The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) eBook

Theodore Watts-Dunton
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 352 pages of information about The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753).

The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) eBook

Theodore Watts-Dunton
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 352 pages of information about The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753).

2.  Phaeton, or the Fatal Divorce; a Tragedy, acted at the Theatre-Royal 1698, dedicated to Charles Montague, Esq; This play is written in imitation of the ancients, with some reflexions on a book called a Short View of the Immorality of the English Stage, written by Mr. Collier, a Non-juring Clergyman, who combated in the cause of virtue, with success, against Dryden, Congreve, Dennis, and our author.  The plot of this play, and a great many of the beauties, Mr. Gildon owns in his preface, he has taken from the Medea of Euripides.

3.  Love’s.  Victim, or the Queen of Wales; a Tragedy, acted at the Theatre in Lincoln’s-Inn-Fields.

He introduced the Play called the Younger Brother, or the Amorous Jilt; written by Mrs. Behn, but not brought upon the stage ’till after her decease.  He made very little alteration in it.  Our author’s plays have not his name to them; and his fault lies generally in the stile, which is too near an imitation of Lee’s.

He wrote a piece called the New Rehearsal, or Bays the Younger; containing an Examen of the Ambitious Step-mother, Tamerlane, The Biter, Fair Penitent, The Royal Convert, Ulysses, and Jane Shore, all written by Mr. Rowe; also a Word or Two on Mr. Pope’s Rape of the Lock, to which is prefixed a Preface concerning Criticism in general, by the Earl of Shaftsbury, Author of the Characteristics, 8vo. 1714.  Scene the Rose Tavern.  The freedom he used with Mr. Pope in remarking upon the Rape of the Lock, it seems was sufficient to raise that gentleman’s resentment, who was never celebrated for forgiving.  Many years after, Mr. Pope took his revenge, by stigmatizing him as a dunce, in his usual keen spirit of satire:  There had arisen some quarrel between Gildon and Dennis, upon which, Mr. Pope in his Dunciad, B. iii. has the following lines,

  Ah Dennis!  Gildon ah! what ill-starr’d rage
  Divides a friendship long confirm’d by age? 
  Blockheads with reason wicked wits abhor,
  But fool with fool is barb’rous civil war. 
  Embrace; embrace my sons! be foes no more,
  Nor glad vile poets with true critics gore.

This author’s other works are chiefly these,

The Post-Boy Robb’d of his Mail, or the Packet Broke Open; consisting of
Five Hundred Letters to several Persons of Quality, &c. 1692.

He published the Miscellaneous Works of Charles Blount, Esq; to which he prefixed the Life of the Author, and an Account, and Vindication of his Death, in 12mo. 1695.  In this volume are several of the publisher’s own letters.

Likewise Letters, and Essays, on several Subjects, philosophical, historical, critical, amorous, &c. in Prose and Verse, to John Dryden, Esq; George Granville, Esq; Walter Moyle, Esq; Mr. Congreve, Mr. Dennis, and other ingenious gentlemen of the age.

Miscellaneous Poems, on several Occasions, and Translations from Horace, Persius, Petronius Arbiter, &c. with an Essay upon Satire, by the famous M. Dacier, 8vo. 1692.

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The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.