131 BOOK II 113
So .shall each hostile name become our own,
afterwards reprinted by Gooke in The Letters ofAtticus, 1731 .> At the same time
the honest Gentleman wrote Letters to Mr. P. in the strongest terms protesting
his innocence. <J739</-5/. In a letter to Pope, dated Aug. n, 1728, Cooke
denies that he is the author of "some scurrilous Pieces, which ha-w$ been lately
printed in the Daily Papers," though admitting that he had formerly \vritten
critically about him in a poem (presumably The Battle of the Poets). In a second
letter, Sept. 16, 1728, he promises to leave this poem out of his forthcoming
volume of Poems. Pope, however, was not reconciled to him, and Cooke
reprinted the poem, which now contained a much bitterer attack on Pope, in
his Tales, Epistles, Odes, Fables etc., 1729.—See Biog. App.> His chief work was
a translation of Hesiod, to which Theobald writ notes, and half-notes, as hath
already been said. </7*9<z-5/. If Pope is making a specific charge in this line,
Cooke must have written something that Curll passed off as Prior's work.
Cooke was, in fact, one of CurlPs authors. In 1726 Curll paid him ^5 for
writing a Life of Marvell etc. (B.M. Add. MSS. 38,728 f. 52.) He may, as EC
suggests, be the hack writer in Savage's Author to be Let who was employed by
Curll to write "a merry tale" which was to be palmed upon the world as "a
posthumous Piece of Mr. Prior." Cf. A ii n6/z.>
^4/w/Concanen, Swift] Matthew Concanen, an Irishman, an anonymous slanderer,
and publisher of other men's slanders, particularly on Dr. Swift to whom he had
obligations, and from whom he had received both in a collection of Poems for
his benefit and otherwise, no small assistance; To which Smedley (one of his
brethren in enmity to Swift) alludes hi his Metam. of Scriblerus, p. 7. accusing
him of having "boasted of what he had not written, but others had revis'd
and done for him." <Pope is here giving the substance of twenty lines of Smed-
ley*s poem.—To this charge Concanen replied in a letter to the Daily Journal,
Sept. 8, 1730: "I do in the most solemn Manner declare, that I never saw Dr.
Swift but four Times in my Life; that I never conversed with him but twice, at
one of which Times I dined with him, and that he then expressed some In-
tentions to serve me, which he declined at the next Visit I paid him ... I do
assure you I never received any Gift, Kindness, or friendly Recommendation
from him whatever." Concanen does not explain, however, how he came to
publish several of Swift's poems in his volume of Miscellaneous Poems, Original
and Translated, By Several Hands, 1724. It is to this volume, no doubt, that Pope
refers.^ He was also author of several scurrilities in the British and London Journals
<and in a paper call'd the Speculatist—17350-5j>; and of a pamphlet call'd a
Supplement to the Profund, wherein he deals very unfairly with our Poet, not only
frequently blaming Mr. Broomed verses as his, (for which he might indeed seem
in some degree accountable, having corrected what that gentleman did) but
those of the Duke of Buckingham, and others. To this rare piece, some-body
humorously caus'd *"™ to take for bis motto, De profundis clamant, (jysga-si.
Concanen afterwards collected his articles in the British and London Journals,
and published them with the tide of The Speculatist ("2nd ed. 1732)—not, he