Pope says:—
"The hero William, and the martyr Charles,
One knighted Blackmore, and one pension'd Quarles."
The bard of Twickenham had of course a few ill words for Blackmore. In the Dunciad he says:—
"Ye critics, in whose heads, as equal scales,
I weigh what author's heaviness prevails;
Which most conduce to soothe the soul in slumbers,
My H——ley's periods, or my Blackmore's numbers."
Elsewhere, in the same poem, the little wasp of poetry continues his hissing song:—
"But far o'er all, sonorous Blackmore's strain,
Walls, steeples, skies, bray back to him again.
In Tot'nham fields, the brethren, with amaze,
Prick all their ears up, and forget to graze;
'Long Chancery Lane retentive rolls the sound,
And courts to courts return it round and round;
Thames wafts it thence to Rufus' roaring hall,
And Hungerford re-echoes bawl for bawl;
All hail him victor in both gifts and song,
Who sings so loudly, and who sings so long."
Such being the tone of the generals, the reader can imagine that of the petty scribblers, the professional libellers, the coffee-house rakes, and literary amateurs of the Temple, who formed the rabble of the vast army against which the doctor had pitted himself, in defence of public decency and domestic morality. Under the title of "Commendatory Verses, on the author of the two Arthurs, and the Satyr against Wit, by some of his particular friends," were collected, in the year 1700, upwards of forty sets of ribald verses, taunting Sir Richard with his early poverty, with his having been a school-master, with the unspeakable baseness of—living in the city. The writers of these wretched dirty lampoons, that no kitchen-maid could in our day read without blushing, little thought what they were doing. Their obscene stupidity has secured for them the lasting ignominy to which they imagined they were consigning their antagonist. What a crew they are!—with chivalric Steel and kindly Garth, forgetting their better natures, and joining in the miserable riot! To "The City Quack"; "The Cheapside Knight"; "The Illustrious Quack, Pedant, Bard"; "The Merry Poetaster of Sadler's Hall"—such are the titles by which they address the doctor, who had presumed to say that authors and men of wit ought to find a worthier exercise for their intellects than the manufacture of impure jests.
Colonel Codrington makes his shot thus—
"By Nature meant, by Want a Pedant made,
Blackmore at first profess'd the whipping trade;
. . . . .
In vain his drugs as well as Birch he try'd—
His boys grew blockheads, and his patients dy'd.
Next he turn'd Bard, and, mounted on a cart,
Whose hideous rumbling made Apollo start,
Burlesqued the Bravest, Wisest son of Mars,
In ballad rhymes, and all the pomp of Farce.
. . . . .
The same dull sarcasms about killing patients and whipping boys into blockheads are repeated over and over again. As if to show, with the greatest possible force, the pitch to which the evil of the times had risen, the coarsest and most disgusting of all these lampoon-writers was a lady of rank—the Countess of Sandwich. By the side of her Ladyship, Afra Behn and Mistress Manley become timid blushing maidens. A better defence of Sir Richard than the Countess's attack on him it would be impossible to imagine.