joyed Dumpling, and their tastes
are ostensibly approved while at the same time being heavily undercut
with satiric indirection. Naturally enough, Walpole (although a Dumpling
Eater) is treated with considerable circumspection. Carey has warned us
that he is a bad chronologist (_Key_, p. 21), and the Sir John Pudding
(be he Walpole or Marlborough [d. 1722]), who at the end of _Dumpling_
is referred to as "the Hero of this DUMPLEID," is for good reason spoken
of in the past tense.

The fable of Dumpling, in the true spirit of _lanx satura_, allows Carey
to attack by indirection a complete spectrum of traditional
eighteenth-century targets. Like the musician and the satirist that he
is, he builds up to a magnificent crescendo (pp. 19-24 of his
"Dumpleid") which results in one of the finest displays of sustained
virtuosity in early eighteenth-century pamphlet writing.

The notes which follow the texts point to a number of the contemporary
allusions, but the reader will surely wish to recognize some of the
references and the more delicate ironies for himself. As the author puts
it on page 17 of _Dumpling_:

O wou'd to Heav'n this little Attempt of Mine may stir up some
_Pudding-headed Antiquary_ to dig his Way through all the mouldy Records
of Antiquity, and bring to Light the Noble Actions of Sir _John_!

What scholar could refuse?

University of Victoria

NOTES TO THE INTRODUCTION

1. "An Eighteenth-Century Original for Lamb," _RES_, V (1929), 447.

2. An exception is Henry J. Dane who denies the relationship in "The
Life and Works of Henry Carey," unpublished doctoral dissertation
(University of Pennsylvania, 1967), pp. xxix-xxx, and _passim_.

3. _Poems_, ed. F. T. Wood (London, 1930).

4. "Henry Carey (1687-1743) and Some Troublesome Attributions," _BNYPL_,
LXII (1968), 372-377.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

These facsimiles of _A Learned Dissertation on Dumpling_ (1726) and
_Pudding and Dumpling Burnt to Pot_ (1727) are reproduced from copies
in the Bodleian Library and the British Museum.

* * * * *
* * * *
* * * * *

A
Learned Dissertation
on
DUMPLING;

Its Dignity, Antiquity, and Excellence.

With a Word upon
PUDDING.

And

Many other Useful Disc