Before them march'd that awful Aristarch;
Plough'd was his front with many a deep remark:
His hat, which never vail'd to human pride,33
Walker with reverence took, and laid aside.
Low bow'd the rest: he, kingly, did but nod; 34
So upright Quakers please both man and God.
"Mistress! dismiss that rabble from your throne:
Avaunt! is Aristarchus yet unknown ?35
Thy mighty scholiast, whose unwearied pains
Made Horace dull, and humbled Milton's strains?
Turn what they will to verse, their toil is vain,
Critics like me shall make it prose again.

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210

Roman and Greek grammarians! know your better: 36 215 Author of something yet more great than letter:

While towering o'er your alphabet, like Saul,

Stands our digamma,37 and o'ertops them all.

""Tis true, on words is still our whole debate,

220

Dispute of me or te, of aut or at;

To sound or sink, in cano, O or A,
Or give up Cicero to C or K.38

33 The hat-worship, as the Quakers call it, is an abomination to that sect: yet, where it is necessary to pay that respect to man (as in the courts of justice and Houses of Parliament) they have, to avoid offence, and yet not violate their conscience, permitted other people to uncover them.

35 A famous commentator, and corrector of Homer, whose name hath been frequently used to signify a complete critic. The compliment paid by our author to this eminent professor, in applying to him so great a name, was the reason that he hath omitted to comment on this part, which contains his own praises. We shall therefore supply that loss to our best ability.—Scriblerus. "Sic notus Ulysses!"-Virg.

"Dost thou not feel me, Rome?"-Ben Jonson. 36 Imitated from Propertius, speaking of the Æneid :

"Cedite, Romani scriptores, cedite Graii!

Nescio quid majus nascitur Iliade."

37 Alludes to the boasted restoration of the Eolic Digamma, in his long projected edition of Homer. He calls it something more than letter, from the enormous figure it would make among the other letters, being one gamma set upon the shoulders of another.

38 [Grammatical disputes about the manner of pronouncing Cicero's name in Greek. It is a dispute whether in Latin the name of Hermagoras should end in as or a. Quintilian quotes Cicero as writing it Hermagora, which

Let Freind affect to speak as Terence spoke,
And Alsop never but like Horace joke ;39
From me, what Virgil, Pliny may deny,
Manilius or Solinus shall supply: 40
For Attic phrase in Plato let them seek,
I poach in Suidas for unlicensed Greek.41
In ancient sense if any needs will deal,

225

Be sure I give them fragments, not a meal;

230

What Gellius or Stobæus hash'd before,

Or chew'd by blind old scholiasts o'er and o'er.42

The critic eye, that microscope of wit,

Sees hairs and pores, examines bit by bit:

How parts relate to parts, or they to whole,

235

The body's harmony, the beaming soul,

Are things which Kuster, Burman, Wasse shall see,
When man's whole frame is obvious to a flea.

"Ah, think not, mistress! more true dulness lies In Folly's cap, than Wisdom's grave disguise;

43

240

Bentley rejects, and says Quintilian must be mistaken; Cicero could not write it so; and that in this case he would not believe Cicero himself. These are his very words: "Ego vero Ciceronem ita scripsisse ne Ciceroni quidem affirmanti crediderim."-Epist. ad Mill. in fin. Frag. Menand. et Phil.-Warburton. [Warburton told Spence that Lord Granville had long wanted to pass an evening with Pope; that he at last did so. Mr. P. said that the two hours were wholly taken up by his lordship in debating and settling how the first verse in the Eneid was to be pronounced, and whether we should say Cicero or Kikero.]

39 Dr. Robert Freind, master of Westminster School, and canon of Christ Church. Dr. Anthony Alsop, a happy imitator of the Horatian style.

40 Some critics having had it in their choice to comment either on Virgil or Manilius, Pliny or Solinus, have chosen the worse author, the more freely to display their critical talents.

41 The first, a dictionary writer of impertinent facts and barbarous words; the second, a minute critic; the third, a collector, who gave his commonplace book to the public, where we happen to find much mincemeat of good old authors.

42 These men taking the same things eternally from the mouth of one. another.

48 By this it appears, that the dunces and fops, mentioned ver. 139, 140, had a contention for the goddess's favour on this great day. Those got the start; but these make it up by their spokesman in the next speech. It seems as if Aristarchus here first saw him advancing with his fair pupil.

