Lampoon'd your monarch, or debauch'd your mother," &c.
is printed as by Savage in Johnson's Life of Savage. In the notes to The Dunciad, i. 106., it is said to be by Pope. Utri credemus?
S. Z. Z. S.
[From the fact, that this epigram was not only attributed to Pope, in the notes to the second edition of The Dunciad, published in 1729, but also in those of 1743, the joint edition of Pope and Warburton, and both published before the death of Pope, it seems extremely probable that he was the author of it; more especially as he had been exasperated by a twopenny tract, of which Dennis was suspected to be the writer, called A True Character of Mr. Pope and his Writings; printed for S. Popping, 1716. D'Israeli however, in his Calamities of Authors, art. "The Influence of a bad Temper in Criticism," quoting it from Dr. Johnson, conjectures it was written on the following occasion: "Thomson and Pope charitably supported the veteran Zoilus at a benefit play, and Savage, who had nothing but a verse to give, returned them very poetical thanks in the name of Dennis. He was then blind and old, but his critical ferocity had no old age; his surliness overcame every grateful sense, and he swore as usual, 'They could be no one's but that fool Savage's,' an evidence of his sagacity and brutality. This perhaps prompted 'the fool' to take this fair revenge and just chastisement." After all, Dr. Johnson, who was at that time narrating Savage's intimate acquaintance with Pope, may have attributed to the former what seems to have been the production of the latter.]
Football played on Shrove Tuesday.—The people of this and the neighbouring towns invariably play at football on Shrove Tuesday. What is the origin of the custom? and does it extend to other counties?
J. P. S.
Dorking.
["Shrove-tide," says Warton, "was formerly a season of extraordinary sport and feasting. There was
anciently a feast immediately preceding Lent, which lasted many days, called Carniscapium. In some cities of France an officer was annually chosen, called Le Prince d'Amoreux, who presided over the sports of the youth for six days before Ash Wednesday. Some traces of these festivities still remain in our Universities." In these degenerate days more is known, we suspect, of pancakes and fritters, than of a football match and a cock-fight:—the latter, we are happy to say, is now almost forgotten among us. As to the pancake custom, no doubt that is most religiously observed by the readers of "N. & Q.," in obedience to the rubric of the Oxford Sausage:
"Let glad Shrove Tuesday bring the pancake thin,