AUDITOR BENSON. Ver. 325. On poets' tombs see Benson's titles writ.] W--m Benson (Surveyor of the buildings to his Majesty King George I.) gave in a report to the Lords, that their house and the Painted Chamber adjoining were in immediate danger of falling. Whereupon the Lords met in committee to appoint some other place to sit in, while the house should be taken down. But it being proposed to cause some other builders first to inspect it, they found it in very good condition. The Lords, upon this, were going upon an address to the king against Benson, for such a misrepresentation: but the Earl of Sunderland, then secretary, gave them an assurance that his Majesty would remove him, which was done accordingly. In favour of this man, the famous Sir Christopher Wren, who had been an architect to the crown for above fifty years, who built most of the churches in London, laid the first stone of St. Paul's, and lived to finish it, had been displaced from his employment at the age of near ninety years. [In the fourth book of the Dunciad (v. 110), Pope again alludes to Benson, adding this note :-"This man endeavoured to raise himself to fame by erecting monuments, striking coins, setting up heads, and procuring translations, of Milton; and afterwards by a great passion for Arthur Johnston, a Scotch physician's version of the Psalms, of which he printed many fine editions. See more of him, Book III. ver. 325." Warton volunteers a defence of Benson. "He translated faithfully, if not very poetically, the second book of the Georgics; he printed elegant editions of Johnston's Psalms; he wrote a discourse on versification; he rescued his country from the disgrace of having no monument erected to the memory of Milton in Westminster Abbey; he encouraged and urged Pitt to translate the Eneid, and he gave Dobson 1000l. for his Latin translation of Paradise lost." His error with respect to Milton's monument was, that he said more of himself than of the poet in the inscription.] AMBROSE PHILIPS. Ver. 326. Lo! Ambrose Philips is preferr'd for wit.] He was (saith Mr. Jacob) one of the wits at Button's, and a justice of the peace;" but he hath since met with higher preferment in Ireland; and a much greater character we 157. p. have of him in Mr. Gildon's Complete Art of Poetry, vol. i. "Indeed be confesses, he dares not set him quite on the same foot with Virgil, lest it should seem flattery: but he is much mistaken if posterity does not afford him a greater esteem than he at present enjoys." He endeavoured to create some misunderstanding between our author and Mr. Addison, whom also soon after he abused as much. His constant cry was, that Mr. P. was an enemy to the government; and in particular he was the avowed author of a report very industriously spread, that he had a hand in a party-paper called the Examiner: a falsehood well-known to those yet living, who had the direction and publi cation of it. [Gildon confines his praise of Philips to his Pastorals: "he is, beyond controversy, the third at least in this kind of poesy." He adds, "This sort of poem has been the bow in which most of our young dabblers in rhyme have tried their strength, but, alas! not one besides Mr. Philips has hit the mark." He then praises Philips for avoiding the error into which Spenser fell by giving an obscure Northern dialect in imitation of the Greek Doric, which was familiar to all Greece, and he remarks:-"There have been poor and malicious endeavours made use of to ridicule that of Mr. Philips; but the effects were so wretched, and the malice so visible, that they are already dead, and therefore not worth our notice." This contemptuous allusion to Pope must have been sufficiently galling to the irritable poet. Gildon's Complete Art of Poetry was published in 1718.] GAY'S BEGGAR'S OPERA. Ver. 330. Gay dies unpension'd with a hundred friends.] See Mr. Gay's fable of the Hare and many Friends. This gentleman was early in the friendship of our author, which continued to his death. He wrote several works of humour with great success, the Shepherd's Week, Trivia, the What-d'ye-call it, Fables, and lastly, the celebrated Beggars' Opera; a piece of satire which hit all tastes and degrees of men, from those of the highest quality to the very rabble: That verse of Horace, Primores populi arripuit, populumque tributim," could never be so justly applied as to this. The vast success of it was unprecedented, and almost incredible: what is related of the wonderful effects of the ancient music or tragedy hardly came up to it: Sophocles and Euripides were less followed and famous. It was acted