Here, too, we find that the facetious Dr. King threw away all his sterling wit for five miserable pounds, though “The Art of Cookery,” and that of “Love,” obtained a more honourable price. But a mere school-book probably inspired our lively genius with more real facetiousness than any of those works which communicate so much to others.
| £ | s. | d. | |
| 18 Feb. 1707-8. | |||
| Paid for Art of Cookery | 32 | 5 | 0 |
| 16 Feb. 1708-9. | |||
| Paid for the First Part of Transactions | 5 | 0 | 0 |
| Paid for his Art of Love | 32 | 5 | 0 |
| 23 June, 1709. | |||
| Paid for the Second Part of the Transactions[246] | 5 | 0 | 0 |
| 4 March, 1709-10. | |||
| Paid for the History of Cajamai | 5 | 0 | 0 |
| 10 Nov. 1710. | |||
| Paid for King’s Gods | 50 | 0 | 0 |
| 1 July, 1712. | |||
| Useful Miscellany, Part I | 1 | 1 | 6 |
| Paid for the Useful Miscellany | 3 | 0 | 0 |
Lintot utters a groan over “The Duke of Buckingham’s Works” (Sheffield), for “having been jockeyed of them by Alderman Barber and Tonson.” Who can ensure literary celebrity? No bookseller would now regret being jockeyed out of his Grace’s works!
The history of plays appears here somewhat curious:—tragedies, then the fashionable dramas, obtained a considerable 333 price; for though Dennis’s luckier one reached only to 21l., Dr. Young’s Busiris acquired 84l. Smith’s Phædra and Hippolytus, 50l.; Rowe’s Jane Shore, 50l. 15s.; and Jane Gray, 75l. 5s. Cibber’s Nonjuror obtained 105l. for the copyright.
Is it not a little mortifying to observe, that among all these customers of genius whose names enrich the ledger of the bookseller, Jacob, that “blunderbuss of law,” while his law-books occupy in space as much as Mr. Pope’s works, the amount of his account stands next in value, far beyond many a name which has immortalised itself!
POPE’S EARLIEST SATIRE.
We find by the first edition of Lintot’s “Miscellaneous Poems,” that the anonymous lines “To the Author of a Poem called Successio,” was a literary satire by Pope, written when he had scarcely attained his fourteenth year. This satire, the first probably he wrote for the press, and in which he has succeeded so well, that it might have induced him to pursue the bent of his genius, merits preservation. The juvenile composition bears the marks of his future excellences: it has the tune of his verse, and the images of his wit. Thirty years afterwards, when occupied by the Dunciad, he transplanted and pruned again some of the original images.
The hero of this satire is Elkanah Settle. The subject is one of those Whig poems, designed to celebrate the happiness of an uninterrupted “Succession” in the Crown, at the time the Act of Settlement passed, which transferred it to the Hanoverian line. The rhymer and his theme were equally contemptible to the juvenile Jacobite poet.