ADVERTISEMENT. THE pieces which have been published under the name of Martinus Scriblerus, are fragments of an extensive plan, contrived, but only partly executed, by Swift, Arbuthnot, Pope, Lord Oxford, and others, members of a literary society, which they called the Scriblerus Club. The general purpose was, to make the life and works of a pedantic and Quixotic scholar, the vehicle of satire against those extravagant pursuits, on which learning, talent, and perseverance are often wasted, with as little advantage to sound literature, as to the student himself. The first book of the Memoirs (to which Sterne has been incalculably indebted), is employed in ridiculing the absurd passion for antiquities in Cornelius Scriblerus, and the metaphysical studies of his son. It was written chiefly by Arbuthnot, whose extensive research into antiquities, upon more liberal and enlarged motives, had possessed him with the various knowledge, necessary to equip the bigotted antiquary. The task of satirising court intrigues, and the arts of statesmen, would probably have devolved upon the Dean, and Pope might have ridiculed in prose, the pursuits of those who See Nature in some narrow partial shape, but which were reserved for the inimitable numbers of the fourth Book of the Dunciad. The death of Queen Anne, however, which disconcerted more important schemes, scattered this club of philosophical satirists. The Memoirs of Scriblerus remained half-finished among Arbuthnot's papers, who could not suppress a characteristic wish, that they had been found in the custody of the Earl of Oxford, to afford speculation to his prosecutors.* * London, 7th Sept. 1714. Arbuthnot to Pope." This blow has so roused Scribierus, that he has recovered his senses, and thinks and talks like other men. His lucubrations he neglected among old newspapers, cases, peti. tions, and abundance of unanswerable letters. I wish to God they had been among the papers of a noble Lord sealed up, Then might Scriblerus have passed for the Pretender, and it would have been an excellent and most laborious work for the Flying Post, or some such author, to have allegorized all his adventures into a plot, and found out mysterious something, like the Key to the Lock." The first Book of the Memoirs remained long in this unfinished state, and at length appeared as a fragment, in 1740. His character, however, had been previously introduced to the public, in the Miscellanies which contained Martinus Scriblerus ПEPI ΒΑΘΟΥΣ. The Memoirs of Scriblerus have, in the division made of the joint literary labours of this gifted brotherhood, been assigned to Pope's works, although they were chiefly the work of Arbuthnot, while the Art of Sinking in Poetry, as printed in the Miscellanies, has been made common property by the Editors of Pope and Swift, though belonging properly to the former alone. This arrangement I have followed, though I am by no means satisfied of its propricty. The following speculations of different commentators, concern. ing the plan adopted by the Scriblerus Club, are interesting. "Mr Pope, Dr Arbuthnot, and Dr Swift, in conjunction, formed the project of a satire on the abuses of human learning; and, to make it the better received, proposed to execute it in the manner of Cervantes (the original author of this species of satire) under a continued narrative of feigned adventures. They had observed that those abuses still kept their ground against all that the ablest and gravest authors could say to discredit them; they concluded, therefore, the force of ridicule was wanting to quicken their disgrace; and ridicule was here in its place, when the abuses had been already detected by sober reasoning, and truth in no danger to suffer by the premature use of so powerful an instrument. But the separation of our author and his friends, which soon after happened, with the death of one, and the infirmities of the other, put a final period to their design, when they had only drawn out an imperfect essay towards it, under the title of The First Book of the Memoirs of Scriblerus. Moral satire never lost more than in the defeat of this project; in the execution of which, each of this illustrious triumvirate would have found exercise for his own peculiar talent; besides constant employment for those they all had in common. Dr Arbuthnot was skilled in every thing which related to science; Mr Pope was a master in the fine arts; and Dr Swift excelled in the knowledge of the world. Wit they all had in equal mea. sure, and in a measure so large, that no age perhaps ever produ. ced three men, to whom Nature had more bountifully bestowed it, or in whom Art had brought it to higher perfection."-Bp. WARBURTON. "The Memoirs of Scriblerus extend only to the first book of a work projected in concert by Pope, Swift, and Arbuthnot, In the early editions this was polite letters. who used to meet in the time of Queen Anne, and denominated themselves the Scriblerus Club. Their purpose was to censure the abuses of learning by a fictitious life of an infatuated scholar. They were dispersed; the design was never completed; and War. burton laments its miscarriage, as an event very disastrous to polite letters. If the whole may be estimated by this specimen, which seems to be the production of Arbuthnot, with a few touches perhaps by Pope, the want of more will not be much lamented; for the follies which the writer ridicules are so little practised, that they are not known; nor can the satire be understood but by the learned; he raises phantoms of absurdity, and then drives them away; he cures diseases that were never felt. For this reason this joint production of three great writers has never obtained any notice from mankind; it has been little read, or when read it has been forgotten, as no man could be wiser, better, or merrier, by remembering it. The design cannot boast of much originality; for, besides its general resemblance to Don Quixotte, there will be found in it particular imitations of the History of Mr Ouffle. Swift carried so much of it into Ireland as supplied him with hints for his travels; and with these the world might have been contented, though the rest had been suppressed."-Dr JOHNSON. "The life of the solemn and absurd pedant, Dr Scriblerus, of which Johnson speaks too contemptuously, and says it is taken from the History of Ouffle, is the only true and genuine imitation we have in our language of the serious and pompous manner of Cervantes; for it is not easy to say, why Fielding should call his Joseph Andrews, excellent as it is, an imitation of his manner. Don Quixotte is in truth the most original and unrivalled work of modern times. The great art of Cervantes consists in having painted his mad hero with such a number of amiable qualities, as to make it impossible for us totally to despise him. This light and shade in drawing characters shew the master. It is thus Addison has represented his Sir Roger, and Shakespeare his Falstaff. How great must be the native force of Cervantes's humour, when it can be embellished by readers, even unacquainted with Spanish manners, with the institution of chivalry, and with the many passages of old romances and Italian poems, to which it perpe tually alludes. There are three or four celebrated works that bear a great resemblance, and have a turn of satire similar to that of these Memoirs; The Barbon of Balsac; The Life of Montmaur, by Menage and others; the Chef d'Oeuvre d'un Inconnu of Mathanase; and La Charlatanerie des Savans of Menken. "Whatever may be determined of other parts of these Memoirs, yet the fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, tenth, and twelfth |