in London sixty-three days, uninterrupted; and renewed the next season with equal applause. It spread into all the great towns of England, was played in many places to the thirtieth and fortieth time, at Bath and Bristol fifty, &c. It made its progress into Wales, Scotland, and Ireland, where it was performed twenty-four days to gether; it was lastly acted in Minorca. The fame of it was not confined to the author only; the ladies carried about with them the favourite songs of it in fans; and houses were furnished with it in screens. The person who acted Polly, till then obscure, became all at once the favourite of the town; her pictures were engraved, and sold in great numbers; her life written, books of letters and verses to her published; and pamphlets made even of her sayings and jests. Furthermore, it drove out of England, for that season, the Italian Opera, which had carried all before it for ten years. That idol of the nobility and the people, which the great critic Mr. Dennis by the labours and outcries of a whole life could not overthrow, was demolished by a single stroke of this gentleman's pen. This happened in the year 1728. Yet so great was his modesty, that he constantly prefixed to all the editions of it this motto Nos hæc novimus esse nihil. [The original account-book of the manager, Mr. Rich, has been found, and extracts from it published in "Notes and Queries," January 19, 1850. From this it appears that the Beggars' Opera was acted for sixty-two nights at the Lincoln's Inn Fields Theatre, and when the run of the piece was abruptly terminated by the advance of the season, and the benefits of the actors, the receipts at the door were on the increase. Of the sixty-two performances thirty-two were in succession, and the total sum realised by the thirty-two successive performances was £5351 15s., of which Gay obtained £693 13s. 6d. To him it was all clear profit, but from the sum obtained by Rich are, of course, to be deducted the expenses of the company, the lights, house rent, &c. Miss Fenton, who performed Polly, left the stage at the end of the season, to be made Duchess of Bolton.] BOOK IV. EXORDIUM TO FOURTH BOOK. Ver. 1. Yet, yet a moment,1 one dim ray of light This book may be properly distinguished from the former, by the name of the GREATER DUNCIAD, not so indeed in size but in subject; and so far contrary to the distinction anciently made of the Greater and Lesser Iliad. But much are they mistaken who imagine this work in anywise inferior to the former, or of any other hand than of our poet: of which I am much more certain than that the Iliad itself was the work of Solomon, or the Batrachomuomachia of Homer, as Barnes hath affirmed.-BENT. 1 This is an invocation of much piety. The poet, willing to approve himself a genuine son, beginneth by showing (what is ever agreeable to Dulness) his high respect for antiquity and a great family, how dull or dark soever: he next declareth his love for mystery and obscurity; and lastly his impatience to be re-united to her.-SCRIBLERUS. 2 Invoked, as the restoration of their empire is the action of the poem. 8 This is a great propriety, for a dull poet can never express himself otherwise than by halves, or imperfectly.-SCRIBLERUS. I understand it very differently; the author in this work had indeed a deep intent; there were in it mysteries or àπópрnta which he durst not fully reveal, and doubtless in divers verses (according to Milton) 66 more is meant than meets the ear."-BENT. 5 Fairly and softly, good poet! (cries the gentle Scriblerus on this place.) For sure, in spite of his unusual modesty, he shall not travel so fast toward oblivion as divers others of more consequence have done: for when I revolve in my mind the catalogue of those who have the most boldly promised to themselves immortality, viz. Pindar, Luis Gongora, Ronsard, Oldham, lyrics; Lycophron, Statius, Chapman, Blackmore, heroics; I find the one half to be already dead, and the other in utter darkness. But it becometh not us, who have taken upon us the office of commentator, to suffer our poet thus prodigally to cast away his life; contrariwise, the more hidden and abstruse is his work, and the more remote its beauties from common understanding, the more is it our duty to draw forth and exalt the same, in the face of men and angels. Herein shall we imitate the laudable spirit of those who have (for this very reason) delighted to comment on the fragments of dark and uncouth authors, preferred Ennius to Virgil, and chosen to turn the dark lanthorn of Lycophron, rather than to trim the everlasting lamp of Homer.