THE DUNCIAD.

BOUK THE SECOND.

ARGUMENT.

The King being proclaimed, the solemnity is graced with public Games, and sports of various kinds; not instituted by the Hero, as by Æneas in Virgil, but for greater honour by the Goddess in person (in like manner as the games Pythia, Isthmia, &r. were anciently said to be ordained by the Gods, and as Thetis herself appearing, according to Homer, Odyss. xxiv. proposed the prizes in honour of her son Achilles). Hither flock the Poets and Critics, attended, as is but just , with their Patrons and Booksellers

. The Goddess is first pleased, for her disport, to propose games to the Booksellers, and setteth up the Phantom of a Poet, which they contend to overtake. The_Races described, with their divers accidents. Next, the game for a Poetess. Then follow the Exercises for the Poets, of_tickling, vociferating, diving : The first holds forth the arts and practices of Dedicators, the second of Disputants and fustian Poets, the third of profound, dark, and dirty Party-writers. Lastly, for the Critics, the Goddess proposes (with great propriety) an Exercise, not of their parts, but their patience, in hearing the works of two voluminous Authors, one in verse, and the other in prose, deliberately read without sleeping: The various effects of which, with the several degrees and manners of their operation, are here set forth; till the whole number, not of Critics only, but of spectators, actors, and all present, fall asleep; which naturally and necessarily ends the games.

BOOK II.

IGH on a gorgeous seat, that far out-shone

Or that where on her Curls the Public pours 3,
All-bounteous, fragrant Grains and Golden show'rs,

· Henley's gilt tub,] The pulpit of a Dissenter zin. P. [It is not known whether Flecknoe had is usually called a Tub; but that of Mr Orator actually died about the time (1682) when Dryden Henley was covered with velvet, and adorned wrote his famous satire, or whether the latter with gold. He had also a fair altar, and over it with careless malice gave unenviable notoriety this extraordinary inscription, The Primitive to a harmless living writer, who had to the best Eucharist. See the history of this person, of his ability honoured Dryden himself. As to Book III. (v. 199). P.

Great Cibber sate: The proud Parnassian sneer,
The conscious simper, and the jealous leer,
Mix on his look : All eyes direct their rays
On him, and crowds turn Coxcombs as they gaze:
His Peers shine round him with reflected grace,
New edge their dulness, and new bronze their face.
So from the Sun's broad beam in shallow urns
Heav'n's twinkling Sparks draw light, and point their homs.

Not with more glee, by hands pontific crown d,
With scarlet hats wide-waving circled round,
Rome in her Capitol saw Querno sit”,
Thron'd on seven hills, the Antichrist of wit.

And now the Queen, to glad her sons, proclaims,
By herald Hawkers, high heroic Games.
They summon all her Race: an endless band
Pours forth, and leaves unpeopled half the land.
A motley mixture! in long wigs, in bags,
In silks, in crapeso, in Garters, and in Rags,
From drawing-rooms, from colleges, from garrets,
On horse, on foot, in hacks, and gilded chariots:
All who true Dunces in her cause appear'd,
And all who knew those Dunces to reward.

Amid that area wide they took their stand,
Where the tall inay-pole once o'er-look'd the Strand.
But now (so ANNE and Piety ordain)
A Church collects the saints of Drury-lane 3.

With Authors, Stationers • obey'd the call,
(The field of glory is a field for all).
Glory, and gain, th' industrious tribe provoke;
And gentle Dulness ever loves a joke.

3

Curl) is a false assertion- I had indeed the to weep for joy. He was ever after a constant corporal punishment of what the Gentlemen of frequenter of the Pope's table, drank abundantly, the long robe are pleased jocosely to call mount- and poured forth verses without number. PAULUS ing the Rostrum for one hour; but that scene Jovius. Some idea of his poetry is given by of action was not in the month of March, but in Fam. Strada, in his Prolusions. P. February.” And of the History of his being tost ? [The material of an ordinary clergyman's in a Blanket, he saith, “Here, Scriblerus! gown. Cf. Moral Essays, Ep. 1. V. 137.) thou leeseth in what thou assertest concerning 3 ['In front of the spot now. occupied by $ the blanket; it was not a blanket, but a rug.' Mary-le-Strand, commonlycalled the New Church, Much in the same manner Mr Cibber remon- anciently stood a cross, at which, says Stowe, in strated, that his Brothers, at Bedlam, mentioned the year 1294, and other times, the justices itine Book 1. were not Brazen, but Blocks; yet our rant sat without London.” In the place of this Author let it pass unaltered, as a trifle that no cross was set up a May-pole, which having been way altered the relationship. Scriblerus. taken down in 1713, a new one was erected oppo

