Lo! on his crown the lotion choice and large, a Not coy Prudelia, when she knows what's what, No more he spoke; but slightly slid along, NOTES VARIORUM. by Addison and Steele, though now reduced to that state of blockheadism, which is so conspicuous in his master. Ficulnus, inutile lignum. BENTLEY junior. A full discharge,] Reader, do not turn up your nose at this passage! it is much more decent than Pope's-Recollect what Swift says, that a nice man has filthy ideas, and let it be considered this discharge may have the same effect upon our bero, as a similar accident had upon a person of equal parts and genius. Renew'd by ordure's sympathetic force, POPE'S Dunciad. Archimedes, &c.] As soon as the philosopher here mentioned discovered the modern save-all, and the new invented-patent black-ball, he threw down his pipe, and ran all along Piccadilly, with his shirt out of his breeches, crying out like a madman, sugnna! sugnna! which in modern English is, the job is done! the job is done! VETUS SCHOL. Another Duck,] Hillario having a mind to celebrate and recommend a genius to the world, compares him to Stephen Duck, and at the close of a late Inspector, cries out, "I have found another Duck, but who shall find a Caroline?" Print my soft essays, ]Our hero for once has spoke truth of himself, for which we could produce the testimonies of several persons of distinction. Bath and Tunbridge-wells have upon many occasions testified their gratitude to him on this head, as his works have been always found of singular use with the waters of those places. To this effect also speaketh that excellent comedian, Mr. Henry Woodward, in an ingenious parody on Busy, curious, thirsty fly, &c. Busy, curions, hungry Hill, VOL. XVI. And now, thou goddess, whose fire-darting eyes Defy all distance and transpierce the skies, The cloud-compelling thund'rer, at whose call NOTES VARIORUM. Freely welcome to abuse, And now thou goddess, &c.] This invocation perfectly in the spirit of ancient poetry. If I may use Milton's words, our author here presumes into the Heavens, an earthly guest, and draws empyreal air. Hence he calls upon the goddess to assist his strain, while he relates the councils of the gods. Virgil, when the plot thickens upon his hands, as Mr. Bayes has it, has offered up his prayer a second time to the Muse, and he seems to labour under the weight of his subject, when he cries out, Majus opus moveo, major rerum mihi nasci tur ordo. This is the case at present with the writer of the Hilliad, and this piece of machinery will evince the absurdity of that Lucretian doctrine, which asserts that the gods are wrapped up in a lazy indolence, and do not trouble themselves about human affairs. The words of Lucretius are, Omnis enim per se divûm natura necesse est Immortali ævo summa cum pace fruatur, Semota a rebus nostris, disjunctaque longè. It is now recommended to the editors of the Anti-Lucretius to make use of this instance to the contrary in the next publication of that work. M. MACULARIUS. Encumber'd space.] Jupiter's speech is full of pomp and solemnity, and is finally closed by a description of our hero, who is here said to take up a place in the creation to no purpose. What a different notion of the end of his existence has Hillario, from what we find delivered by the excellent Longinus in his treatise on the Sublime. E "Good is his cause, and just is his pretence," (Replies the god of theft and eloquence.) A hand mercurial, ready to convey, E'en in the presence of the garish day, The work an English classic late has writ, And by adoption be the sire of witSure to be this is to be something-sure, Next to perform, 'tis glorious to procuré. Small was th' exertion of my god-like soul, When privately Apollo's herd I stole, Compar'd to him, who braves th' all-seeing Sun, And boldly bids th' astonish'd world look on." NOTES VARIORUM. The passage is admirable, translated by the author of the Pleasures of Imagination. "The godlike geniuses of Greece were well-assured that nature had not intended man for a low spirited or ignoble being; but bringing us into life and the midst of this wide universe, as before a multitude assembled at some heroic solemnity, that we might be spectators of all her magnificence, and candidates high in emulation for the prize of glory: she has therefore implanted in our souls an inextinguishable love of every thing great and exalted, of every thing which appears divine beyond our comprehension. Hence by the very propensity of nature we are led to admire, not little springs or shallow rivulets, however clear and delicious, but the Nile, the Rhine, the Danube, and much more than all the ocean."