3

She mounts the throne: her head a cloud conceal'd, In broad effulgence all below reveal'd,3 ́ ('Tis thus aspiring Dulness ever shines)

Soft on her lap her laureate son reclines.

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Beneath her foot-stool, Science groans in chains,

And Wit dreads exile, penalties, and pains.*

There foam'd rebellious Logic, gagg'd and bound,

There, stripp'd, fair Rhetoric languish'd on the ground
His blunted arms by Sophistry are borne,

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And shameless Billingsgate her robes adorn.
Morality, by her false guardians drawn,
Chicane in furs, and Casuistry in lawn,

Gasps, as they straighten at each end the cord,

And dies, when Dulness gives her page the word.
Mad Mathesis alone was unconfined,5

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Too mad for mere material chains to bind,

Now to pure space lifts her ecstatic stare,

Now running round the circle, finds its square.
But held in ten-fold bonds the Muses lie,
Watch'd both by Envy's and by Flattery's eye:6

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3 It was the opinion of the ancients, that the divinities manifested themselves to men by their back-parts. Virg. Æneid, i. et avertens, rosea cervice refulsit. But this passage may admit of another exposition.-Vet. Adag. The higher you climb, the more you show your a Verified in no instance more than in dulness aspiring. Emblematized also by an ape climbing and exposing his posteriors.-Scriblerus.

4 We are next presented with the pictures of those whom the goddess leads in captivity. Science is only depressed and confined so as to be rendered useless; but Wit or Genius, as a more dangerous and active enemy, punished, or driven away: Dulness being often reconciled in some degree with Learning, but never upon any terms with Wit. And accordingly it will be seen that she admits something like each science, as Casuistry, Sophistry, &c., but nothing like Wit, Opera alone supplying its place.

5 Alluding to the strange conclusions some mathematicians have deduced from their principles, concerning the real quantity of matter, the reality of space, &c.

6 One of the misfortunes falling on authors, from the Act for subjecting plays to the power of a licencer, being the false representations to which they were exposed, from such as either gratified their envy to merit, or made their court to greatness, by perverting general reflections against vice into libels on particular persons.

[The refusal of the Lord Chamberlain to license Gay's "Folly,"-a continuation of the Beggars' Opera-no doubt prompted this note.]

There to her heart sad Tragedy address'd
The dagger wont to pierce the tyrant's breast;
But sober History restrain'd her rage,

And promised vengeance on a barbarous age.
There sunk Thalia, nerveless, cold, and dead,
Had not her sister Satire held her head:
Nor could'st thou, CHESTERFIELD! a tear refuse,
Thou wept'st, and with thee wept each gentle muse.
When lo a harlot form soft sliding by,

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With mincing step, small voice, and languid eye:
Foreign her air, her robe's discordant pride

In patchwork fluttering, and her head aside :

By singing peers upheld on either hand,

She tripp'd and laugh'd, too pretty much to stand;

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Cast on the prostrate Nine a scornful look,

Then thus in quaint recitativo spoke.

O Cara Cara! silence all that train :

Joy to great Chaos !7 let Division reign:
Chromatic tortures soon shall drive them hence,
Break all their nerves, and fritter all their sense:
One trill shall harmonize joy, grief, and rage,
Wake the dull church, and lull the ranting stage;
To the same notes thy sons shall hum, or snore,
And all thy yawning daughters cry, Encore!
Another Phoebus, thy own Phoebus, reigns,
Joys in my jigs, and dances in my chains.
But soon, ah soon, rebellion will commence,
If music meanly borrows aid from sense:
Strong in new arms, lo! giant HANDEL stands,8
Like bold Briareus, with a hundred hands;

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60

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7 Joy to great Cæsar-The beginning of a famous old song. 8 [Dr. Burney relates, that "when Pope found that his friends, Lord Bur lington and Dr. Arbuthnot, thought so highly of Handel, he not only lashed his enemies in the Dunciad, but wished to have his Eurydice set to music by him. Mr. Belchier, a common friend, undertook to negotiate the business; but Handel, having heard that Pope had made his ode more lyrical, that is, fitter for music, by dividing it into airs and recitatives, for Dr. Green, who had already set it, and whom, as a partisan for Bononcini, and confederate with his enemies, he had long disliked, said, "It is de very ding vat my pellows-plower has set already for ein tocktor's tecree at Cambridge." Handel got unpopular, for a season, in consequence partly of his own irritable temper and the disputes with the Italian singers; so that his great oratorio of the

To stir, to rouse, to shake the soul he comes,
And Jove's own thunders follow Mars's drums.
Arrest him, empress; or you sleep no more-
She heard, and drove him to the Hibernian shore.
And now had Fame's posterior trumpet blown, 9
And all the nations summon'd to the throne.
The young, the old, who feel her inward sway,
One instinct seizes, and transports away.
None need a guide,10 by sure attraction led,
And strong impulsive gravity of head:

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None want a place, for all their centre found,
Hung to the goddess, and cohered around.
Not closer, orb in orb, conglobed are seen
The buzzing bees about their dusky queen.

The gathering number, as it moves along,
Involves a vast involuntary throng,

Who gently drawn, and struggling less and less,
Roll in her vortex, and her power confess.

