THE DUNCIAD.

En Four Books.

TO DOCTOR JONATHAN SWIFT.

BOOK THE FIRST.

ARGUMENT.

The Proposition, the Invocation, and the Inscription. Then the original of the great empire of Dulness, and cause of the continuance thereof. The College of the Goddess in the City, with her private Academy for Poets in particular; the governors of it, and the four Cardinal Virtues. Then the Poem hastes into the midst of things, presenting her, on the evening of a Lord Mayor's day, revolving the long succession of her sons, and the glories past and to come. She fixes her eye on Bays to be the instrument of that great event which is the subject of the poem. He is described pensive among his books, giving up the cause, and apprehending the period of her empire: after debating whether to betake himself to the Church, or to Gaming, or to Party-writing, he raises an altar of proper books, and (making first his solemn prayer and declaration) purposes thereon to sacrifice all his unsuccessful writings. As the pile is kindled, the Goddess beholding the flame from her seat, flies and puts it out by casting upon it the poem of Thule. She forthwith reveals herself to him, transports him to her temple, unfolds her arts, and initiates him into her mysteries; then announcing the death of Eusden, the Poet Laureate, anoints him, carries him to court, and proclaims him successor.

THE mighty mother, and her son who brings
The Smithfield muses to the ear of kings,

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 curst,
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,
Dulness o'er all possess'd her ancient right,
Daughter of Chaos and eternal Night:

712

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.

m

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 ought 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 Monroe 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.

Keen hollow winds howl thro' the bleak recess,
Emblem of music caus'd by emptiness.

Hence bards, like Proteus long in vain tied down,
Escape in monsters, and amaze the town.
Hence Miscellanies spring, the weekly boast
Of Curl's chaste press, and Lintot's rubric post P:
Hence hymning Tyburn's elegiac lines",

Isaac Bickerstaff, the assumed name under which Swift also wrote. Ironicè, alluding to Gulliver's representations of both.-The next line relates to the papers of the Drapier against the currency of Wood's copper coin in Ireland, which, upon the great discontent of the people, his masjesty was graciously pleased to recal.

The ancient golden age is by poets styled Saturnian; but in the chemical language Saturn is lead. She is said here only to be spreading her wings to hatch this age, which is not produced completely till the fourth book.

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, and (as the son justly says of them) are no ill monuments of his fame as an artist. The King of Spain is said to have offered their weight in gold for them.

P Two booksellers, of whom see book ii. The former was fined by the Court of King's Bench for publishing obscene books; the latter usually adorned his shop with titles in red letters.

It is an ancient English custom for the malefactors to sing a psalm at

Hence Journals, Medleys, Merc'ries, 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.
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;
Maggots half-form'd in rhyme exactly meet,
And learn to crawl upon poetic feet.

Here one poor word an hundred clenches makes,
And ductile Dulness new meanders takes ;
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 Ægypt glads with showers ",

their execution at Tyburn, and no less customary to print elegies on their deaths, at the same time, or before.

-Genus unde Latinum,

Albanique patres, atque altæ mania Roma.-VIRG. Æn. i.

Is a just satire on the flatteries and falsehoods admitted to be inscribed on the walls of churches in epitaphs.

• Made by the poet laureate for the time being, to be sung at court on every new-year's day, the words of which are happily drowned in the voices and instruments.

Alludes to the transgressions of the unities in the plays of such poets. For the miracles wrought upon time and place, and the mixture of tragedy and comedy, farce and epic, see "Pluto and Proserpine," "Penelope," &c., if yet extant.

In the Lower Egypt rain is of no use, the overflowing of the Nile being sufficient to impregnate the soil.

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.

V

All these, and more, the cloud-compelling queen Beholds through fogs, that magnify the scene: She, tinsel'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 ** 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: 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 recals What city swans once sung within the walls; Much she revolves their arts, their ancient praise, And sure succession down from Heywood's days". She saw, with joy, the line immortal run, Each sire imprest and glaring in his son : So watchful Bruin forms, with plastic care, Each growing lump, and brings it to a bear. She saw old Prynne in restless Daniel shine",

▾ From Homer's epithet of Jupiter, veλnyegéta Zɛús.

w The procession of a Lord Mayor is 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.

* Settle was poet to the city of London. His office was to compose yearly panegyrics upon the Lord Mayors, and verses to be spoken in the pageants; but that part of the show being at length frugally abolished, the employment of city poet ceased, so that upon Settle's demise there was no successor to that place.

John Heywood, whose interludes were printed in the time of Henry VIII.

The first edition had it,

She saw in Norton all his father shine.

A great mistake; for Daniel De Foe had parts, but Norton De Foe was a wretched writer, and never attempted poetry. Much more justly is Daniel himself made successor to W. Prynne, both of whom wrote verses as well

a

And Eusden eke out Blackmore's endless line;
She saw slow Phillips creep like Tate's poor page,
And all the mighty mad, in Dennis rage.

b

In each she marks her image full exprest,
But chief in Bays's monster-breeding breast;
Bays, form'd by nature stage and town to bless,
And act, and be, a coxcomb with success.
Dulness with transport eyes the lively dunce,
Remembering she herself was Pertness once.
Now (shame to Fortune!) an ill run at play

as politics; as appears by the poem De jure divino, &c. of De Foe, and by these lines, in Cowley's Miscellanies, on the other:

One lately did not fear

(Without the Muses' leave) to plant verse here ;
But it produced such base, rough, crabbed, hedge-
Rhymes, as e'en set the hearers' ears on edge:
Written by William Prynn, Esqui-re, the
Year of our Lord, six hundred thirty-three.

Brave Jersey Muse! and he's for his high style
Call'd to this day the Homer of the isle.

And both these authors had a resemblance in their fates as well as writings, having been alike sentenced to the pillory.

a Laurence Eusden, poet laureate. Mr. Jacob gives a catalogue of some few only of his works, which were very numerous. Mr. Cook, in his Battle of Poets, saith of him,

Eusden, a laurel'd bard, by fortune raised,
By very few was read, by fewer praised.
The Duke of Buckingham upon this matter writes-

In rush'd Eusden, and cried, Who shall have it
But I, the true laureate, to whom the king gave it?
Apollo begg'd pardon, and granted his claim,

But vow'd that till then he ne'er heard of his name.

SESSION OF POETS.

The same plea might also serve for his successor, Mr. Cibber, and is further strengthened in the following epigram, made on that occasion:

In merry old England it once was a rule,
The king had his poet, and also his fool;

But now we're so frugal, I'd have you to know it,
That Cibber can serve both for fool and for poet.

Of Blackmore, see book ii. Of Phillips, book i. ver. 262, and book iii. prope fin.

Nahum Tate was poet laureate, a cold writer, of no invention; but sometimes translated tolerably when befriended by Mr. Dryden. In his second part of Absalom and Achitophel are above two hundred admirable lines together of that great hand, which strongly shine through the insipidity of the rest. Something parallel may be observed of another author here mentioned.

b This is by no means to be understood literally, as if Mr. Dennis were really mad, according to the narrative of Dr. Norris, in Swift and Pope's Miscellanies, vol. iii. No- it is spoken of that excellent and divine madness, so often mentioned by Plato; that poetical rage and enthusiasm with which Mr. D. hath, in his time, been highly possessed.

Mr. John Dennis was the son of a saddler in London, born in 1657. He