108
The Dunciad.
Book II.
All look, all sigh, and call on Smedley lost[I 1] ;
Smedley in vain resounds thro' all the coast.
Then* essay'd[R 1]; scarce vanish'd out of sight,295
He buoys up instant, and returns to light:
He bears no token of the sabler streams,
And mounts far off among the Swans of Thames.
True to the bottom, see Concanen[R 2] creep,
A cold, long-winded, native of the deep: 300
If perseverance gain the Diver's prize,
Not everlasting Blackmore[I 2] this denies:
Remarks
- ↑ Ver. 295. Then* essay'd;]. A Gentleman of genius and spirit, who was secretly dipt in some papers of this kind, on whom our Poet bestows a panegyric instead of a satyr, as deserving to be better employed than in Party-quarrels and personal invectives.
- ↑ Ver. 299. Concanen] Matthew Concanen, an Irishman, bred to the law. Smedley (one of his brethren in enmity to Swift) in his Metamorphosis of Scriblerus, p. 7. accuses him of "having boasted of what he had not written, but others had revised and done for him." He was author of several dull and dead scurrilities in the British and London Journals, and in a paper called the Speculatist. In a pamphlet, called a Supplement to the Profund, he dealt very unfairly with our Poet, not only frequently imputing to him Mr. Broome'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 humourously caused him to take for his motto, De profundis clamavi. He was since a hired scribler in the Daily Courant, where he poured forth much Billingsgate against the lord Bolingbroke, and others; after which this man was surprisingly promoted to administer Justice and Law in Jamaica.
Imitations
