Commentary

This text was first printed in this volume of the Miscellanies. The capitalization suggests the text is faithful to its original, and Davis points to some spellings (‘writ’, ‘extreamly’, ‘corkt’) that might be Swift’s, though of these only the last seems to me significant.

Robert Dodsley was born 13 February 1703 and died 23 September 1764. In his early life he was footman to Charles Dartiquenave and others, but gained admission to literary society through his poems and plays. Pope set him up in business with £100 in 1735. He published for Pope and became one of the foremost literary booksellers of the century, publishing Akenside, Shenstone, the Wartons, Collins, Gray, the Annual Register, Percy’s Reliques, and his innovative collections of poems and plays.

References: The Prose Writings of Jonathan Swift, ed. Herbert Davis and others, 16 vols. (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1939-74), vol. v, pp. 237-8, 358; James E. Tierney, ‘Robert Dodsley’, in The Dictionary of Literary Biography, vol. 154, The British Literary Book Trade, 1700-1820, ed. James E. Bracken and Joel Silver (Detroit, MI: Gale, 1995).