1 Rome in her Capitol saw Querno sit,] site Somerset House. This second May-pole Camillo Querno was of Apulia, who, hearing the had two gilt balls and a vanc on the summit

, great Encouragement which Leo X. gave to and was decorated on holidays with flags and poets, travelled to Rome with a harp in his hand, garlands. It was removed in 1718, probably being and sung to it twenty thousand verses of a poem thought in the way of the new church which called Alexias. He was introduced as a Buffoon was then being erected. Sir Isaac Newton to Leo, and promoted to the honour of the Laurel; begged it of the parish, and afterwards sent it to a jest which the Court of Rome and the Pope the Rector of Wanstead, who set it up in Warhimself entered into so far, as to cause him to stead Park to support the then largest telescope ride on an elephant to the Capitol, and to hold a in Europe.' Leigh Hunt's Town.] solemn festival on his coronation; at which it is 4 [Stationers, i.e. booksellers. ) recorded the Poet himself was so transported as

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A Poet's form she plac'd before their eyes,
And bade the nimblest racer seize the prize;
No meagre, muse-rid mope, adust and thin,
In a dun night-gown of his own loose skin;
But such a bulk as no twelve bards could raise,
Twelve starv'ling bards of these degen'rate days.
All as a partridge plump, full-fed, and fair,
She form'd this image of well-body'd air;
With pert flat eyes she window'd well its head :
A brain of feathers, and a heart of lead;
And empty words she gave, and sounding strain,
But senseless, lifeless! idol void and vain!
Never was dash'd out, at one lucky hit,
A fool, so just a copy of a wit;
So like, that critics said, and courtiers swore,
A Wit it was, and call’d the phantom Moore'.

All gaze with ardour: some a poet's name,
Others a sword-knot and lac'd suit inflame.
But lofty Lintot 2 in the circle rose:
“This prize is mine; who tempt it are my foes;
“With me began this genius, and shall end.”
He spoke: and who with Lintot shall contend?

Fear held them mute. Alone, untaught to fear,
Stood dauntless Curl 3; “Behold that rival here!
“The race by vigour, not by vaunts is won;
“So take the hindmost, Hell,” (he said) “and run.
Swift as a bard the bailiff leaves behind,
He left huge Lintot, and out-stripp'd the wind.
As when a dab-chick 4 waddles thro' the copse
On feet and wings, and flies, and wades, and hops :
So lab’ring on, with shoulders, hands, and head,
Wide as a wind-mill all his figure spread,
With arms expanded Bernard rows his state,
And left-legg'd Jacob seems to emulate.
Full in the middle way there stood a lake,

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[Pope has a note too long for insertion on Anecdotes, calls Lintot 'a great sputtering the sins of this hated personage, James Moore fellow.') Smythe, the son of Arthur Moore. James was 3 Stood dauntless Curl;) We come now to an admirer of Teresa Blount, and intimate with a character of much respect, that of Mr Edmund her family, as well as an occasional associate of Curl. As a plain repetition of great actions is Pope's literary circle. He was the author of a the best praise of them, we shall only say of this comedy called the Rival Modes, in which he was eminent man, that he carried the Trade many accused by Pope of having plagiarised the lines lengths beyond what it ever before had arrived addressed by the latter to Martha Blount on her at; and that he was the envy and admiration of birth-day. See note ad loc.)

all his profession. He possessed himself of a ? But lofty Lintot] We enter here upon the command over all authors whatever; he caused episode of the Booksellers: Persons, whose names them to write what he pleased; they could not being more known and famous in the learned call their very Names their own.

He was not world than those of the Authors in this poem, do only famous among these; he was taken notice therefore need less explanation. The action of of by the State, the Church, and the Law, and Mr Bernard Lintot here imitates that of Dares in received particular marks of distinction from Virgil, rising just in this manner to lay hold on a each. P. [Part om.] Buil. This eniinent Bookseller printed the Rival 4 [A dab-chick is small water-fowl which is Modes before-mentioned. P. [Young, in Spence's constantly dabbling under the water.]

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Which Curl's Corinna 1 chanc'd that morn to make :
(Such was her wont, at early dawn to drop
Her evening cates before his neighbour's shop,)
Here fortun'd Curl to slide; loud shout the band,
And “Bernard ! Bernard !” rings thro' all the Strand.
Obscene with filth the miscreant lies bewray'd,
Fall’n in the plash his wickedness had laid :
Then first (if Poets aught of truth declare)
The caitiff Vaticide conceiv'd a pray’r.

“Hear, Jove! whose name my bards and I adore,
As much at least as any God's, or more;
And him and his if more devotion warms,
Down with the Bible, up with the Pope's Arms 3."

