Here lay poor Fletcher's half-eat scenes, and here There hapless Shakespear, yet of Tibbald sore, Or serve (like other fools) to fill a room; REMARKS. 135 Ver. 131. poor Fletcher's half-eat scenes,] A great number of them taken out to patch up his plays. P.t Ver. 132. The frippery] "When I fitted up an old play, it was as a good housewife will mend old linen, when she has not better employment." Life, p. 217, Octavo. P.t Ver. 133. hapless Shakespear, &c.] It is not to be doubted but Bays was a subscriber to Tibbald's Shakespear. He was frequently liberal this way: and, as he tells us, "subscribed to Mr. Pope's Homer, out of pure generosity and civility; but when Mr. Pope did so to his Nonjuror, he concluded it could be nothing but a joke."-Letter to Mr. P. p. 24. This Tibbald, or Theobald, published an edition of Shakespear, of which he was so proud himself as to say, in one of Mist's Journals, June 8, "That to expose any errors in it was impracticable." And in another, April 27, "That whatever care might for the future be taken by any other Editor, he would still give above five hundred emendations, that shall escape them all." P.† Ver 134. Wish'd he had blotted] It was a ridiculous praise which the Players gave to Shakespear, "that he never blotted a line." Ben Jonson honestly wished he had blotted a thousand; and Shakespear would certainly have wished the same, if he had lived to see those alterations in his works, which, not the Actors only (and especially the daring Hero of this Poem) have made on the Stage, but the presumptuous critics of our days in their Editions. P.t Ver. 135. The rest on out-side merit, &c.] This Library is divided into three parts; the first consists of those authors from whom he stole, and whose works he mangled; the second, of such as fitted the shelves, or were gilded for shew, or adorned with pictures ; Such with their shelves as due proportion hold, And Quarles is sav'd by beauties not his own. 140 Here swells the shelf with Ogilby the great; There, stamp'd with arms, Newcastle shines complete; Here all his suff'ring brotherhood retire, And 'scape the martyrdom of jakes and fire; REMARKS. pictures; the third class our author calls solid learning, old Bodies of Divinity, old Commentaries, old English Printers, or old English Translations; all very voluminous, and fit to erect altars to Dulness. P.t These six lines are below the usual vein of our author; and the note upon them is very forced and unnatural. The prints in Ogilby's China, many of them by Hollar, atone for the page. Dryden used to say that Quarles excelled him in a facility of rhyming. Warton. Ver. 141. Ogilby the great;] " John Ogilby was one who, from a late initiation into literature, made such a progress as might well style him the prodigy of his time! sending into the world so many large Volumes! His translations of Homer and Virgil done to the life, and with such excellent sculptures! And (what added great grace to his works) he printed them all on special good paper, and in a very good letter."—WINSTANLY, Lives of Poets. P. Ver. 142. Newcastle shines complete;] The Duchess of Newcastle was one who busied herself in the ravishing delights of poetry; leaving to posterity to print three ample volumes of her studious endeavours. WINSTANLY, ibid. Langbaine reckons up eight folios of her Grace's, which were usually adorned with gilded covers, and had her arms upon them. IMITATIONS. Ver. 140. In the former Edd. The page admires new beauties not its own.] "Miraturque novas frondes et non sua poma." VIRG. Georg. ii. P. P. A Gothic Library! of Greece and Rome 145 Well purg'd, and worthy Settle, Banks, and Broome. REMARKS. Ver. 146. Worthy Settle, Banks, and Broome.] The Poet has mentioned these three authors in particular, as they are parallel to our Hero in his three capacities: 1. Settle was his Brother Laureate; only indeed upon half-pay, for the City instead of the Court; but equally famous for unintelligible flights in his poems on public occasions, such as Shows, Birth-days, &c. 2. Banks was his Rival in Tragedy, though more successful in one of his Tragedies, the Earl of Essex,* which is yet alive: Anna Boleyn, the Queen of Scots, and Cyrus the Great, are dead and gone. These he dressed in a sort of Beggar's Velvet, or a happy mixture of the thick Fustian, and thin Prosaic; exactly imitated in Perolla and Isidora, Cæsar in Egypt, and the Heroic Daughter. 