Note 110 — AN ESSAY OF DRAMATIC POESY.

This was certainly Dr Robert Wild; an allusion to whose "Iter Boreale" occurs a little below. It is written in a harsh and barbarous style, filled with "clenches and carwhichets," as the time called them; which having been in fashion in the reign of James I. and his unfortunate son, now revived after the Restoration. One of these poets would perhaps have told us, in rugged verse, that the Muse having been long in mourning, it was no wonder that her gayer dress should appear unfashionable when resumed. The other scribbler, Mr Malone thinks, might be Flecnoe. Or it may have been Samuel Holland, a great scribbler on public occasions.