106
The Dunciad.
Book II.
Remarks
- ↑ Ver. 280. the Weekly Journals] Papers of news and scandal intermixed, on different sides and parties, and frequently shifting from one side to the other, called the London Journal, British Journal, Daily Journal, &c. the concealed writers of which for some time were Oldmixon, Roome, Arnall, Concanen, and others; persons never seen by our author.
- ↑ Ver. 282. "A peck of coals a-piece] Our indulgent Poet, whenever he has spoken of any dirty or low work, constantly puts us in mind of the Poverty of the offenders, as the only extenuation of such practices. Let any one but remark, when a Thief, a Pick-pocket, an Highwayman, or a Knight of the post are spoken of, how much our hate to those characters is lessened, if they add a needy Thief, a poor Pick-pocket, an hungry Highwayman, a starving Knight of the post, &c.
- ↑ Ver. 283. In naked majesty Oldmixon stands,) Mr. John Oldmixon, next to Mr. Dennis, the most ancient Critic of our Nation; an unjust censurer of Mr. Addison in his prose Essay on Criticism, whom also in his imitation of Bouhours (called the Arts of Logic and Rhetoric) he misrepresents in plain matter of fact; for in p. 45. he cites the Spectator as abusing Dr. Swift by name, where there is not the least hint of it; and in p. 304 is so injurious as to suggest, that Mr. Addison himself writ that Tatler, N. 43 which says of his own Simile, that "'Tis as great as ever entered into the mind of man. In Poetry he was not so happy as laborious, and therefore charačterised by the Tatler, N. 62. by the name of Omicron the Unborn Poet." Curl, Key, p. 13. "He writ Dramatic works, and a volume of Poetry, consisting of heroic Epistles, &c. some whereof are very well done," faith that great Judge Mr. Jacob, in his Lives of Poets, vol. ii. p. 303.
In his Essay on Criticism, and the Arts of Logic and Rhetoric, he frequently reflects on our Author. But the top of his character was a Perverter of History, in that scandalous one of the Stuarts, in folio, and his Critical History of England, two volumes, octavo. Being employed by bishop Kennet, in publishing the Historians in his Collection, he falsified Daniel's Chronicle in numberless places. Yet this very man, in the preface to the first of these books, advanced a particular Fact to charge three eminent persons of falsifying the lord Clarendon's History; which fact has been disproved by Dr. Atterbury, late bishop of Rochester, then the only survivor of them; and the particular part
