om there;
Yet wrote and floundered on in mere despair.
Round him much embryo, much abortion lay,
Much future ode, and abdicated play;
Nonsense precipitate, like running lead,
That slipped through cracks and zigzags of the head;
All that on folly frenzy could beget,
Fruits of dull heat, and sooterkins of wit,
Next, o'er his books his eyes began to roll,
In pleasing memory of all he stole,
How here he sipped, how there he plundered snug,
And sucked all o'er, like an industrious bug.
Here lay poor Fletcher's half-eat scenes, and here
The frippery of crucified Moliere;
There hapless Shakespeare, yet of Tibbald sore,
Wished he had blotted for himself before.
The rest on outside merit but presume,
Or serve (like other fools) to fill a room;
Such with their shelves as due proportion hold,
Or their fond parents dressed in red and gold;
Or where the pictures for the page atone,
And Quarles is saved by beauties not his own.
Here swells the shelf with Ogilby the great;
There, stamped with arms, Newcastle shines complete:
Here all his suffering brotherhood retire,
And 'scape the martyrdom of jakes and fire:
A Gothic library! of Greece and Rome
Well purged, and worthy Settle, Banks, and Broome.

[Footnote 183: Smithfield is the place where Bartholomew Fair was kept,
whose shows and dramatical entertainments were, by the hero of this
poem and others of equal genius, brought to the theatres of Covent
Garden, Lincolns-Inn-Fields, and the Haymarket, to be the reigning
pleasures of the court and town. This happened in the reigns of King
George I. and II.]

[Footnote 184: _Ironice_, alluding to Gulliver's representations of
both.--The next line relates to the papers of the Drapier against the
currency of Wood's copper coin in Ireland, which, upon the great
discontent of the people, his majesty was graciously pleased to
recall.]

[Footnote 185: Mr. Caius Gabriel Cibber, father of the poet laureate.
The two statues of the lunatics over the gates of Bedlam Hospital were
done by him, and (as the son justly says of them) are no ill monuments
of his fame as an artist.]

[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 customar