3. Broome was a serving man of Ben Jonson, who once picked up a Comedy from his betters, or from some cast scenes of his master, not entirely contemptible. VARIATIONS. Ver. 146. In the first Edit. it was, Well purg'd, and worthy W-y, W—s, and Bl— P.t And in the following altered to Withers, Quarles, and Blome, on which was the following note: It was printed in the surreptitious editions, Westley, Watts, who were persons eminent for good life; the one writ the Life of Christ in verse, the other some valuable pieces in the lyric kind on pious subjects. The line is here restored according to its original. "George Withers was a great pretender to poetical zeal against the vices of the times, and abused the greatest personages in power, * The Earl of Essex of Banks. Of this play I think Addison says, that it is impossible to see it or read it without tears, although it does not contain one good line. The Poet was doubtless happy in the choice of a subject; but this could not produce the effect, without a judicious disposition of the events, and an accurate discrimination of the characters.-BANNISTER. Bowles. But, high above, more solid learning shone, The Classics of an age that heard of none; There Caxton slept, with Wynkyn at his side, One clasp'd in wood, and one in strong cow-hide; REMARKS. Ver. 147. More solid learning] Some have objected that books of this sort suit not so well the Library of our Bays, which they imagined consisted of Novels, Plays, and obscene books; but they are to consider that he furnished his shelves only for ornament, and read these books no more than the dry bodies of Divinity, which, no doubt, were purchased by his father, when he designed him for the gown. See note on ver. 200. P.t Ver. 149. Caxton] A Printer in the time of Edw. IV. Rich. III. and Hen. VII. Wynkyn de Worde, his successor, in that of Hen. VII. and VIII. The former, whom Bayle intitles, Vir non omnino stupidus, translated into prose, Virgil's Æneis, as a history; of which he speaks in his Proeme, in a very singular manner, as of a book hardly known. "Happened that to my hande cam a lytyl book in frenche, whiche late was translated out of latyn by some noble clerke of fraunce, whiche booke is named Eneydos, (made in latyne by that noble poete & grete clerk Vyrgyle): whiche booke I sawe over and redde therein, How after the generall destruccyon of the grete Troy, Eneas departed berynge his old fader anchises upon his sholdres, his lytyl son yolas on his hande, his wyfe with moche other people followynge, and how he shipped and departed; wythe all thystorye of his adventures that he had er he came to the atchievement of his conquest of ytalye, as all alonge shall be shewed in this present booke. In whiche booke I had grete playsyr, by cause of the fayr and honest termes & wordes in frenche, whiche I never sawe to fore lyke, ne none so playsaunt ne so well ordred; whiche booke as me semed sholde be moch requysite to noble men to see, as wel for VARIATIONS. power, which brought upon him frequent correction. The Marshalsea and Newgate were no strangers to him." WINSTANLY. Quarles was a dull writer, but an honester man. Blome's books are remarkable for their cuts. There, sav'd by spice, like mummies, many a year, Dry bodies of divinity appear: De Lyra there a dreadful front extends, And here the groaning shelves Philemon bends. That altar crowns: a folio Common-place REMARKS. for the eloquence as the historyes. How wel that many hondred yeryes passed was the sayd booke of Eneydos wyth other workes made and lerned dayly in scolis, especyally in ytalye and other places, which hystorye the sayd Vyrgyle made in metre." Tibbald quotes a rare passage from him in Mist's Journal of March 16, 1728, concerning a straunge and mervyllouse beaste called Sagittarye, which he would have Shakespear to mean rather than Teucer, the archer celebrated by Homer. P. An undeserved piece of ridicule, on an industrious man, whose labours introduced literature into this country. See what is said of him by one who was a real and rational lover of antiquity, in the History of English Poetry, vol. ii. Warton. Ver. 152. Dry bodies of divinity] The impropriety of placing such sort of books in the library of Cibber, is not to be vindicated. Warton.* Ver. 153. De Lyra there] A very voluminous Commentator, whose works, in five vast folios, were printed in 1472. P. He was born in Normandy, of Jewish parents, educated under some learned Rabbis, and for many years devoted to Judaism. He afterwards was converted to Christianity, and became a Cordelier at Verneuil, 1291. He taught with great reputation at Paris, and was made executor to the will of King Philip's Queen. He died in an advanced age, 1340. Ver. 154. Philemon Holland, Doctor in Physic. Warton. "He translated |