s happier predecessor,
"The What d'ye call it?"

[244] The brutal amusements of these "Mohocks," and the helpless
terror of London, is scarcely credible in modern days. Wild
bands of drunken men nightly infested the streets, attacking
and ill-using every passer-by. A favourite pastime was to
surround their victim with drawn swords, pricking him on every
side as he endeavoured to escape. Many persons were maimed and
dangerously wounded. Gay, in his _Trivia_, has noted some of
their more innocent practical jokes; and asks--

"Who has not trembled at the Mohock's name?
Was there a watchman took his hourly rounds,
Safe from their blows or new invented wounds?"

Swift, in his notes to Stella, has expressed his dread, while
in London, of being maimed, or perhaps killed, by them.--ED.

[245] Bought of Mr. George Strahan, bookseller.

[246] For an account of these humorous pieces, see the following
article on "The Royal Society."

POPE'S EARLIEST SATIRE.

We find by the first edition of Lintot's "Miscellaneous Poems," that
the anonymous lines "To the Author of a Poem called _Successio_," was
a literary satire by Pope, written when he had scarcely attained his
fourteenth year. This satire, the first probably he wrote for the
press, and in which he has succeeded so well, that it might have
induced him to pursue the bent of his genius, merits preservation. The
juvenile composition bears the marks of his future excellences: it has
the tune of his verse, and the images of his wit. Thirty years
afterwards, when occupied by the _Dunciad_, he transplanted and pruned
again some of the original images.

The hero of this satire is Elkanah Settle. The subject is one of those
Whig poems, designed to celebrate the happiness of an uninterrupted
"Succession" in the Crown, at the time the Act of Settlement passed,
which transferred it to the Hanoverian line. The rhymer and his theme
were equally contemptible to the juvenile Jacobite poet.

The hoarse and voluminous Codrus of Juvenal aptly designates this
eternal verse-maker;--one who has written with such constant
copiousness, that no bibliographer has presumed to form a complete
list of his works.[247]

When Settle had outlived his temporary rivalship with Dryden, and was
reduced to mere Settle, he published party-poems, in folio, composed
in Latin, a