-SCRIBLERUS. 6 Alluding to the vis inertia of matter, which, though it really be no power, is yet the foundation of all the qualities and attributes of that sluggish substance. DULNESS ASLEEP UPON THE THRONE.-CIBBER. Ver. 20. Her laureat son reclines.] With great judgment it is imagined by the poet, that such a colleague as Dulness had elected, should sleep on the throne, and have very little share in the action of the poem. Accordingly, he hath done little or nothing from the day of his anointing; having passed through the second book without taking part in any thing that was transacted about him, and through the third in profound sleep. Nor ought this, well considered, to seem strange in our days, when so many king-consorts have done the like.-SCRIBLERUS. This verse our excellent laureate took so to heart, that he appealed to all mankind, "If he was not as seldom asleep as any fool?" But it is hoped the poet hath not injured him, but rather verified his prophecy (p. 243 of his own life, 8vo. ch. ix.) where he says, "the reader will be as much pleased to find me a dunce in my old age, as he was to prove me a brisk blockhead in my youth." Wherever there was any room for briskness, or alacrity of any sort, even in sinking, he hath had it allowed him; but here, where there is nothing for him to do but to take his natural rest, he must permit his historian to be silent. It is from their actions only that princes have their character, and poets from their works; and if in those he be as much asleep as any fool, the poet must leave him and them to sleep to all eternity." -BENTLEY. "When I find my name in the satirical works of this poet, I never look upon it as any malice meant to me, but profit to himself. For he considers that my face is more known than most in the nation; and therefore a lick at the laureate will be a sure bait ad captandum vulgus, to catch little readers." -Life of Colley Cibber, chap. ii. Now if it be certain, that the works of our poet have owed their success to this ingenious expedient, we hence derive an unanswerable argument, that this fourth Dunciad, as well as the former three, hath had the author's last hand, and was by him intended for the press; or else to what purpose hath he crowned it, as we see, by this finishing stroke, the profitable lick at the laureate?-BENTLEY. [It was very unlike Colley Cibber to be asleep anywhere, or to have no action in a piece of which he was hero. At eighty years of age he was the same brisk airy character that he was in his youth, and his gallant attentions to Mrs. Woffington, when long past threescore and ten, were the talk of the town.] ACT FOR LICENSING DRAMATIC PERFORMANCES. Ver. 43. Nor couldst thou Chesterfield a tear refuse.] This noble person, in the year 1737, when the Act aforesaid was brought into the House of Lords, opposed it in an excellent speech (says Mr. Cibber) “with a lively spirit, and uncommon eloquence." This speech had the honour to be answered by the said Mr. Cibber, with a lively spirit also, and in a manner very uncommon, in the 8th chapter of his Life and Manners. And here, gentle reader, would I gladly insert the other speech, whereby thou mightest judge between them but I must defer it on account of some differences not yet adjusted between the noble author and myself, concerning the true reading of certain passages. SCRIBLERUS. [The speech of Lord Chesterfield against the licensing bill brought in by Walpole, in 1737, was much admired. "This bill," he said, "is not only an encroachment on liberty, but it is likewise an encroachment on property. Wit, my lords, is a sort of property-the property of those who have it, and too often the only property they have to depend on. It is, indeed, but a precarious dependence. We, my Lords, thank God, have a dependence of another kind." This sarcasm is worthy of Pope. Our author's anxiety to have a "lick at the laureate" on all occasions, is curiously evinced by the allusion to Chesterfield and Cibber in this note. The laureate does not mention the name of Chesterfield. His words are, "While this law was in debate, a lively spirit and uncommon eloquence was employed against it." And he then proceeds to show that the licentiousness of the stage called for some restraint. Lord Hervey, in his memoirs, states that "besides the general liberty that was taken at this time with religion, as well as government, in the theatrical representations, Sir Robert Walpole had got into his hands two plays in manuscript, which were the most barefaced and scurrilous abuse on the persons and characters of the King and Queen, and |