-Instead of acting upon this plan, Hillario is employed in pursuit of insects in Kensington-gardens, and as this is all the gratitude he pays for the being conferred upon him, he is finely termed an insolvent te Glorious to procure.] If our author could be thought capable of punning, I should imagine that the word procure, in this place, is made use of in preference to an appellation given to our hero in the commencement of this poem, viz. a pimp; but the reader will please to recollect that the term pimp is not in that passage used in its modern acceptation. Small was th' exertion, &c.] Not so fast, good poet, cries out in this place, M. Macularius. We do not find that Hillario, upon any occasion whatever, has been charged with stealing Apollo's quiver, and certain it is, that those arrows, which he has shot at all the world, never were taken from thence. But of Mercury it is recorded by Horace, that he really did receive the god of wit in this manner; Te boves olim nisi reddidisses Her approbation Venus next exprest, And on Hillario's part the throne addrest, "If there be any praise the nails to pare, And in soft ringlets wreathe th' elastic hair, In talk and tea to trifle time away, The mien so easy and the dress so gay! Can my Hillario's worth remain unknown, With whom coy Sylvia trusts herself alone; With whom, so pure, so innocent his life, The jealous husband leaves his buxom wife? What tho' he ne'er assume the post of Mars; By me disbanded from all amorous wars ; His fancy (if not person) he employs, And oft ideal countesses enjoys-Tho' hard his heart, yet beauty shall control, And sweeten all the rancour of his soul, NOTES VARIORUM. Venus next express'd,] Venus rises in this assembly quite in the manner attributed to her in the ancient poets; thus we see in Virgil that she is all mildness, and at every word breathes ambrosia ; At non Venus aurea contra, Pauca refert.She is to speak upon this occasion, as well as in the case produced from the Eneid, in favour of a much loved son, though indeed we cannot say that she has been quite so kind to Hillario, as formerly she was to Eneas, it being evident that she has not bestowed upon him that lustre of youthful bloom, and that liquid radiance of the eye, which she is said to have given the pious Trojan. Lumenque juventæ Purpureum, et lætos oculis afflavit honores. On the contrary Venus here talks of his black self, which makes it suspected that she reconciled herself to this hue, out of a compliment to Vulcan, of whom she has frequent favours to solicit and perhaps it may appear hereafter, that she procured a sword for our hero from the celestial blacksmith's forge. One thing is not a little surprising, that while Venus speaks on the side of Hillario, she should omit the real utility he has been of to the cause of love by his experience as an apothecary, of which, he himself hath told us, several have profited; and it should be remembered at the same time, that he actually has employed his person in the service of Venus, and has now an offspring of the amorous congress. It is inoreover notorious, that having, in his elegant language, tasted of the cool stream, he was ready to plunge in again, and therefore publicly set himself up for a wife, and thus, became a fortune-hunter with his pen; and if he has failed in his design, it is because the ladies do not approve the new scheme of propagation without the knowledge of a man, which Hillario pretended to explain so handsomely in the Lucina sine concubitu.-But the truth is, he never wrote a syllable of this book, though he transcribed part of it, and showed it to a bookseller, in order to procure a higher price for his productions. QUINBUS FLESTRIN. Diamond in an Ethiop's ear,] There is neither morality, nor integrity, nor unity, nor universality in this poem.-The author of it is a Smart; I hope to see a Smartead published; I had my pocket picked the other day, as I was going through Paul's Church-yard, and I firmly believe it was this little author, as the man who can pun, will also pick a pocket. JOHN DENNIS, Junior. How rise from filth the violet and rose! So from Hillario some effect may spring, NOTES VARIORUM. Music flows,]"Persons of most genius," says the Inspector, Friday Jan. 26, Number 587, "have in general been the foudest of music; sir Isaac Newton was remarkable for his affection for harmony; he was scarce ever missed at the beginning of any performance, but was seldom seen at the end of it." And indeed of this opinion is M. Macularius; and he further adds, that if sir Isaac was still living, it is probable he would be at Inanity will ever be, &c.] Our author does not per's, but that he would not be at the end of it, the beginning of the Inspector's next song at Cuhere mean to list himself among the disputants may be proved to a mathematical demonstration, concerning pure space, but the doctrine he