishman, bred to the law. Smedley (one of his brethren in enmity to Swift) in his Metamorphosis of Scriblerus, p. 7, accuses him of having boasted of what he had not written, but others had revised and done for him.' He was author of several dull and dead scurrilities in the British and London Journals, and in a paper called the Speculatist. In a pamphlet, called a Supplement to the Profound, he dealt very unfairly with our poet, not only frequently imputing to him Mr. Broome's verses (for which he might, in |