of the best burlesques ever written. As Baker observes in his Biographia Dramatica, it may fairly be ranked as a sequel to Buckingham’s Rehearsal, since it includes the absurdities of nearly all the writers of tragedies from the period when that piece stops to 1730. Among the authors satirised are Nat. Lee, Thomson (whose famous
“O Sophonisba, Sophonisba, O!”
is parodied by
“O Huncamunca, Huncamunca, O!”),
Banks’s Earl of Essex, a favourite play at Bartholomew Fair, the Busiris of Young, and the Aurengzebe of Dryden, etc. The annotations, which abound in transparent references to Dr. B[entle]y, Mr. T[heobal]d, Mr. D[enni]s, are excellent imitations of contemporary pedantry. One example, elicited in Act 1 by a reference to “giants,” must stand for many:—
“That learned Historian Mr. S——n in the third Number of his Criticism on our Author, takes great Pains to explode this Passage. It is, says he, difficult to guess what Giants are here meant, unless the Giant Despair in the Pilgrim’s Progress, or the giant Greatness in the Royal Villain; for I have heard of no other sort of Giants in the Reign of King Arthur. Petrus Burmanus makes three Tom Thumbs, one whereof he supposes to have been the same Person whom the Greeks called Hercules, and that by these Giants are to be understood the Centaurs slain by that Heroe. Another Tom Thumb he contends to have been no other than the Hermes Trismegistus of the Antients. The third Tom Thumb he places under the Reign of King Arthur; to which third Tom Thumb, says he, the Actions of the other two were attributed. Now, tho’ I know that this Opinion is supported by an Assertion of Justus Lipsius, Thomam ilium Thumbum non alium quam
