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Arthur Mainwaring (?)
An anonymous correspondent to the GM (1785. ii. 1030-1031) wrote,
The following Poem, I doubt not, has been in print; but probably is
not now to be met with. I think it a pity it should perish, and therefore send
it you to be inserted in your Magazine. Who the author was I cannot tell;
but it has much the appearance of one of Swift's Grubs, as
he
used to call his ballads and penny-papers. Your readers, however, will
judge for themselves.
The index to the poetry section for this volume of the GM
listed
the poem as "Ballad, a Grub one, probably by Swift." The poem, entitled
"The History and Fall of the Occasional Conformity Bill; Being an
Excellent New Song. To the Tune of the Ladies Fall," is
listed
in Margaret Crum, ed. First-line Index of English Poetry 1500-1800
in Manuscripts of the Bodleian Library (1969), G 242. There it is
said to be by Arthur Mainwaring on the authority of John Oldmixon, editor
of the Life and Posthumous Works of Mainwaring (1715),
pp.
40-41, where only stanzas 10-16 and 35, eight out of the thirty-eight
four-line stanzas, are printed. Substantive differences between the two texts
are as follows, with the GM reading first, i.e. stanza and
line:
10:3 will/he'll; 10:4 "Twill . . . plog[1] He'll . . . clog; 13:1 a/no; 13:2
never/ever; 14:4 and/nor; 15:1 that God doth/our Lord can; 15:2 doth/does;
16:1 So/Sure; 16:1 say they/I say;
16:2 Whence ever/Where-ever; 16:3 and/For; 35:3 in time/at length. The
poem is printed in Poems on Affairs of State, From
165
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