94
The Dunciad.
Book II.
The Goddess then: "Who best can send on high
"The salient spout, far-streaming to the sky;
"His be yon Juno[I 1] of majestic size,
"With cow-like udders, and with ox-like eyes.
"This China Jordan[I 2] let the chief o'ercome 165
"Replenish, not ingloriously, at home."
Osborne[R 1] and Curl accept the glorious strife,
(Tho' this his Son dissuades, and that his Wife.)
Remarks
- ↑ Ver. 167. Osborne] A Bookseller in Grays-Inn, very well qualified by his impudence to act this part; and therefore placed here instead of a less deserving Predecessor. This man published advertisements for a year together, pretending to sell Mr. Pope's Subscription books of Homer's Iliad at half the price: Of which books he had none, but cut to the size of them (which was Quarto) the common books in folio, without Copper-plates, on a worse paper, and never above half the value.
Upon this Advertisement the Gazetteer harangued thus, July 6, 1739. "How melancholy must it be to a Writer to be so unhappy as to see his works hawked for sale in a manner so fatal to his fame! How, with Honour to your self, and Justice to your Subscribers, can this be done? What an Ingratitude to be charged on the Only honest Poet that lived in 1738! and than whom Virtue has not had a shriller Trumpeter for many ages! That you were once generally admired and esteemed can be denied by none; but that you and your works are now despised, is verified by this fact." which being utterly false, did not indeed much humble the Author, but drew this just chastisement on the Bookseller.
Imitations
- ↑ Ver. 163.———yon Juno———
With cow-like udders, and with ox-like eyes.]
In allusion to Homer's Βοῶπις ῶότνια Ήρη. - ↑ Ver. 165. This China Jordan]
Tertius Argolica bar galea contentus abite.Virg. Æn. vi.
In the games of Homer, Il. xxiii. there are set together, as prizes, a Lady and a Kettle, as in this place Mrs. Haywood and a Jordan. But there the preference in value is given to the Kettle, at which Mad. Dacier is justly displeased. Mrs. H. is here treated with distinction, and acknowledged to be the more valuable of the two.
