True to the bottom, see Concanen creep,
A cold, long-winded, native of the deep;
If perseverance gain the diver's prize,

300

Not everlasting Blackmore this denies ;
No noise, no stir, no motion canst thou make,
Th' unconscious stream sleeps o'er thee like a lake.
Next plung'd a feeble, but a despèrate 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

REMARKS.

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. v. 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 hav ing boasted of what he had not ritten, 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 indeed seem, in some degree, accountable, having corrected what that gentleman did), but those of the Duke of Buckingham and others: to this rare piece, somebody humourously caused him to take for his motto, De profundis clamavi. lle was since a hired scribbler in the Daily Courant, where he poured forth much Billingsgate against the Lord Bolingbroke and others; after which this man was surprizingly promoted to administer justice and law in Jamaica.

7.302.

IMITATIONS.

Not everlasting Blackmore.]

Ace bonus Eurytian praelato invidit honori,' &c. Virg. Æn.

Fast by, like Niobe (her children gone)
Sits Mother Osborne, stupify'd to stone!
And monumental brass this record bears,
These are, ah no! these were the Gazetteers !'
Not so bold Arnall; with a weight of scull 315
Furious he drives, precipitately dull.
Whirlpools and storms in circling arm invest,
With all the might of gravitation blest.
No crab more active in the dirty dance,
Downward to climb, and backward to advance,
He brings up half the bottom on his head,
And loudly claims the Journal and the Lead.
The plunging Prelate, and his pond'rous Grace,
With holy envy gave one layman place.

REMARKS.

321

v. 312. Osborne.] A name assumed by the eldest and gravest of these writers, who at last being ashamed of his pupils, gave his paper over, and in his age remained silent.

v. 315. Arnall.] William Arall, bred an attorney, was a perfect genius in this sort of work. He began, under twenty, with furious party-papers; then succeeded Concanen in the British Journal. At the first publication of the Dunciad, he prevailed on the author not to give him his due place in it, by a letter. professing his detestation of such practices as his predecessors. But since, by the most unexampled insolence, and personal abuse of several great men, the Poet's particular friends, he most amply deserved a niche in the temple of infamy: witness a pa per called The Free Briton; a Dedication intitled, To the Gentine Blunderer, 1732, and many others. He writ for hire, and valued himself upon it; not indeed without cause, it appearing that he received For Free Britons, and other writings, in the space of four years, no less than ten thousand, nine hundred, and ninety-seven pounds, six shillings and eight pence out of the Treasury. But, frequently, through his fury or folly, he exceeded all the bounds of his commission, and obliged his ho norable patron to disavow his scurrilities.

v. 323. The plunging Prelate, &c.] It having been invidi

When lo! a burst of thunder shook the flood, 325
low rose a form in majesty of Mud;
haking the horrors of his sable brows,
And each ferocious feature grim with ooze.
Greater he looks, and more than mortal stares;
Then thus the wonders of the deep declares. 330.
First he relates how, sinking to the chin,
3mit with his mien, the mud-nymphs suck'd him in;
How young Lutetia, softer than the down,
Nigrina black, and Merdamente brown,
Vy'd for his love in jetty bow'rs below,
As Hylas fair was ravish'd long ago.

335

[maids

Then 'sung, how shown him by the Nut-brown

A branch of Styx here rises from the shades,
That tinctured as it runs with Lethe's streams,
And wafting vapors from the land of dreams, 340
(As under seas Alpheus' secret sluice
Bears Pisa's offering to his Arethuse)

REMARKS.

ously insinuated, that by this title was meant a truly great pres late, as respectable for his defence of the present balance of power in the Civil constitution, as for his opposition to the scheme of no power at all, in the Religious, I owe so much to the memory of my deceased friend as to declare, that when, a little before his death, I informed him of this insinuation, he called it vile and malicious; as any candid man, he said, might understand, by his having paid a willing compliment to this very prelate in another part of the Poem.

IMITATIONS.

.329. Greater he looks, and more than mortal stares.) Virg Hen. VI. of the Sibyl.

.....majorque videri,

Nec mortale sonans'

Pours into Thames; and hence the mingled wave
Intoxicates the pert, and lulls the grave:

Here brisker vapours o'er the Temple creep ; 345
There, all from Paul's to Aldgate drink and sleep.
Thence to the banks where rev'rend bards repose,
They led him soft; each rev'rend bard arose;
And Milbourn chief, deputed by the rest,
Gave him the cassock, surcingle, and vest. 350
Receive (he said) these robes, which once were
• Dulness is sacred in a sound divine,' . [mine,
He ceas'd, and spread the robe; the crow'd confess
The rev'rend flamen in his lengthen'd dress.
Around him wide a sable army stand,

355

A low-born, cell-bred, selfish, servile band, Prompt or to guard, or stab, to saint, or damn, Heav'n's Swiss, who fight for any god, or man. [fleet,

Through Lud's fam'd gates, along the well-known Rolls the black troop, and overshades the street,

REMARKS.

v. 349. And Milbourn.] Luke Milbourn, a clergyman, the fairest of critics; who, when he wrote against Mr. Dryden's Virgil, did him justice in printing at the same time his own translations of him, which were intolerable. His manner of writing has a great resemblance with that of the gentlemen of the Dus ciad against our Author, as will be seen in the parallel of Mr. Dryden and him.

IMITATIONS.

v. 347. Thence to the banks, &c.]

"Tum canit errantem Permessi ad flumina Gallum,
Utque viro Phoebi chorus assurrexerit omnis;
Ut Linus haec, illi divino carmine pastor,
Floribus atque apio crines ornatus amaro,
'Dixerit, Hos tibi dant calamos, en accipe, Musae,
Ascraeo quos ante seni',. &c.

361'

Till show'rs of sermons, characters, essays,
In circling fleeces whiten all the ways:
So clouds replenish'd from some bog below,
Mount in dark volumes, and descend in snow.
Here stopt the Goddess; and in pomp proclaims
A gentler exercise to close the games.
366
Ye Critics! in whose heads, as equal scales,
"I weigh what author's heaviness prevails;
Which most conduce to sooth the soul in slumbers,
My H-ley's periods, or my Blackmore's numbers;
371
• Attend the trial we propose to make:
If there be man who o'er such works can wake,
Sleep's all-subduing charms who dares defy,
And boasts Ulysses' ear with Argus' eye;
To him we grant our amplest pow'rs to sit 375
Judge of all-present, past, and future wit;
To cavil, censure, dictate, right or wrong,
Full and eternal privilege of tongue.'

381

Three college sophs, and three pertTemplars came, The same their talents, and their tastes the same; Each prompt to query, answer, and debate, And smit with love of poesy and prate. The pond'rous books two gentle readers bring; The heroes sit, the vulgar form a ring.

IMITATIONS.

v. 380, 381. The same their talents. Each prompt, &c.] 'Ambo florentes ætatibus, Arcades ambo. 'Et certare pares, et respondere parati.'

v. 382. And smit with love of poesy and prate.]
Smit with the love of sacred song'..
0.384. The heroes sit, the vulgar form a ring.]
Consedere duces, et vulgi stante corona."

L

Virg. Ecl. vi.

"

Milton.

Ovid. Met. XIII.