Dr. Wood maintains of Dumpling that “the general style bears a close resemblance to that of the prefaces to Carey’s plays and collections of poetry” (p. 443). I should like strongly to support his statement. Dr. Oldfield says that an inviolable regard for decency “is nowhere contradicted in Carey’s works . . . . Yet the pamphlets, besides being palpably Whiggish, are larded passim with vulgarity of the ‘Close-Stool’ and ‘Clyster’ variety” (p. 376). The reader need look no further than Namby Pamby to see that Carey satisfies Northrop Frye’s very proper observation: “Genius seems to have led practically every great satirist to become what the world calls obscene.”
As for the pamphlets being “palpably Whiggish,” the reader will not look far into the allegory before he realizes that one of the central attacks is against those well-known Whigs Walpole and Marlborough and their appetite for Dumpling (i.e.,
bribery and perquisites). Furthermore, the attack on Swift, which is central to the Key, is based on the very real fear that the Dean’s two recent private interviews with Walpole might presage a return to that leader’s Whig party in exchange for Dumpling. The last pages of the Key (pp. 28-30) deal with the possibility of an accommodation between Swift and Walpole which is, I feel sure, the main target of attack. In his poems (Poems, ed. Wood, pp. 83, 86, 88, and passim) Carey claims to stand between Whig and Tory, just as he does in the pamphlets (Dumpling, p. 1, and Key, p. 15 and passim).
Dr. Wood perceptively points to two parallels between Dumpling and the satiric Of Stage Tyrants (1735) which Carey openly addressed to the Earl of Chesterfield. Dumpling’s “O Braund, my Patron! my Pleasure! my Pride” (p. [ii]) becomes: “O Chesterfield, my patron and my pride” (Poems, ed. Wood, p. 104). The passage which follows, dealing with “all the Monkey-Tricks of Rival Harlequins” (Dumpling, p. [ii]), becomes:
Prefer pure nature and the simple scene
To all the monkey tricks of Harlequin
(Poems, ed. Wood, p. 106).
Even more striking is a passage in the Key: “Mr. B[ooth] had spoken to Mr. W[ilks] to speak to Mr. C[ibber] . . .” (p. 111). This is similar to the following lines in Stage Tyrants:
Booth ever shew’d me friendship and respect,
And Wilks would rather forward than reject.