first volume of the Poetical Register, with a second volume in 1720. This work provided biographies of contemporary authors as well as earlier ones. According to the literary editor Stephen Jones: [H]e is generally accurate and faithful, and affords much information to those who have occasion to consult him. It cannot be denied that he possessed very small abilities; but he was fully equal to a task where plodding industry, and not genius, must be deemed the essential qualification. In the Poetical Register, Jacob criticized the play Three Hours After Marriage (1717), which had been written by John Gay with anonymous assistance from John Arbuthnot and Alexander Pope. Jacob wrote that its scenes "trespass[ed] on Female Modesty". He subsequently criticized that play for "obscenity and false Pretence". Jacob had admired Pope, had been on good terms with him, and had submitted the biographical entry of Pope (in the Poetical Register) to Pope himself for correction. Jacob likely did not realize that Three Hours After Marriage had been anonymously co-authored by Pope. In The Dunciad of 1728, Pope pounced: Jacob, the scourge of grammar, mark with awe, Nor less revere him, blunderbuss of law. Pope explained Jacob's offense as follows: "he very grossly and unprovoked abused in that book [the Poetical Register] the author’s friend, Mr. Gay". The play Three Hours After Marriage was panned by most critics as obscene, and literary historian Thomas Lounsbury has explained that no one criticized the play "without incurring [from Pope] an enmity that never died out". In 1725, Jacob wrote The Student's Companion and regarded it as his favorite of the books he had written. It was a guide to studying law, with practical tips, reviews, and indexes. In 1729, his most famous work, nine years in the making, appeared: A New Law Dictionary. It combined a dictionary of legal practice with an abridgment of statute law, and it reached its fifth edition by the time of Jacob's death. As late as 1807, "Jacob's Law Dictionary" was still a very profitable copyright. His last work was Every Man his Own Lawyer, which outsold even the law dictionary. It was a self-help book for average citizens who might be involved in litigation. Jacob's legal writings were of a practical and descriptive sort, often compared unfavorably to the analytic and theoretical treatises by authors like William Blackstone. But, according to historian Julia Rudolph, authors like Jacob