A passage I have always suspected. Who sees not the antithesis of _auratis_ and _argenteus_ to be unworthy the Virgilian majesty? And what absurdity to say a goose sings? _canebat_. Virgil gives a contrary character of the voice of this silly bird, in Ecl. ix. ... 'argutos interstrepere anser olores.' Read it, therefore, _adesse strepebat_. And why _auratis porticibus_? does not the very verse preceding this inform us, 'Romuleoque recens horrebat regia culmo.' Is this thatch in one line, and gold in another, consistent? I scruple not (_repugnantibas omnibus manuscriptis_) to correct it _auritis_. Horace uses the same epithet in the same sense.--P. [274] 'Bear and Fiddle:' see 'Butler's Hudibras.' [275] 'Gratis-given Bland--Sent with a pass.' It was a practice so to give the Daily Gazetteer and ministerial pamphlets (in which this Bland, Provost of Eton, was a writer), and to send them post-free to all the towns in the kingdom.--P. [276] 'With Ward, to ape-and-monkey climes.' Edward Ward, a very voluminous poet in Hudibrastic verse, but best known by the London Spy, in prose. He has of late years kept a public-house in the City (but in a genteel way), and with his wit, humour, and good liquor (ale) afforded his guests a pleasurable entertainment, especially those of the High-Church party. Jacob, Lives of Poets, vol. ii., p. 225. Great number of his works were yearly sold into the plantations. Ward, in a book called Apollo's Maggot, declared this account to be a great falsity, protesting that his public-house was not in the City, but in Moorfields.--P. [277] 'Tate, Shadwell:' two of his predecessors in the Laurel.--P. [278] 'The dear Nonjuror, Moliere's old stubble:' a comedy threshed out of Moliere's Tartuffe, and so much the translator's favourite, that he assures us all our author's dislike to it could only arise from disaffection to the government: 'Qui meprise Cotin, n'estime point son roi, Et n'a, selon Cotin, ni Dieu, ni foi, ni loi.'--Boil. He assures us, that 'when he had the honour to kiss his Majesty's hand upon presenting his dedication of it, he was graciously pleased, out of his royal bounty, to order him two hundred pounds for it. And this he doubts not grieved Mr P.'--P. [279] 'Thule:' An unfinished poem of that name, of which one sheet was printed many years ago, by Amb. Philips, a northern author. It is a usual method of putting out a fire to cast wet sheets upon it. Some critics have been of opinion that this sheet was of the nature of the asbestos, which cannot be consumed by fire: but I rather think it an allegorical allusion to the coldness and heaviness of the writing.--P.