Like buoys, that never sink into the flood,
On Learning's surface we but lie and nod.
Thine is the genuine head of many a house,
And much divinity without a Noûs.44
Nor could a Barrow work on every block,
Nor has one Atterbury spoil'd the flock.45
See! still thy own, the heavy canon roll,
And metaphysic smokes involve the pole.
For thee we dim the eyes, and stuff the head
With all such reading as was never read;
For thee explain a thing till all men doubt it,
And write about it, goddess, and about it:
So spins the silk-worm small its slender store,
And labours till it clouds itself all o'er.

"What though we let some better sort of fool
Thrid every science, run through every school?
Never by tumbler through the hoops was shown
Such skill in passing all, and touching none.46
He may indeed (if sober all this time)
Plague with dispute, or persecute with rhyme:
We only furnish what he cannot use,
Or wed to what he must divorce, a Muse:
Full in the midst of Euclid dip at once,
And petrify a genius to a dunce : 47

245

250

255

260

44 A word much affected by the learned Aristarchus in common conversation, to signify genius, or natural acumen. But this passage has a farther view: Nous was the Platonic term for mind, or the first cause; and that system of Divinity is here hinted at which terminates in blind nature, without a Noūs: such as the poet afterwards describes (speaking of the dream of one of these later Platonists),

Or that bright Image to our fancy draw,
Which Theocles in raptured vision saw,
That nature, &c.

45 Isaac Barrow, Master of Trinity; Francis Atterbury, Dean of Christchurch: both great geniuses and eloquent preachers; one more conversant in the sublime geometry, the other in classical learning; but who equally made it their care to advance the polite arts in their several societies.

46 [These two verses are verbatim from an epigram of Dr. Evans, of St. John's College, Oxford; given to my father twenty years before the Dunciad was written.-Warton.]

47 Those who have no genius, employed in works of imagination; those who have, in abstract sciences.

Or, set on metaphysic ground to prance,
Show all his paces, not a step advance.
With the same cement, ever sure to bind,
We bring to one dead level every mind.
Then take him to develop, if you can,
And hew the block off, and get out the man."
But wherefore waste I words? I see advance
Whore, pupil, and laced governor from France.4
Walker! our hat:"- -nor more he deign'd to say,
But, stern as Ajax' spectre, strode away.50

265

48

270

49

In flow'd at once a gay embroider'd race,
And tittering push'd the pedants off the place: 51
Some would have spoken, but the voice was drown'd
By the French horn, or by the opening hound.
The first came forwards, with an easy mien,
As if he saw St. James's and the queen.52
When thus the attendant orator begun : 53
"Receive, great empress! thy accomplish'd son:
Thine from the birth, and sacred from the rod,
A dauntless infant! never scared with God.54

275

280

48 A notion of Aristotle, that there was originally in every block of marble a statue, which would appear on the removal of the superfluous parts.·

49 Why laced? Because gold and silver are necessary trimming to denote the dress of a person of rank; and the governor must be supposed so in foreign countries, to be admitted into courts and other places of fair recep tion. But how comes Aristarchus to know at sight that this governor came from France? Know? Why, by his laced coat.-Scriblerus.

[Supposed to allude to the Duke of Kingston and his mistress, Mad. de Latouche.]

50 See Homer Odyss. xi. where the ghost of Ajax turns sullenly from Ulysses the traveller, who had succeeded against him in the dispute for the arms of Achilles. There had been the same contention between the travelling and the university tutor for the spoils of our young heroes; and fashion adjudged it to the former: so that this might well occasion the sullen dignity in departure, which Longinus so much admired.-Scriblerus.

51 "Rideat et pulset lasciva decentius ætas."-Hor.

52 Reflecting on the disrespectful and indecent behaviour of several forward young persons in the presence, so offensive to all serious men, and to none more than the good Scriblerus.

53 The governor above-said. The poet gives him no particular name; 'being unwilling, I presume, to offend or do injustice to any, by celebrating one only with whom this character agrees, in preference to so many who equally deserve it.-Scriblerus.

54" Sine Dîs animosus infans."-Hor.

The mother begg'd the blessing of a rake.
Thou gavest that ripeness, which so soon began,
And ceased so soon, he ne'er was boy, nor man;
Through school and college, thy kind cloud o'ercast,
Safe and unseen the young Eneas pass'd:
Thence bursting glorious, all at once let down,
Stunn'd with his giddy 'larum half the town.

55 See Virg. Æneid, i:

"At Venus obscuro gradientes aëre sepsit,

55

Et multo nebulæ circum Dea fudit amictu,
Cernere ne quis eos;-1. neu quis contingere possit:

2. Molirive moram;-aut 3. veniendi poscere causas."

290

Where he enumerates the causes why his mother took this care of him; to wit, 1. that nobody might touch or correct him: 2. might stop or detain him: 3. examine him about the progress he had made, or so much as guess why he came there.