It originated in a whimsical fact. Mr. Cambridge had a rage for news; and living in effect at Richmond, though on the other side of the Thames, he had the command of many political reporters. As I was then in professional business at my chambers, I knew less of public news than he did; and every Saturday, in my way from Lincoln's Inn to a villa of my own near him, called upon him for the news from London. This I told him was not unlike what Martial said, L. iii. 7.
Deciano salutem.
Vix Roma egressus, villa novus advena, ruris
Vicini dominum te "quid in urbe?" rogo.
Tu novitatis amans Roma si Tibura malles
Per nos "de villa quae nova" disce "tua."
Nichols's Illust. of the Literary Hist, of the xviii. Cent. v. i. p. 131.
Of his poems, which are neither numerous, nor exhibit much variety of manner, little remains to be said. Archimage, though a sprightly sally, cannot be ranked among the successful imitations of Spenser's style. Als ne and mote, how often soever repeated, do not go far towards a resemblance of the Faery Queene.
In his preface to the Scribleriad, which betrays great solicitude to explain and vindicate the plan of the poem, he declares that his intention is "to shew the vanity and uselessness of many studies, reduce them to a less formidable appearance, and invite our youth to application, by letting them see that a less degree of it than they apprehend, judiciously directed, and a very few books indeed, well recommended, will give them all the real information which they are to expect from human science." The design was a laudable one. In the poem itself we feel the want of some principal event, on the development and issue of which the interest of the whole may turn; as in those patterns of the mock-heroic, the Secchia Rapita, the Lutrin, and the Rape of the Lock; an advantage, which these poems in some measure derive from having been founded in fact; for however trifling the incident by which the imagination of the poet may have been first excited, when once known or believed to be true, it communicates something of its own reality to all the fictions that grow out of it. The hero too is one of the [Greek: amenaena karaena]; or rather is but the shadow of a shade; for he has taken the character of Martinus Scriblerus, as he found it in the memoirs of that unsubstantial personage. The adventures indeed in which the author has engaged him, though they did not require much power of invention, are yet sufficiently ludicrous; and we join, perhaps, more willingly in the laugh, as it is aimed at general folly and not at individual weakness. The wit is not condensed and sparkling as in the Dunciad; the writer's chief resource consisting in an adaptation of passages from writers, ancient and modern, to the purposes of a grave burlesque; and for the application of these, by a contrivance not very artificial, it is sometimes necessary to recur to the notes. The style, if it be not distinguished by any remarkable strength or elegance, is at least free and unaffected.
The imitations of Horace are often happy: that addressed to Lord Bathurst, particularly towards the latter part, is perhaps the best. Of the original jeux d'esprits, the verses occasioned by the Marriage and Game Acts, both passed the same session, have, I think, most merit. The Fable of Jotham, or the Borough Hunters, does not make up by ingenuity for what it wants in reverence. In the Fakeer, a tale professedly borrowed from Voltaire, the story takes a less humorous turn than as it is told in the extracts from Pere Le Comte's memoirs in the preface.
FOOTNOTE [1] In 1752 appeared his Dialogue between a Member and his Servant. The Intruder in 1754; and the Fakeer in 1756.—MS. addition. ED.
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