-"On grave
conundrums and serious buffoons, in defence of burlesque
discourses, from the most weighty authorities."--"A
Dissertation upon Nonsense." At the close he has a fling at
his friend Pope; it was after the publication of the Dunciad.
"Of Nonsense there are celebrated professors; Mr. Pope grows
witty like Bays in the 'Rehearsal,' by selling bargains (his
subscriptions for Homer), praising himself, laughing at his
joke, and making his own works the test of any man's
criticism; but he seems to be in some jeopardy; for the ghost
of Homer has lately spoke to him in Greek, and Shakspeare
resolves to bring him, as he has brought Shakspeare, to a
tragical conclusion. Mr. Pope suggests the last choice of a
subject for writing a book, by making the _Nonsense_ of others
his argument; while his own puts it out of any writer's power
to confute him." In another fling at Pope, he gives the reason
why Mr. Pope adds the dirty dialect to that of the water, and
is in love with the Nymphs of Fleet ditch; and in a lecture on
the spleen he announced "an anatomical discovery, that Mr.
Pope's spleen is bigger than his head!"

[50] Thus he anticipated the term, since become so notorious among
German theologians.

[51] It is preserved in the "Historical Register," vol. xi. for 1726.
It is curious and well written.

[52] "Gentleman's Magazine," vol. lvii. p. 876.

[53] His "Defence of the Oratory" is a curious performance. He
pretends to derive his own from great authority. "St. Paul
is related, Acts 28, to have dwelt _two whole years in his
own hired house_, and to have received all that came in
unto him, teaching those things which concern the Lord Jesus
Christ with all confidence, no man forbidding him. This
was at _Rome_, and doubtless was his practice in his other
travels, there being the same reason in the thing to produce
elsewhere the like circumstances." He proceeds to show
"the calumnies and reproaches, and the novelty and impiety,
with which Christianity, at its first setting out, was
charged, as a mean, abject institution, not only useless
and unserviceable, but pernicious to the public and its
professors, as the refuse of the world."--Of the