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I sing. Say you, her instruments, the great!
Call'd to this work by Dulness, Jove, and Fate;
You, by whose care, in vain decried and cursed,
Still Dunce the second reigns like Dunce the first;
Say, how the goddess bade Britannia sleep,
And pour'd her spirit o'er the land and deep.

In eldest time, ere mortals writ or read;
Ere Pallas issued from the thunderer's head; 10
Dulness o'er all possess'd her ancient right,
Daughter of Chaos and eternal Night:
Fate in their dotage this fair idiot gave,
Gross as her sire, and as her mother grave;
Laborious, heavy, busy, bold, and blind,
She ruled, in native anarchy, the mind.

Still her old empire to restore she tries; For, born a goddess, Dulness never dies.

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O thou! whatever title please thine ear, Dean, Drapier, Bickerstaff, or Gulliver! * Whether thou choose Cervantes' serious air, Or laugh and shake in Rabelais' easy chair, Or praise the court, or magnify mankind, Or thy grieved country's copper chains unbind; From thy Boeotia though her power retires, Mourn not, my Swift! at aught our realm acquires; Here pleased behold her mighty wings outspread, To hatch a new Saturnian age of lead.

Close to those walls where Folly holds her throne, And laughs to think Monroet would take her down; Where o'er the gates by his famed father's hand, Great Cibber's brazen, brainless brothers stand;‡ One cell there is conceal'd from vulgar eye, The cave of Poverty and Poetry :

33

Keen, hollow winds howl through the bleak recess Emblem of music caused by emptiness.

*These four names are in allusion to Dean Swift and his writings.

+ Physician to Bethlehem Hospital.

"Mr. Caius Gabriel Cibber, father of the poet-laureate. The two statues of the lunatics over the gates of Bedlam Hospital were done by him."

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Four guardian virtues, round support her throne."

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Hence bards, like Proteus, long in vain tied down,
Escape in monsters, and amaze the town;
Hence Miscellanies spring, the weekly boast
Of Curll's chaste press, and Lintot's rubric post ;*
Hence hymning Tyburn's elegiac lines;+
Hence, Journals, Medleys, Mercuries, Magazines;
Sepulchral lies, our holy walls to grace;
And new-year odes,+ and all the Grub-street race.
In clouded majesty here Dulness shone;
Four guardian Virtues, round, support her throne:
Fierce champion, Fortitude, that knows no fears
Of hisses, blows, or want, or loss of ears:

Calm Temperance, whose blessings those partake
Who hunger and who thirst for scribbling sake: 50
Prudence, whose glass presents the approaching
jail :

Poetic Justice, with her lifted scale,

Where, in nice balance, truth with gold she weighs, And solid pudding against empty praise.

Here she beholds the chaos dark and deep,
Where nameless somethings in their causes sleep,
Till genial Jacob, § or a warm third day,||
Call forth each mass, a poem or a play:

How hints, like spawn, scarce quick in embryo lie,
How new-born nonsense first is taught to cry, 60
Maggots half-formed in rhyme exactly meet,
And learn to crawl upon poetic feet.

Here one poor word a hundred clenches makes,
And ductile Dulness new meanders takes;

*Two booksellers. See Book II. The former was fined for publishing indecent books; the latter usually adorned his shop with titles in red letters.

"It was an ancient English custom, for the malefactors to sing a psalm at their execution at Tyburn; and no less customary to print elegies on their deaths, at the same time, or before."

The odes composed by the poet-laureate to be sung at court on New-year's day.

§ Jacob Jonson, a bookseller.

It was usual for the third, sixth, and ninth performance of a new play to be appropriated for the benefit of the author. See also line 114,

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There motley images her fancy strike,
Figures ill-pair'd, and similes unlike.
She sees a mob of metaphors advance,
Pleased with the madness of the mazy dance;
How tragedy and comedy embrace;
How farce and epic get a jumbled race;
How Time himself stands still at her command,
Realms shift their place, and ocean turns to land.
Here, gay description Egypt glads with showers,
Or gives to Zembla fruits, to Barca flowers;
Glittering with ice, here hoary hills are seen;
There painted valleys of eternal green;
In cold December fragrant chaplets blow,
And heavy harvests nod beneath the snow.

All these, and more, the cloud-compelling queen
Beholds through fogs, that magnify the scene. 80
She, tinsell'd o'er in robes of varying hues,
With self-applause her wild creation views;
Sees momentary monsters rise and fall,
And with her own fools-colours gilds them all.
'Twas on the day, when Thorold,* rich and grave,
Like Cimon, triumph'd both on land and wave; †
Pomps without guilt, of bloodless swords and maces,
Glad chains, warm furs, broad banners, and broad
faces.

Now night descending, the proud scene was o'er,
But lived in Settle's numbers one day more. 90
Now mayors and shrieves all hush'd and satiate lay,
Yet eat in dreams the custard of the day;
While pensive poets painful vigils keep,
Sleepless themselves to give their readers sleep.
Much to the mindful queen the feast recalls,
What city swans once sung within the walls;

* Lord Mayor's day, 1720, when Sir George Thorold entered upon office.

"The procession of a lord mayor was made partly by land, and partly by water. Cimon, the famous Athenian general, obtained a victory by sea, and another by land, on the same day, over the Persians and barbarians."

Poet to the City of London.

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