ble opinion, some faculties, which they have in contempt, are superiour to them in point of time, which I have already proved to be the natural ground of precedency; and it is enough here but to name the excellent faculties of musick and poetry, whose antiquity, I think, no man of sense or modesty will call in question.
But having mentioned poetry, I must go aside a little, to salute my worthy friend the professor[1] of, or (to speak more properly) the reader in, that faculty in Oxford; who has befriended the world so much by his incomparable performances of that kind, especially his latest: I will own, he has taught me, and I believe some other gentlemen who had lost their Latin, the true grammatical construction of Virgil; and deserves, not our acknowledgments only, but those of Eaton and Westminster. I am sensible, construction is as necessary to the relish and use of
- ↑ Dr. Joseph Trapp was elected poetry professor in 1708, and published his lectures under the title of "Prælectiones Poeticæ;" the first volume of which is dedicated to Mr. secretary St. John; to whose father, in the early part of his life, he had been chaplain. He was also made chaplain to the son by Swift's recommendation, Journal to Stella, July 17, 1712; and had been chaplain to the lord chancellor of Ireland in 1711, in which year he published "A Character of the present Set of Whigs;" which Swift, who conveyed it to the printer, calls "a very scurvy piece;" see the Journal to Stella, May 14, 1711. In a short time after, he printed at Dublin a poem on the duke of Ormond, which was republished at London, "and the printer sold just eleven of them;" see Journal, Aug. 24, 1711. Our author, having mentioned to Stella, that Trapp and Sacheverell had been to visit him, adds, "Trapp is a coxcomb, and the other is not very deep; and their judgment in things of wit and sense is miraculous!" Journal, March 17, 1711-12. He was an agreable and pathetick preacher; and published several volumes of sermons. He died Nov. 22, 1747.
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