Page:The Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets, Volume 4.djvu/78

74 He soon afterwards (1727) joined with Swift, who was then in England, to publish three volumes of Miscellanies, in which amongst other things he inserted the "Memoirs of a Parish Clerk," in ridicule of Burnet's importance in his own History, and a "Debate upon Black and White Horses," written in all the formalities of a legal process by the assistance, as is said, of Mr. Fortescue, afterwards Master of the Rolls. Before these Miscellanies is a preface signed by Swift and Pope, but apparently written by Pope; in which he makes a ridiculous and romantick complaint of the robberies committed upon authors by the clandestine seizure and sale of their papers. He tells, in tragick strains, how "the cabinets of the Sick and the closets of the Dead have been broke open and ransacked;" as if those violences were often committed for papers of uncertain and accidental value, which are rarely provoked by real treasures; as if epigrams and essays were in danger where gold and diamonds are safe. A cat hunted for his musk, is, according to Pope's account, but the emblem of a wit, winded by booksellers. Rh