And in another place he says,

’I should imagine the Dunciad meant you a real compliment, and so it has been thought by many who have ask’d to whom that passage made that oblique panegyric.  As to the notes, I am weary of telling a great truth, which is, that I am not author of them, &c.’

Which paragraph was answer’d by the following in Mr. Hill’s reply.

’As to your oblique panegyric, I am not under so blind an attachment to the goddess I was devoted to in the Dunciad, but that I know it was a commendation; though a dirtier one than I wished for; who am neither fond of some of the company in which I was listed—­the noble reward, for which I was to become a diver;—­the allegorical muddiness in which I was to try my skill;—­nor the institutor of the games you were so kind to allow me a share in, &c.’—­A genteel severe reprimand.

Much about the same time he wrote another poem, called Advice to the Poets; in praise of worthy poetry, and in censure of the misapplication of poetry in general.  The following lines here quoted, are the motto of it, taken from the poem.

  Shame on your jingling, ye soft sons of rhyme,
  Tuneful consumers of your reader’s time! 
  Fancy’s light dwarfs! whose feather-footed strains,
  Dance in wild windings, thro’ a waste of brains: 
  Your’s is the guilt of all, who judging wrong,
  Mistake tun’d nonsense for the poet’s song.

He likewise in this piece, reproves the above named celebrated author, for descending below his genius; and in speaking of the inspiration of the Muse, he says,

  I feel her now.—­Th’invader fires my breast: 
  And my soul swells, to suit the heav’nly guest. 
  Hear her, O Pope!—­She sounds th’inspir’d decree,
  Thou great Arch-Angel of wit’s heav’n! for thee! 
    Let vulgar genii, sour’d by sharp disdain,
  Piqu’d and malignant, words low war maintain,
    While every meaner art exerts her aim,
  O’er rival arts, to list her question’d fame;
  Let half-soul’d poets still on poets fall,
  And teach the willing world to scorn them all. 
  But, let no Muse, pre-eminent as thine,
  Of voice melodious, and of force divine,
  Stung by wits, wasps, all rights of rank forego,
  And turn, and snarl, and bite, at every foe. 
  No—­like thy own Ulysses, make no stay
  Shun monsters—­and pursue thy streamy way.

In 1731 he brought his Tragedy of Athelwold upon the stage in Drury-Lane; which, as he says in his preface to it, was written on the same subject as his Elfrid or the Fair Inconstant, which he there calls, ’An unprun’d wilderness of fancy, with here and there a flower among the leaves; but without any fruit of judgment.’—­

He likewise mentions it as a folly, having began and finished Elfrid in a week; and both the difference of time and judgment are visible in favour of the last of those performances.

That year he met the greatest shock that affliction ever gave him; in the loss of one of the most worthy of wives, to whom he had been married above twenty years.