That scarce a man well-bred in either's deemed,
But who has killed, been drunk, and often rhymed.
The fools are troubled with a flux of brains,
And each on paper squirts his filthy sense;
A leash of sonnets and a dull lampoon
Set up an author, who forthwith is grown
A man of parts, of rhyming, and renown.
Even that vile wretch, who in lewd verse each year
Describes the pageants and the good Lord Mayor,
Whose works must serve the next election day
For making squibs, and under pies to lay,
Yet counts himself of the inspired train,
And dares in thought the sacred name profane.[1]
'But is it nought,' thou'lt say, 'in front to stand,
With laurel crowned by White, or Loggan's hand?[2]
Is it not great and glorious to be known,
Marked out, and gazed at through the wondering town,
By all the rabble passing up and down?'
So Oates and Bedloe have been pointed at,
And every busy coxcomb of the state;
- ↑ Jordan, who, in 1671, succeeded Tatham as 'city poet,' and continued to produce the annual pageants till 1682, when the usual show was dropped, and not resumed till 1684, in consequence of the suspension of the charter of the city by Charles II. This Satire was published in 1683. Notwithstanding the severity with which he is, justly upon the main, treated by Oldham, Jordan had some merit as a writer of pageants, especially in the after-dinner glorification, a part of the entertainment in which he excelled all his predecessors. 'He is the most humorous of city poets,' says Mr. Fairholt, 'and his songs, in some of the pageants, are extremely good.' See Lord Mayors' Pageants, published by the Percy Society.
- ↑ 'And in the front of all his senseless plays,
Makes David Loggan crown his head with bays.'
Dryden.
David Loggan, a native of Dantzig, who settled in England before the Restoration, was an engraver in high repute at this period. Robert White was one of his pupils; and 'no man,' says Walpole, 'perhaps exceeded him in the multiplicity of English heads.' Lists of the portraits they executed, collected by Vertue, will be found in Walpole's Catalogue of Engravers.
