Series Two: Essays on Poetry and Language No. 1 

Samuel Cobb's Discourse on Criticismandof Poetry

from Poems on Several Occasions (1707)    With an Introduction by Louis I. Bredvold 

The Augustan Reprint SocietyJuly, 1946

 Membership in the Augustan Reprint Society entitles the subscriber to six publications issued each year. The annual membership fee is $2.50. Address subscriptions and communications to The Augustan Reprint Society in care of the General Editors: Richard C. Boys, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan; or Edward N. Hooker or H.T. Swedenberg, Jr., University of California, Los Angeles 24, California. Editorial Advisors: Louis I. Bredvold, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, and James L. Clifford, Columbia University, New York.

Introduction

 What little is known of the life of Samuel Cobb (1675-1713) may be found in the brief article in the Dictionary of National Biography by W.P. Courtney. He was born in London, and educated at Christ's Hospital and at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he obtained the degrees of B.A., 1698, and M.A., 1702. He was appointed "under grammar master" at Christ's Hospital in 1702 and continued his connection with this school until his early death. He had a reputation for wit and learning, and also for imbibing somewhat too freely. In his poetry he especially cultivated the style of the free Pindaric ode, a predilection which won him a mention without honor in Johnson's life of Pope (Lives of the Poets, ed. Birkbeck Hill, III, 227). Even the heroic couplets of his poem on "Poetry" aim rather at pseudo-Pindaric diffuseness than at epigrammatic concentration of statement. As a critic Cobb deserves attention in spite of his mediocrity, or even because of it. He helps to fill out the picture of the literary London of his time, and his opinions and tastes provide valuable side-lights on such greater men as Dennis, Addison, and Pope. "Of Poetry" belongs to the prolific literary type of "progress poems," in which the modern student finds illuminating statements as to how the eighteenth century surveyed and evaluated past literary traditions. The list of Cobb's publications in the Cambridge Bibliography suggests that he enjoyed some degree of popularity. His volume, Poems on Several Occasions, was published in 1707, and reprinted in enlarged form in 1709 and 1710. The reproduction herewith of the Preface "On Criticism" and the versified discourse "Of Poetry" is from a copy of the 1707 edition in the Newberry 

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