This is cheap enough, in all conscience, and yet there is little doubt that the afflicted infinitely preferred the nostrums so speciously advertised by empirics to treatment according to the pharmacopœia. We have good authority for the statement that faith will move mountains, and it seems, if we are to judge by the testimonials published from time immemorial by vendors of ointment and pills, to have moved mountainous tumours, wens, and carbuncles, for without it soft soap, bread, and bacon fat would be of little use indeed. Glorious John Dryden died early in this year, and a hoaxing advertisement appeared in the Post Boy of May 4-7, which called for elegies, &c.:—
THE Death of the famous John Dryden Esq. Poet Laureat to their two late Majesties, King Charles and King James the Second; being a Subject capable of employing the best pens, and several persons of quality and others, having put a stop to his interment, which is to be in Chaucer’s grave, in Westminster Abbey: This is to desire the gentlemen of the two famous universities, and others who have a respect for the memory of the deceas’d, and are inclinable to such performances, to send what copies they please as Epigrams, etc. to Henry Playford at his shop at the Temple-Change in Fleet street, and they shall be inserted in a Collection which is design’d after the same nature and in the same method (in what language they shall please) as is usual in the composures which are printed on solemn occasions at the two Universities aforesaid.
Other advertisements followed this, and from them it appears that the shop of Henry Playford was inundated with manuscripts of all lengths and kinds, and in many languages. What became of them does not make itself known, which is a pity, as many must have been equal to any specimen which occurs in the “Rejected Addresses,” with the advantage and recommendation of being genuine.