The King of dykes! than whom no sluice of mud With deeper sable blots the silver ficod. “ Here strip, my children! here at once leap in, 275 “ 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

REMARKS.

“ much as by common received opinion, so are they di“ rectly contrary to the doctrine of the church of Eng“ land; for the visible descent of an Angel must be a 16 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 doc" trine of the Church of England 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 6s probability, then it follows of necessity that the doc"strine of the Church is faise. So I leave it to every “ impartial Clergyman to consider,” &c. Preface to the Remarks on Prince Arthur.

Ver. 270. (As morning prayer and flagellation end)] It is between eleven and twelve in the morning, after church service, that the criminals are whipt in Bridewell. -- This is to mark punctually the time of the day: Homer coes it by the circumstance of the Judges rising from court, or of the Labourers dinner : our author by one very proper both to the Persons and the Scene of his poem, which we may remeinber commenced in the evening of the Lord mayor's day: The first hook passed in that night; the next morning the games begin in the Strand, the ice along Fleet-street (places inhabited by Bookfellers) then they proceed by Bridewell toward Fleet-ditch, and lastly through Ludgate to the City and the Temple of the Goddess.

:

“ Who flings most filth, and wide pollutes around
“ The stream, be his the Weekly Journals bound; 280
" A pig of lead to him who dives the best;
* A peck of coals apiece shall glad the rest."

In naked majesty Oldmixon stands,
And, Milo-like, surveys his arms and hands;

Then

VARIATION.
Ver. 283. In former Ed.- -great Dennis stands.

REMARKS. Ver. 280. the weekly Journals) Papers of news and scandal intermixed, on different fides and parties, 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 Oidmixon, Roome, Arnall, Concanen, and others; persons never seen by our author.

Ver. 283. In naked majesty Oldmixon ftands,] Mr. JOHN OLDMIXON, next to Mr. Dennis, the most ancient Critic of our Nation; an unjust censurer of Mr. Addison in his prose Effay on Criticism, whom also in his imitation of Bouhours (called the Arts of Logic and Rhetoric) he misrepresents in plain matter of fačt; 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 therefore characterized by the Tailer, « No. 62. by the name of Omicron the Unborn Poet." Curll, Key, p. 13,

“ He writ Dramatic works, and a k volume of Poetry consisting of heroic Epistles, &c. fome " whereof are very well done,” said that great Judge, Mr. Jacob, in his Lives of Poets, vol. ii. p. 303.

a

Then sighing thus, “ And am I now threescore ? 285
“ Ah, why, ye Gods! should two and two make four?”
He said, and climb'd a stranded lighter's height,
Shot to the black abyss, and plung'd downright.
The Senior's judgment all the crowd admire,
Who, but to link the deeper, rose the higher. 290
Next Smedley div'd; flow circles dimpled o'er

1
The quaking mud, that clos'd and op'd no more.

All

REMARKS.

In his Esay 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 firit of these books, advanced a particular fact to charge three eminent persons of fallifying the Lord Clarendon's History; which fa& has been disproved by Dr. Atterbury, late bishop of Rochetter, then the only survivor of them; and the particular part he pretended to be fallified, produced since, after almoft 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 furreptitious 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 his character. The allegory evidently demands a person dipped in scandal, and deeply immersed in dirty work; whereas Mr. Euíden's writings rarely offended but by their length and multitude, and accordingly are taxed

of

All look, all righ, and call on Smedley lost;
Smedley in vain resounds through all the coast.

Then essay'd ; scarce vanith'd out of sight, 295
He buoys up instant, and returns to light:
He bears no tokens of the fabler streams,
And mounts far off among the Swans of Thames.

True to the bottom, fee Concanen creep, A cold, long-winded, native of the deep :

If

300

VARIATIONS.

Ver. 295. in former Ed.

Then ** try'd, but hardly snatched from sight.
After ver. 298. in the first Edit. followed these,

Far worse unhappy D-r succeeds,
He search'd for coral, but he gather'd weeds.

REMARKS.

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 ** effay'd;] A gentlemen of genius and spirit, who was secretly dipt 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] MATTHEW 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

:

If perseverance gain the Diver's prize,
Not everlasting Blackmore this denies :
No noise, no ftir, no motion canst thou make,
Th’unconscious stream sleeps o’er thee like a lake.

Next plung'd a feeble, but a desperate pack, 305
With each a sickly brother at his back :
Sons of a Day! just buoyant on the flood,
Then number'd with the puppies in the mud.
Ask ye their names ? I could as soon disclose
The names of these blind puppies as of those. 310
Fast by, like Niobe (her children gone)
Sits Mother Osborne, stupify'd to stone !

And VARIATION. Ver. 303–314. Not in former Ed.

REMARKS.

dead fcurrilities in the British and London Journals, and in a paper called the Speculatift. 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 indeed seem in fome degree accountable, having corrected what that gentleman did) but those of the duke of Buckingham, and others : To this rare piece somebody humouroully caused him to take for his motto, “ De profundis cla“ mavi.” He was fince a hired Scribler in the Daily Courant, where he poured forth much Billingsgate against the lord Bolingbroke, and others; after which this man was surprisingly promoted to administer Justice and Law in Jamaica.

Ver. 306, 307. With each a fickly brother at his back :--Sons of a day, &c.] These were daily Papers, a number of which, to lessen the expence, were printed one on the back of another,