Note 202 — AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM.
Reading edition
Between this and verse 448:
The rhyming clowns that gladded Shakespear's age, No more with crambo entertain the stage. Who now in anagrams their patron praise, Or sing their mistress in acrostic lays? Ev'n pulpits pleased with merry puns of yore; Now all are banished to th' Hibernian shore! [And thither soon soft op'ra shall repair, Conveyed by Sw——y to his native air. There, languishing awhile, prolong its breath, Till like a swan it sings itself to death.] Thus leaving what was natural and fit, The current folly proved their ready wit: And authors thought their reputation safe, Which lived as long as fools were pleased to laugh.—Pope.
The lines between brackets are from the manuscript, and were not printed by Pope. The whole passage was probably written after the poem was first published, since the topics seem to have been suggested by Addison's papers upon false wit in the Spectator of May, 1711, where the anagrams, acrostics, and punning sermons of the reign of James I. are all enumerated. Swiney was the director of the Italian opera, which, at the commencement of 1712, failed to meet with adequate support, and he withdrew, not to Ireland, but to the continent. "He remained there," says Cibber, "twenty years, an exile from his friends and country."