Till Isis' elders reel, their pupils sport, And Alma Mater lie dissolved in port! Enough! enough! the raptured monarch cries; And through the Ivory Gate the vision flies.79 340 of our nobility, the encouragement of our patrons, and the genius of our writers in all kinds (notwithstanding some few exceptions in each), may plainly be seen from his conclusion; where, causing all this vision to pass through the Ivory Gate, he expressly, in the language of poesy, declares all such imaginations to be wild, ungrounded, and fictitious.—Scriblerus. Another great prophet of dulness, on this side Styx, promiseth those days to be near at hand. "The devil (saith he), licensed bishop, to license masters of schools to instruct youth in the knowledge of the heathen gods, their religion, &c. The schools and universities will soon be tired and ashamed of classics, and such trumpery."-Hutchinson's Use of Reason recovered. 79"Sunt geminæ Somni portæ ; quarum altera fertur Cornea, quâ veris facilis datur exitus umbris; Virg. Eneid, vi. AND THROUGH THE IVORY GATE THE VISION FLIES." 119 BOOK THE FOURTH. ARGUMENT. The poet being, in this Book, to declare the completion of the prophecies mentioned at the end of the former, makes a new invocation, as the greater poets are wont when some high and worthy matter is to be sung. He shows the goddess coming in her majesty, to destroy order and science, and to substitute the kingdom of the Dull upon earth; how she leads captive the sciences, and silenceth the Muses, and what they be who succeed in their stead; all her children, by a wonderful attraction, are drawn about her, and bear along with them divers others, who promote her empire by connivance, weak resistance, or discouragement of arts, such as half wits, tasteless admirers, vain pretenders, the flatterers of dunces, or the patrons of them; all these crowd around her; one of them, offering to approach her, is driven back by a rival, but she commends and encourages both. The first who speak in form are the geniuses of the schools, who assure her of their care to advance her cause, by confining youth to words, and keeping them out of the way of real knowledge. Their address, and her gracious answer, with her charge to them and the Universities. The Universities appear by their proper deputies, and assure her that the same method is observed in the progress of education. The speech of Aristarchus on this subject. They are driven off by a band of young gentlemen returned from travel with their tutors: one of whom delivers to the goddess, in a polite oration, an account of the whole conduct and fruit of their travels, presenting to her at the same time a young nobleman perfectly accomplished. She receives him graciously, and endues him with the happy quality of want of shame. She sees loitering about her a number of indolent persons, abandoning all business and duty, and dying with laziness: to these approaches the antiquary Annius, intreating her to make them virtuosos, and assign them over to him. But Mummins another antiquary, complaining of his fraudulent proceeding, she finds a method to reconcile their difference. Then enter a troop of people fantastically adorned, offering her strange and exotic presents: amongst them, one stands forth and demands justice on another, who had deprived him of one of the greatest curiosities in nature: but he justifies himself so well, that the goddess gives them both her approbation. She recom mends to them to find proper employment for the indolents before mentioned, in the study of butterflies, shells, birds' nests, moss, &c., but with particular caution not to proceed beyond trifles, to any useful or extensive views of nature, or of the Author of nature. Against the last of these apprehensions, she is secured by a hearty address from the minute philosophers and free-thinkers, one of whom speaks in the name of the rest. The youth, thus instructed and principled, are delivered to her in a body by the hands of Silenus, and then admitted to taste the cup of the Magus, her high-priest, which causes a total oblivion of all obligations, divine, civil, moral, or rational. To these her adepts she sends priests, attendants, and comforters, of various kinds; confers on them orders and degrees; and then, dismissing them with a speech, confirming to each his privileges, and telling what she expects from each, concludes with a yawn of extraordinary virtue, the progress and effects whereof on all orders of men, and the consummation of all, in the restoration of Night and Chaos, conclude the poem. YET, yet a moment, one dim ray of light Indulge, dread Chaos, and eternal Night! Now flamed the dog-star's unpropitious ray, 10 15 5 1 The two great ends of her mission; the one in quality of daughter of Chaos, the other as daughter of Night. Order here is to be understood extensively, both as civil and moral; the distinctions between high and low in society, and true and false in individuals: Light, as intellectual only; Wit, science, arts. 2 The Allegory continued; dull, referring to the extinction of light or science; venal, to the destruction of order, or the truth of things. Ibid. [a new world]. In reference to the Epicurean opinion, that from the dissolution of the natural world into night and chaos, a new one should arise; this the poet alluding to, in the production of a moral world, makes it partake of its original principles. |