Cast on the prostrate Nine a scornful look,
Then thus in quaint recitativo spoke :-

51

'O Cara Cara! silence all that train! Joy to great Chaos! 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!" 60 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, Like bold Briareus, with a hundred hands; 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 '- 69 She heard, and drove him to the Hibernian shore. And now had Fame's posterior trumpet blown, 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, by sure attraction led, And strong impulsive gravity of head: 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; Whate'er of mongrel no one class admits, A wit with dunces, and a dunce with wits.

80

90

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.

100

There march'd the bard and blockhead, side by side,

*

Who rhymed for hire, and patronised for pride.
Narcissus, praised with all a parson's power,
Look'd a white lily sunk beneath a shower.
There moved Montalto+ with superior air;
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
Composed he stood, bold Benson thrust him by :
On two unequal crutches propp'd he came, 111
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,

On whom three hundred gold-capp'd youths await,
To lug the ponderous volume off in state.

When Dulness, smiling :-Thus revive the wits!

But murder first, and mince them all to bits: 120 As erst Medea (cruel so to save!)

A new edition of old son gave;

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

*Lord Hervey, so lauded by Middleton in his dedication of the "Life of Cicero."

+ Sir Thomas Hanmer, editor of a rival Shakspeare. See Book III., 1. 325, note.

And you, my critics! in the checker'd shade, Admire new light through holes yourselves have made.

'Leave not a foot of verse, a foot of stone, A page, a grave, that they can call their own; But spread, my sons, your glory thin or thick, On passive paper or on solid brick.

130

So by each bard an alderman shall sit ;*
A heavy lord shall hang at every wit; +
And while on Fame's triumphal car they ride,
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 :
When, lo! a spectre rose, whose index-hand
Held forth the virtue of the dreadful wand: 140
His beaver'd brow a birchen garland wears,
Dropping with infants' blood, and mothers' tears:
O'er every vein a shuddering horror runs ;
Eton and Winton shake through all their sons;
All flesh is humbled; Westminster's bold race
Shrink, and confess the genius of the place;
The pale boy-senator yet tingling stands,
And holds his breeches close with both his hands.
Then thus:Since man from beast by words
is known,
Words are man's province; words we teach alone,
When Reason doubtful, like the Samian letter,+
Points him two ways, the narrower is the better:
Placed at the door of Learning, youth to guide,
We never suffer it to stand too wide.

To ask, to guess, to know, as they commence,
fancy opens the quick springs of sense,

149

Alluding to the monument erected to Butler, the author of 'Hudibras,' by Alderman Barber.

+ Lord Radnor lived next to Pope's villa.

The letter Y was used by Pythagoras as an emblem of the different roads of virtue and vice.

We ply the memory, we load the brain,
Bind rebel wit, and double chain on chain,
Confine the thought to exercise the breath,
And keep them in the pale of words till death. 160
Whate'er the talents, or howe'er design'd,
We hang one jingling padlock on the mind:
A poet the first day he dips his quill;
And what the last? a very poet still.
Pity the charm works only in our wall,
Lost, lost too soon in yonder House or Hall :*
There truant Wyndham every Muse gave o'er;
There Talbot sunk, and was a wit no more!
How sweet an Ovid, Murray,§ was our boast!
How many Martials were in Pulteney || lost! 170
Else sure some bard, to our eternal praise,
In twice ten thousand rhyming nights and days,
Had reach'd the work, the all that mortal can ;
And South beheld that masterpiece** of man.'

'O!' cried the goddess, 'for some pedant reign,
Some gentle James, to bless the land again;
To stick the doctor's chair into the throne,
Give law to words, or war with words alone,
Senates and courts with Greek and Latin rule,
And turn the council to a grammar-school!
For, sure, if Dulness sees a grateful day,
"Tis in the shade of arbitrary sway.

O! if my sons may learn one earthly thing,
Teach but that one, sufficient for a king;

180

That which my priests, and mine alone, main

tain,

Which, as it dies or lives, we fall or reign:

*The House of Commons and Westminster Hall.

+ Sir William Wyndham.

Charles Talbot, Lord Chancellor in 1733.

8 Lord Mansfield.

Earl of Bath.

Dr. Robert South, Canon of Westminster.

his sermons.

Noted for

** An' epigram. Dr. Robert South "used to declare that a perfect epigram was as difficult a performance as an epic poem; and the critics say, an epic poem is the greatest work human nature is capable of.""

May you, my Cam and Isis, preach it long!
The right divine of kings to govern wrong."

Prompt at the call, around the goddess roll Broad hats, and hoods, and caps, a sable shoal: 190 Thick and more thick the black blockade extends, A hundred head of Aristotle's friends.

Nor wert thou, Isis! wanting to the day,
Though Christ-church long kept prudishly away.
Each stanch polemic, stubborn as a rock;
Each fierce logician, still expelling Locke,*
Came whip and spur, and dash'd through thin
and thick,

On German Crousaz + and Dutch Burgersdyck :
As many quit the streams that murmuring fall
To lull the sons of Margaret and Clare-hall, 200
Where Bentley late tempestuous wont to sport
In troubled waters, but now sleeps in port.
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,
Walker with reverence took, and laid aside.
Low bow'd the rest: he, kingly, did but nod:
So upright Quakers please both man and God.
'Mistress! dismiss that rabble from your throne !
Avaunt! is Aristarchus yet unknown?
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.
Roman and Greek grammarians! know your
better;

210

Author of something yet more great than letter:

*John Locke, the celebrated philosopher, was expelled from his studentship at Christ-church, Oxford, in 1684, by Charles II.

↑ A Swiss professor, the author of the commentary on the Essay on Man,' and a Treatise on Logic.

The lines 200-274 are all levelled at Dr. Bentley, the Master of Trinity, Cambridge.

§ Bentley.

Vice-master of Trinity, and Bentley's constant com

anion.