Dodsley, Robert (1703-1764), publisher and author, declared himself “Untutored by the love of Greece or Rome” in his blank verse poem Agriculture, 1753, canto ii., line 319. His Toy-Shop, a Dramatick Satire, was acted and printed in 1735. The quotation is not verbally accurate; see the New British Theatre, 1787, xvii., p. 48.
A word of exceeding good command. 2 Henry IV., iii. 2. 84.
[165]. learned Rubbish. Cf. Pope, Essay on Criticism, line 613.
Paths of Nature. Cf. Prior, Charity, line 25.
one of the first criticks of the age. Dr. Johnson: see Introduction, p. [xxvii].
a brother of the craft. “Mr. Seward, in his Preface to Beaumont and Fletcher, 10 vols. 8vo., 1750” (Farmer). Cf. Theobald, Introduction to Shakespeare Restored: “Shakespeare's works have always appear'd to me like what he makes his Hamlet compare the world to, an unweeded Garden grown to Seed.”
contrary to the statute. See Horace, Ars Poetica, 136, etc.
[166]. Small Latin and less Greek. “This passage of Ben. Jonson, so often quoted, is given us in the admirable preface to the late edition, with a various reading, ‘Small Latin and no Greek’; which hath been held up to the publick as a modern sophistication: yet whether an error or not, it was adopted above a century ago by W. Towers, in a panegyrick on Cartwright. His eulogy, with more than fifty others, on this now forgotten poet, was prefixed to the edit. 1651” (Farmer). Johnson corrected the error in subsequent editions. See note, p. [135].
“darling project,” etc. Kenrick, Review of Dr. Johnson's New Edition of Shakespeare, 1765, p. 106: “Your darling project ... of invidiously representing him as a varlet, one of the illiterate vulgar.”
[166]. braying faction. See Don Quixote, ii. 25 and 27. those who accuse him, etc. Dryden, Essay of Dramatic Poesy.