ABSTRACT
Date and publication. The lines seem to have been in MS circulation c. 1698. A letter from Richard Powys to Matthew Prior of 14 [–24] July 1698, recorded in Historical Manuscripts Commission: Calendar of the Manuscripts of the Marquis of Bath (iii (1908) 238–9), includes the following statement: ‘Sir Godfrey Kneller hath drawn at length the picture of your friend Jacob Tonson, which he shewed Mr. Dryden, who desired to give a touch of his pencil [paintbrush], and underneath it writ these three verses.’ Malone (I i 525) gives an alternative account of the lines’ genesis, in the course of a description of D.’s occasional ‘bickerings’ with Tonson: ‘On another occasion, Tonson having refused to advance him a sum of money for a work on which he was employed, he sent a second messenger to the bookseller, with a very satirical triplet; adding, “Tell the dog, that he who wrote these lines, can write more.” These descriptive verses, which had the desired effect, by some means got abroad in manuscript; and, not long after Dryden’s death, were inserted in Faction Displayed, a satirical poem, supposed to have been written by William Shippen.’ The lines were, as Malone says, first printed in Shippen’s Faction Display’d (1704; four or five editions that year), where Tonson is said to be ‘well describ’d by th’ old Satyrick Bard’ (15). The present text is based on that of the Marquis of Bath MS (which may be closer to the original version circulating in MS), with variants in Shippen’s printed version cited in the notes. The poem is untitled in both the Bath MS and Shippen.