Not those alone who passive own her laws,

But who, weak rebels, more advance her cause.
Whate'er of dunce in college or in town
Sneers at another, in toupée or gown;

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Messiah was but coldly received, and he went to Ireland, as alluded to by the poet in the next couplet. He afterwards regained the public favour, and had certainly no cause to complain of the patronage he received in this country.] 9 Posterior, viz. her second or more certain report: unless we imagine this word posterior to relate to the position of one of her trumpets, according to Hudibras:

"She blows not both with the same wind,

But one before and one behind;

And therefore modern authors name

One good, and t'other evil fame."

10 The sons of Dulness want no instuctors in study, nor guides in life. They are their own masters in all sciences, and their own heralds and introducers into all places. It ought to be observed that here are three classes in this assembly. The first of men absolutely and avowedly dull, who naturally adhere to the goddess, and are represented in the simile of the bees about their queen. The second involuntarily drawn to her, though not caring to own her influence; from ver. 81 to 90. The third, of such as, though not members of her state, yet advance her service by flattering dulness, cultivating mistaken talents, patronizing vile scribblers, discouraging living merit, or setting up for wits, and men of taste in arts they understand not: from ver. 91 to 101.

Whate'er of mongrel no one class admits,
A wit with dunces, and a dunce with wits.

Nor absent they, no members of her state,
Who pay her homage in her sons, the great;
Who false to Phoebus, bow the knee to Baal;
Or impious, preach his word without a call.
Patrons, who sneak from living worth to dead,
Withhold the pension, and set up the head!
Or vest dull Flattery in the sacred gown;
Or give from fool to fool the laurel crown.
And (last and worst) with all the cant of wit,
Without the soul, the Muse's hypocrite.

There march'd the bard and blockhead, side by side,
Who rhymed for hire, and patronized for pride.
Narcissus, praised with all a parson's power,11
Look'd a white lily sunk beneath a shower.
There moved Montalto with superior air; 12
His stretch'd-out arm display'd a volume fair;
Courtiers and patriots in two ranks divide,
Through both he pass'd, and bow'd from side to side:
But as in graceful act, with awful eye

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95

100

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Composed he stood, bold Benson thrust him by:

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On two unequal crutches propp'd he came,

Milton's on this, on that one Johnston's name.
The decent knight retired with sober rage,
Withdrew his hand, and closed the pompous page.
"But (happy for him as the times went then)
Appear'd Apollo's Mayor and Aldermen,

13

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On whom three hundred gold-capped youths await,
To lug the ponderous volume off in state.”

11 [Lord Hervey, praised by Dr. Conyers Middleton, in his dedication of the Life of Cicero.]

12 [Montalto, Sir Thomas Hanmer, the "Oxford editor," as Warburton calls him. Sir Thomas published a magnificent quarto edition of Shakspeare, printed at Oxford, and embellished with engravings.]

18 [The four lines which we have marked with inverted commas, do not appear in the edition of 1743. They were first published by Warburton, who had a quarrel with Sir Thomas Hanmer, the "decent knight," relative to Sir Thomas's edition of Shakspeare. Warburton charged the knight with making an unauthorized use of his emendations on the text of Shakspeare, while the knight, on the other hand, charged Warburton with a desire to produce a "paltry edition," with the view of getting "a greater sum of money by it."

When Dulness, smiling-" Thus revive the Wits! 14
But murder first, and mince them all to bits;
As erst Medea (cruel, so to save!)

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Let standard-authors, thus, like trophies born,
Appear more glorious as more hack'd and torn.

And you, my critics! in the chequer'd shade,16
Admire new light through holes yourself have made.
Leave not a foot of verse, a foot of stone,

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A page, a grave,17 that they can call their own;

But spread, my sons, your glory thin or thick,
On passive paper, or on solid brick.

So by each bard an alderman shall sit,18
A heavy lord shall hang at every wit,

And while on Fame's triumphal car they ride,

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Some slave of mine be pinion'd to their side.”

Now crowds on crowds around the goddess press,

Each eager to present the first address.

Dunce scorning dunce beholds the next advance,

But fop shows fop superior complaisance.

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The result, said Warburton, was that Sir Thomas "applied to the University of Oxford, and was at the expense of his purse in procuring cuts for this edition, and at the expense of his reputation in employing a number of my emendations on the text, without my knowledge or consent; and his behaviour was what occasioned Mr. Pope's perpetuating the memory of the Oxford edition of Shakspeare in the Dunciad."]

14 The goddess applauds the practice of tacking the obscure names of persons not eminent in any branch of learning, to those of the most distinguished writers; either by printing editions of their works with impertinent alterations of their text, as in the former instances; or by setting up monuments disgraced with their own vile names and inscriptions, as in the latter. 15 of whom Ovid (very applicable to these restored authors),

"Eson miratur,

Dissimilemque animum subiit."

16 "Dancing in the chequer'd shade."-Milton's Allegro.

17 For what less than a grave can be granted to a dead author? or what less than a page can be afforded a living one? Pagina, not Pedissequus. A page of a book, not a servant, follower, or attendant; no poet having had page since the death of Mr. Thomas Durfey.-Scriblerus.

[D'Urfey's plays and "Pills to Purge Melancholy," were popular during his lifetime, but have sunk into deserved oblivion. He died in 1723.]

18 Vide the Tombs of the Poets, Editio Westmonasteriensis. [Alluding to the monument erected for Butler, the author of Hudibras, by Alderman Barber-Warburton.]