A place there is, betwixt earth, air, and seas 3,
Where, from Ambrosia, Jove retires for ease.
There in his seat two spacious vents appear,
On this he sits, to that he leans his ear,
And hears the various vows of fond mankind;
Some beg an eastern, some a western wind:
All vain petitions, mounting to the sky,
With reams abundant this abode supply;
Amus'd he reads, and then returns the bills
Sign'd with that Ichor which from Gods distils 4.

In office here fair Cloacina 5 stands,
And ministers to Jove with purest hands.
Forth from the heap she pick'd her Vot’ry's pray'r,
And plac'd it next him, a distinction rare!
Oft had the Goddess heard her servants call,
From her black grottos near the Temple-wall,
List’ning delighted to the jest unclean
Of link-boys vile, and watermen obscene;
Where as he fish'd her nether realms for Wit,
She oft had favour'd him, and favours yet.
Renew'd by ordure's sympathetic force,
As oild with magic juices 7 for the course,
Vig'rous he rises; from th' effluvia strong

1 Curl's Corinna) This name, it seems, was Arms.) The Bible, Curl's sign; the Cross-key's taken by one Mrs T- who procured some

Lintot's. P. private letters of Mr Pope, while almost a boy, 3 See Lucian's Icaro-Menippus, where this to Mr Cromwell, and sold them without the fiction is more extended. P. consent of either of those Gentlemen to Curl, * Ver. 92. Alludes to Homer, Iliad v. (v. who printed them in 12mo, 1727. We only take 339). this opportunity of mentioning the manner in -ρέε δ' όμβροτον αιμα Θέoιο, which those letters got abroad, which the author "Ιχωρ οίος πέρ τε ρέει μακάρεσσι Θεοίσιν. was ashamed of as very trivial things, full not Å stream of necťrous humour issuing floud, only of levities, but of wrong judgments of men Sanguine, such as celestial spirits may bleed. and books, and only excusable from the youth

Milton [Par. Lost, Bk. vi. V. 332). and inexperience of the writer. P. Mrs Elizabeth 5 Cloacina] The Roman Goddess of the Thomas was first styled Corinna by Dryden, to common-sewers.

P. whom she sent a copy of verses. She died, in 6 Where as he fish'd &c.] See the preface want, in 1730. Carruthers. (On the subject of to Swift's and Pope's Miscellanies. P. this 'unwarranted publication' see Introductory 7 As oild with magic juices] Alluding to the Memoir, p. xxxiii.)

opinion that there are ointments used by witches : Down with the Bible, up with the Pope's to enable them to fly in the air, &c. P.

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Imbibes new life, and scours and stinks along;
Re-passes Lintot, vindicates the race,
Nor heeds the brown dishonours of his face.

And now the victor stretch'd his eager hand,
Where the tall Nothing stood, or seem'd to stand;
A shapeless shade, it melted from his sight,
Like forms in clouds, or visions of the night.
To seize his papers, Curl, was next thy care;
His papers light fly diverse, tost in air;
Songs, sonnets, epigrams the winds uplift,
And whisk 'em back to Evans, Young, and Swift?.
Th’ embroider'd suit at least he deem'd his prey;
That suit an unpaid tailor” snatch'd away.
No rag, no scrap, of all the beau, or wit,
That once so flutter'd, and that once so writ.

Heav'n rings with laughter. Of the laughter vain,
Dulness, good Queen, repeats the jest again.
Three wicked imps of her own Grubstreet_choir,
She deck'd like Congreve, Addison, and Priors;
Mears, Warner, Wilkins run: delusive thought!
Breval, Bond, Besaleel, the varlets caught.
Curl stretches after Gay, but Gay is gone :
He grasps an empty Josephó for a John;
So Proteus, hunted in a nobler shape,
Became, when seiz'd, a puppy, or an ape.

To him the Goddess : “Son! thy grief lay down,
And turn this whole illusion on the town 6 :
As the sage dame, experienc'd in her trade,
By names of Toasts retails each batter'd jade;
(Whence hapless Monsieur much complains at Paris
Of wrongs from Duchesses and Lady Maries ? ;)

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1 Evans, Young, and Swift.) Some of those printed in news-papers.

-"Bond writ a satire persons, whose writings, epigrams,

or jests he "against Mr P. - Capt. Breval was author of had owned.

See Note on v. 5o. Dr Evans, of "the Confederates, an ingenious dramatic perSt John's College, Oxford, author of the Appa- formance, to expose Mr P.;, Mr Gay, Dr Arb. rition, a Satire on Tindal. Warton.

“and some ladies of quality,' says Curl. P. an unpaid tailor) This line has been loudly * Mears, Warner, Wilkins] Booksellers, and complained of in Mist, June 8, Dedic. to Sawney, Printers of much anonymous stuff