Note 24 — CALAMITIES OF AUTHORS:

This circumstance was so notorious at the time, that it occasioned a poetical satire in a dialogue between Motteux and his patron Henningham—preserved in that vast flower-bed or dunghill, for it is both, of “Poems on Affairs of State,” vol. ii. 251. The patron, in his zeal to omit no possible distinction that could attach to him, had given one circumstance which no one but himself could have known, and which he thus regrets:

“PATRON. I must confess I was to blame That one particular to name; The rest could never have been known, I made the style so like thy own. POET. I beg your pardon, Sir, for that! PATRON. Why d——e what would you be at? I writ below myself, you sot! Avoiding figures, tropes, what not; For fear I should my fancy raise Above the level of thy plays!”