would though Hilario takes so much pleasure in beatadvance, is, that nothing can come from nothing.ing time to them himself, and though he so freIn so unbelieving an age as this, it is possible this tenet may not be received, but if the reader has a mind to see it handled at large, he may find it in Rumgurtius, vol. 16, pagina 1001. De hac re multum et turpiter hallucinantur scriptores tam exteri quàm domestici. Spatium enim absolutum et relativum debent distingui, priusquam distincta esse possunt ; neque ulla alia regula ad normam rei metaphysicæ quadrabit,quam triplex consideratio de substantiâ inanitatis, sive eatitate nihili, quæ quidem consideratio triplex ad unam reduci potest necessitatem; nempe idem spatium de quo jam satis dictum est. This opinion is further corroborated by the tracts of the society of Bourdeaux. Selon la distinction entre les choses, qui n'ont pas de difference, il nous faut absolument agréer, que les idées, qui ont frappé l'imagination, peuvent bien être effacées, pourvu qu'on ne s'avise pas d'oublier cet espace immense, qui environne toute la nature, et le systême des étoiles. Among our country men, I do not know any body that has handled this subject so well as the acurate Mr. Fielding, in his Essay upon Nothing, which the reader may find in the first volume of his Miscellanies; but with all due deference to his authority, we beg leave to dissent from one assertion in the said essay; the residence of nothing might in his time have been in a critic's head, and we are apt to believe that there is a something like nothing in most critic's heads to this day, and this false appearance misled the excellent metaphysician just quoted; for nothing, in its puris naturalibus, as Gravesend describes it in his experimental philosophy, does subsist no where so properly at present as in the pericranium of our hero. MART. MACULARIUS. fine!-Since the lucubration of Friday Jan. 26th customers. Penumbra of a thing,] Whatever mean opinion Dr. Phoebus may entertain of his terrestrial brotalked of in a different manner, as will appear ther physician and poet, on Earth, Hillario is from the following parody on the lines prefixed by Mr. Dryden, to Milton's Paradise Lost. Three wise great men in the same era born, Momus the last of all, in merry mood, NOTES VARIORUM. riferous quality of Hillario's pen is manifest from the following asseveration, which was published in the New Craftsman, and is a letter from a tradesman in the city. "Sir, A paltry play'r, that in no parts succeeds, NOTES VARIORUM. florid Hillario becomes, in Woodward's phrase, a On grace, free will, and mystʼries high, J-n H-ll believes he knows not why, Peace, idiots, peace, and both agree, Tom kiss thy empty brother; But dreads a friend like t'other. A paltry play'r, &c.] It appears that the first effort of this universal genius, who is lately become remarkable as the Bobadil of literature, was to excel in Pantomine. What was the event? "From a motive of gratitude, and for the sake of those of my fellow-creatures, who may unhappily be afflicted, as I have been for some time past, I beg leave, through the channel of your paper, to communicate the disorder I have laboured under, and the extraordinary cure I have lately met with. I have had for many months successively a slow nervous fever, with a constant flutter on my spirits, attended with pertinacious watchings, twitchings of the nerves, and other grievous symptoms, which reduced me to a mere shadow. At length, by the interposition of di--he was damned.-Mr. Cross, the prompter, vine Providence, a friend who had himself experienced it, advised me to have recourse to the reading of the Inspectors. 1 accordingly took one of them, and the effect it had upon me was such that I fell into a profound sleep, which lasted near six and thirty hours. By this I have at tained a more composed habit of body, and I now doze away almost all my time, but for fear of a lethargy, am ordered to take them in smaller quantities. A paragraph at a time now answers my purpose, and under Heaven I owe my sleeping powers to the above-mentioned Inspectors. I look upon them to be a grand soporificum mirabile, very proper to be had in all families. He makes great allowance to those who buy them to sell again, or to send abroad to the plantations; and the above fact I am ready to attest whenever called upon. Given under my hand this 4th day of January, 1753. "Humphrey Roberts, Weaver, in Crispin- Forges Socrates,] Socrates was the father of the truest philosophy that ever appeared in the world, and though he has not drawn God's image, which was reserved for the light of the gospel, he has at least given the shadow, which together with his exemplary life, induces Erasmus to cry out, Sancte Socrates, ora pro nobis ; of Mr. Cibber we shall say nothing, as he has said abundantly enough of himself; but to illustrate the poet's meaning in this passage, it may be necessary to observe, that when the British worthy was indisposed some time since, the inspector did not hesitate to prefer him to the god-like ancient philosopher. O te, Bollane, cerebri felicem. M. MACULARIUS. Consistencies to fight,] Alluding to his egregious talent at distinctions without a difference. Religious at the last?] On every Saturday the took great pains to fit him for the part of Oroo- See the Gentleman's No mortal read.] Notwithstanding this assertion of Momus, our hero pro eâ quâ est verecundia, compareth himself to Addison and Steele, which occasioned the following epigram, by the right hon. the earl * * * addressed to the right honourable G-e D-n. Art thou not angry, learning's great protector, "See, (brother) how We Mountains lift the How great we show! how awful and how high, us lie." And now, reader, please to observe, that since so ingenious a nobleman hath condescended to take notice of his Iuspectorship, Mr. Smart doth not need any apology for the notice he hath also taken of him. M. MACULARIUS. The trumpet of a base deserted cause, So spake and ceas'd the joy-exciting god, "While in the vale perennial fountains flow, While the gay seasons their due course shall run, NOTES VARIORUM. So long in gross stupidity's extreme, NOTES VARIORUM. Mr. Hogarth entertains of our hero's writings, may be guessed at, by any one who will take the pleasure of looking at a print called Beer-street, in which Hillario's critique upon the Royal Society is put into a basket directed to the trunkmaker in St. Paul's Church-yard. I shall only just observe that the same compliment in this passage to Mr. Hogarth is reciprocal, and reflects a lustre on Mr. Garrick, both of them having similar talents, equally capable of the highest elevation, and of representing the ordinary scenes of life, with the most exquisite humour. Conclusion] And now, candid reader, Martinus Macularius hath attended thee throughout the first book of this most delectable poem. As it is not improbable that those will be inquisitive after the particulars relating to this thy commentator, he here gives thee notice that he is preparing for the press, Memoirs of Martinus Macularius, with his travels by sea and land, together with his flights aerial, and descents subterraneous, &c. And in the mean time he bids thee farewell, until the appearance of the second book of the Hilliad, of which we will say, speciosa miracula promet. And so as Terence says, Vos valetę & plaudite. THE JUDGMENT OF MIDAS, A MASQUE. Auriculas Asini Mida Rex habet, Juv. The trumpet, &c.] In a very pleasant account of the riots in Drury-lane play-house, by Henry Fielding, esq. we find the following humorous description of our hero in the character of a trumpeter. "They all ran away except the trumpeter, who having an empyema in his side, as well as several dreadful bruises on his breech, was taken. When he was brought before Garrick to be examined, he said the ninnies, to whom he had the honour to be trumpeter, had resented the use made of the monsters by Garrick. That it was unfair, that it was cruel, that it was inhuman to employ a man's own subjects against him. That Rich was lawful sovereign over all the monsters in the universe, with much more of the same kind; all which Garrick seemed to think unworthy of an answer; but when the trumpeter challenged him as his acquaintance, the chief with great disdain turned his back, and ordered the fellow to be dismissed with full power of trumpeting again on what side he pleased." Hillario has since trumpeted in the cause of pantomime, the gaudy scenery of which with great judgment he dismisses from the Opera-house, and saith, it is now fixed in its proper place in the theatre. On this occasion, Macularius cannot help exclaiming, "O Shakespear! O Jonson! rest, rest, perturbed Timolus, Melinoe, and Agno, two Woodspirits." APOLLO. PERSONS REPRESENTED. TIMOLUS, God of the Mountain. MELPOMENE. AGNO, two Wood-Nymphs. nymphs. TIMOLUS. Handel, Arne, and Boyce,] The first of these gentlemen may be justly looked upon as the Milton of music, and the talents of the two latter AGNO, to day we wear our acorn crown, may not improperly be delineated by calling The parsley wreath be thine; it is most meet them the Drydens of their profession, as they not We grace the presence of these rival gods only touch the strings of love with exquisite art, With all the honours of our woodland weeds. but also, when they please, reach the truly su-Thine was the task, Melinoe, to prepare blime. The turf-built theatre, the boxen bow'r, Hogarth is the Garrick, &c.] The opinion which And all the sylvan scenery. |