[Footnote 186:  Two booksellers.  The former was fined by the Court of King’s Bench for publishing obscene books; the latter usually adorned his shop with titles in red letters.]

[Footnote 187:  It was an ancient English custom for the malefactors to sing a psalm at their execution at Tyburn; and no less customary to print elegies on their deaths, at the same time or before.]

[Footnote 188:  Made by the poet laureate for the time being, to be sung at court on every New Year’s Day.]

[Footnote 189:  Jacob Tonson the bookseller.]

[Footnote 190:  Alluding to the transgressions of the unities in the plays of such poets.]

[Footnote 191:  Sir George Thorold, Lord Mayor of London in the year 1720.  The procession of a Lord Mayor was made partly by land, and partly by water.—­Cimon, the famous Athenian general, obtained a victory by sea, and another by land, on the same day, over the Persians and barbarians.]

[Footnote 192:  Settle was poet to the city of London.  His office was to compose yearly panegyrics upon the Lord Mayors, and verses to be spoken in the pageants:  but that part of the shows being at length abolished, the employment of the city poet ceased; so that upon Settle’s death there was no successor appointed to that place.]

[Footnote 193:  John Heywood, whose “Interludes” were printed in the time of Henry VIII.]

[Footnote 194:  The first edition had it,—­

     “She saw in Norton all his father shine”: 

Daniel Defoe was a genius, but Norton Defoe was a wretched writer, and never attempted poetry.  Much more justly is Daniel himself made successor to W. Pryn, both of whom wrote verses as well as politics.  And both these authors had a semblance in their fates as well as writings, having been alike sentenced to the pillory.]

[Footnote 195:  Laurence Eusden, poet laureate before Gibber.  We have the names of only a few of his works, which were very numerous.

Nahum Tate was poet laureate, a poor writer, of no invention; but who sometimes translated tolerably when assisted by Dryden.  In the second part of Absalom and Achitophel there are about two hundred lines in all by Dryden which contrast strongly with the insipidity of the rest.]

[Footnote 196:  John Dennis was the son of a saddler in London, born in 1657.  He paid court to Dryden; and having obtained some correspondence with Wycherley and Congreve he immediately made public their letters.]

XXXVI.  SANDYS’ GHOST; OR, A PROPER NEW BALLAD OF THE NEW OVID’S METAMORPHOSES, AS IT WAS INTENDED TO BE TRANSLATED BY PERSONS OF QUALITY.

    This satire owed its origin to the fact that Sir Samuel Garth was
    about to publish a new translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. 
    George Sandys—­the old translator—­died in 1643.

  Ye Lords and Commons, men of wit,
    And pleasure about town;
  Read this ere you translate one bit
    Of books of high renown.