Whether thou choose Cervantes' serious air, (k) Mourn not, my SWIFT, at aught our Realm acquires. 1 After verse 22 in the MS. : Or in the graver Gown instruct mankind, Or silent let thy morals tell thy mind. But this was to be understood, as the poet says, ironicè, like the 23rd verse. -WARBURTON [1743]. 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 Majesty was graciously pleased to recall.-POPE [1729]. 3 The ancient golden age is by poets styled Saturnian, as being under the reign of Saturn: 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.-POPE and WARBURTON [1729 and 1743]. See Editor's note. 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.-POPE and WARBURTON [1743]. 25 30 The cell of poor Poetry is here very properly represented as a little unendowed Hall in the neighbourhood of the magnific College of Bedlam; and as the surest seminary to supply those learned walls with professors. For there cannot be a plainer indication of madness than in men's persisting to starve themselves and offend the public by scribbling, Escape in Monsters, and amaze the town, when they might have benefited themselves and others in profitable and honest employments. The quali ties and productions of the students of this private academy are afterwards described in this first book; as are also their actions throughout the second; by which it appears, how near allied dulness is to madness. This naturally prepares us for the subject of the third book, where we find them in union, and acting in conjunction to produce the catastrophe of the fourth; a mad poetical Sibyl leading our hero through the regions of vision, to animate him in the present undertaking, by a view of the past triumphs of barbarism over science. POPE and WARBURTON [1743]. The Cave of Poverty and Poetry.' (q) Keen, hollow winds howl thro' the bleak recess, Hence Bards, like Proteus long in vain tied down, Hence Miscellanies (r) spring, the weekly boast 2 Of Curl's chaste press and Lintot's rubric post: (s) Hence Journals, Medleys, (t) Merc'ries, (u) MAGAZINES ;*(†) And New-year Odes,' and all the Grub-street race. 1 I cannot here omit a remark that will greatly endear our author to every one, who shall attentively observe that humanity and candour, which everywhere appears in him towards those unhappy objects of the ridicule of all mankind, the bad poets. He here imputes all scandalous rhymes, scurrilous weekly papers, base flatteries, wretched elegies, songs, and verses (even from those sung at Court to ballads in the streets), not so much to malice or servility as to dulness; and not so much to dulness as to necessity. And thus, at the very commencement of his Satire, makes an apology for all that are to be satirized.-POPE and WARBURTON [1743]. 35 40 their deaths, at the same time, or before.-POPE [1729]. • The common name of those upstart collections in prose and verse; in which, at some times, -new-born nonsense first is taught to cry; at others, dead-born scandal has its monthly funeral where Dulness assumes all the various shapes of Folly to draw in and cajole the rabble. The eruption of every miserable scribbler; the scum of every dirty newspaper; or fragments of fragments, picked up from every dunghill, under the title of Papers, Essays, Reflections, Confutations, Queries, Verses, Songs, Epigrams, Riddles, &c., equally the disgrace of human wit, morality, decency, and common sense.-POPE and WARBURTON [1743]. Is a just satire on the flatteries and falsehoods admitted to be inscribed on the walls of churches, in epitaphs; which occasioned the following epigram, Friend! in your Epitaphs, I'm griev'd, O e half will never be believ'd, -POPE and WARBURTON. [1729 and 1751]. 6 Made by the Poet Laureate for the time being, to be sung at Court on every New Year's Day, the words In clouded Majesty' here Dulness shone ; Where, in nice balance, truth with gold she weighs, Here she beholds the Chaos dark and deep,' How hints, like spawn, scarce quick in embryo lie, Rising in clouded Majesty. -Milton, Book iv. POPE [1729]. Quem neque pauperies, neque mors, neque vincula terrent.-Hor. -POPE [1729]. 3 "This is an allusion to a text in Scripture, which shews, in Mr. Pope, a delight in prophaneness," said Curl upon this place. But it is very familiar with Shakespear to allude to passages of Scripture. Out of a great number I will select a few, in which he not only alludes to, but quotes the very text from Holy Writ. In All's Well that ends Well, "I am no great Nebuchadnezzar, I have not much skill in grass." Ibid: "They 45 50 55 69 are for the flowery way that leads to The first part of this note is Mr. That is to say, unformed things, to the following in Garth's Dispen- Within the chambers of the globe they spy Maggots half-form'd in rhyme exactly meet, And learn to crawl upon poetic feet. 2 Here one poor word an hundred clenches makes,' (aa) She sees a Mob of Metaphors advance, It may not be amiss to give an instance or two of these operations of Dulness out of the works of her sons, celebrated in the poem. A great critic formerly held these clenches in such abhorrence, that he declared, "he that would pun, would pick a pocket." Yet Mr. Dennis's works afford us notable examples in this kind: "Alexander Pope hath sent abroad into the world as many bulls as his namesake Pope Alexander.— Let us take the initial and final letters of his name, viz. A. P—E, and they give you the idea of an Ape.-Pope comes from the Latin word Popa, which signifies a little wart; or from poppysma, because he was continually popping out squibs of wit, or rather popysmata, or popisms." -Dennis on Hom. and Daily Journal, June 11, 1728.-POPE [1729]. See Editor's note. 2 A parody on a verse in Garth, Cant. i.: How ductile matter new meanders takes. -POPE [1729]. 65 70 75 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.-POPE [1729]. In the Lower Egypt rain is of no use, the overflowing of the Nile being sufficient to impregnate the soil.— These six verses represent the inconsistencies in the descriptions of poets, who heap together all glittering and gawdy images, though incompatible in one season, or in one scene.-POPE [1729]. See the Guardian, No. 40, par. 6. See also Eusden's whole works, if to be found. It would not have been unpleasant to have given examples of all these species of bad writing from these authors, but that it is already done in our treatise of the Bathos. SCRIBLERUS. - POPE and WARBURTON [1729 and 1743]. In cold December fragrant chaplets blow, And heavy harvests nod beneath the snow. All these and more the cloud-compelling Queen' She, tinsell'd o'er in robes of varying hues, And with her own fools-colours gilds them all. (cc) Like Cimon, triumph'd both on land and wave: (dd) Now May'rs and Shrieves all hush'd and satiate lay, 1 From Homer's Epithet of Jupiter, νεφεληγερέτα Ζεύς. —POPE [1729]. 2 Viz., a Lord Mayor's Day; his name the author had left in blanks, but most certainly could never be that which the editor foisted in formerly, and which no way agrees with the chronology of the poem.BENTLEY.-POPE and WARBURTON [1743]. 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. -POPE [1729]. See Editor's note. The ignorance of these moderns! This was altered in one edition to "gold chains," shewing more regard to the metal of which the chains, of aldermen are made, than to the beauty of the Latinism and Græcism, nay of figurative speech itself: Lætas segétes, glad, for making glad, &c.SCRIBLERUS [POPE, 1729]. 4 A beautiful manner of speaking, usual with poets in praise of poetry, in which kind nothing is finer than those lines of Mr. Addison : Sometimes, misguided by the tuneful I look for streams immortaliz'd in song, Yet run for ever by the Muses' skill, 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 |