William Diaper

He was born in Bridgwater, the son of Joseph Diaper, and attended Balliol College, Oxford in 1699 as a poor scholar (pauper puer),[1] and took his BA degree in 1705.

"[2] In December he introduced Diaper and his new poem to the politician Henry St John and to the Somerset Member of Parliament William Wyndham through their Society of Brothers.

Swift's friend Alexander Pope, less impressed by Diaper's poetical abilities, included him in the diving episode in the 1728 version of The Dunciad:Far worse unhappy D[iape]r succeeds,He search’d for coral, but he gather'd weeds.

[15] Diaper's late appearance in John Nichols’ Select Collection was owing to the enthusiasm of Joseph Warton,[16] but all this was not enough to save his name from oblivion for the next century and a half.

[17] This came about after the poet's reputation was revived in the mid-20th century by the critic Geoffrey Grigson, who devoted an enthusiastic radio talk to Diaper and later included it in his book of essays, The Harp of Aeolus (1947).

These too, dressed in suitably mock-heroic garb, find their place in the poem, This was a time when authors were seeking to go beyond slavish adherence to Classical models and, among other strategies of renewal, were injecting into them details of contemporary urban existence.

Diaper's recipe for renewal was simply to move "a variety of pastoral episodes modelled closely on Theocritus and Virgil"[25] from dry land to the sea, making the interlocutors sea-gods and sea-nymphs.

"We know", Diaper reasons in his preface, "that the agreeable Images, which may be drawn from things on Earth, have been long since exhausted, but it will be allow’d that the Beauties (as well as the Riches) of the Sea are yet in a great Measure untouch’d."

Where that had portrayed the desirable leisure of an eternal Arcadian summer, Diaper's characters contrast the clement conditions undersea with the unstable English climate above the surface.

In addition, marine natural history is drawn on as a novel source of imagery to such an extent that it has led to the suggestion that Diaper was drawing on Oppian's Halieutica well before he made it a translation project.

The admiral of the English navy mentioned under that name has been identified with John Leake,[27] who had recently been elected a Member of Parliament and contrived to make himself useful to both the Whig and succeeding Tory ministries.

[32] But though Diaper departs his usual form for the octosyllabic couplets of Swift's model, the voice he adopts is still recognisably his own, balancing there the sharp humour evident in "Brent" and parts of the Nereides and identification with the interests of the Tory Ministry.

As John Jones noted in his preface to the completed work, "He has somewhat paraphrased the Author…The Richness of his Fancy and copious Expression maintain the Character and Spirit of Oppian, even while he recedes from the Letter of the Original" (p. 13).

One example of this appears in the extended image from the end of the first book, referring to the shoals of the "Slime-Fish": As when soft Snows, brought down by Western Gales, Silent descend and spread on all the Vales; Add to the Plains, and on the Mountains shine, While in chang'd Fields the starving Cattle pine; Nature bears all one Face, looks coldly bright, And mourns her lost Variety in White, Unlike themselves the Objects glare around, And with false Rays the dazzled Sight confound: So, where the Shoal appears, the changing Streams Lose their Sky-blew, and shine with silver Gleams."