for the government. There is an anecdote told of these authors, which we sincerely hope is not true, which is, that in order to render their trade more profitable, they resolved to espouse different interests, one should oppose and the other defend the ministry, and determined the side of the question each was to take by tossing up a half penny, when it fell to the share of Concanen to defend the ministry, which task he performed with as much abilities as ephemeral political writers generally discover. His companion, Stirling, afterwards went into orders, and became a clergyman in Maryland"[1]. Concanen was, for some time, concerned in the "British" and "London Journals," and in a paper called "The Speculatist," which last was published in 1780. These periodical pieces are long since buried in neglect, and, doubtless, would have sunk to utter oblivion, had not Pope, by his satirical writings, given them a kind of disgraceful immortality. In these journals he published many scurrilities against Pope, and in a pamphlet entitled "The Supplement to the Profound," he used him with great virulence and little candour. He not only imputed to him Brown's verses (for which he might, indeed, seem in some degree accountable, having corrected what that gentleman did), but those of the Duke of Buckingham and others. To this rare piece somebody humorously persuaded him to take for his motto, "De profundis clamavi." He afterwards wrote a paper called "The Daily Courant," wherein he evinced much spleen against Lord Bolingbroke, and many of his friends. All those provocations excited Mr. Pope to allot him a place in his "Dunciad." In his second book, line 287, where he represents the dunces diving in the mud of the Thames for the prize, he speaks thus of Concanen:—
"Firm to the bottom, see Concanen creep,
A cold, long-winded native of the deep;
If perseverance gain the diver's prize,
Not everlasting Blackmore this decries."
- ↑ He was the author of two plays, entitled "The Rival Generals," trag. 8vo. 1722; and "The Parricide," trag. 8vo. 1736.
