and 46, in the quarto edition, [from 1. 275 to 1. 304 of Book II.] are omitted. Possibly the copy of the quarto from which this edition was printed wanted this leaf. Many of the errors of the 4to edition are reproduced.

G.-"The Dunciad Variorum, with the Prolegomena of Scriblerus. (Same plate as in 4to.) London: Printed and reprinted for the booksellers in Dublin, MDCCXXIX." 8vo.

This is an exact reprint of the 4to edition of A. Dod, 1729. F.

The arrangement of the pieces is the same, and at the end of the Index on the opposite page are the twelve lines of Addenda, “M. Scriblerus Lectori," which are sometimes found in F.

It may have been printed earlier than G, and is a genuine Dublin edition. K. "The Dunciad in Three Books, written in the year 1727. With Notes Variorum and the Prolegomena of Scriblerus." Folio.

There is no name of printer or place of printing.

This edition, like N, was doubtless intended for a complete edition of Pope's Works, as at the end there is a postscript containing notes on the "Epistle to Lord Bathurst," and "The Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot," and variations, &c., on the "Essay on Man."

The arrangement of the different pieces is entirely different from any other which has come under my notice.

It is very carefully printed on good, thick paper, and all the errors and mistakes, which occur in the other editions, are so carefully corrected that there is no list of errata, except one at the end which refers to the notes on the ethic Epistles. The Notes Variorum are not in footnotes but by themselves, after the "Testimonies of Authors" (pages 81-163).

On page 18 (misprinted 81) at the end of the “Argument to the Books" (not "Dunciados, Periocha, or Argument to the Books," as in other editions) is the plate of the ass with a curious variation. The scroll on the ass's left has an inscription, "The Free Briton," instead of Baker's Journal as in the 4to and all other editions in which this plate occurs.

There is a very well executed vignette (W. K. inv. P. F. sculpt.) at the commencement of Book I. It represents an owl looking at itself in a lookingglass; on either side are asses playing on the harp.

The date of this edition is probably earlier than that of L, as in the "List of Books, &c., in which the author was abused," the "Verses on the Imitator of Horace," and "Letter from a Nobleman to a Dr. of Divinity from Hampton Court," are not given. It is certainly later than K, as it contains (page 51) "By the Author, A Declaration," dated 1732, which is also in L.

On page 168 is "Advertisement to the first correct edition in 4to, London, 1729." This is remarkable, as in N it appears, "Advertisement to the First Correct Edition in 4to, London, 1729." As pointed out in the remarks on N, no edition in 4to appeared in 1729,

EDITOR'S NOTES.

BOOK I.

NOTE (a).

THE allusion to the edition of Shakespeare about to be issued from the Oxford press is explained in the Editor's Note to verse 105 of the Fourth Book. The inscription on the scroll, to the inaccuracies of which the annotator humorously supposes the figure of Shakespeare in Westminster Abbey to be pointing, is as follows:

The cloud-capt towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all that it inherit, shall dissolve,

And, like the baseless fabric of a vision,
Leave not a wreck behind.

The last line but one is of course misplaced, and the verse which ought to stand in its place omitted. The text in the folio reads "this vision," instead of "a vision," and "rack" instead of "wreck." "Wreck " is, however, the reading of the old quartos.

In the note signed "Bentley" the idea of employing the preposterous theories of that great scholar as to the text of "Paradise Lost," to explain the disappearance of Tibbald from the Dunciad, is admirably humorous, and is skilfully executed.

b. VERSE 2.

Bartholomew Fair was instituted by the Jester of Henry I. It was held on the Eve of St. Bartholomew, and lasted for three days. It was at first simply a fair for the sale of cloth, but, in Elizabeth's time, it became a kind of carnival. In the reign of Charles II. its duration was extended to fourteen days, but it was afterwards limited to the old period, and continued to be held nearly up to the time of the first Reform Bill. The amusements were wrestling and shooting, puppets, operas, tight-rope dancing, and shows of monsters and wild beasts. The theatres were closed during the Fair.

c. VERSE 3.

In the first edition the opening was:

Books and the Man I sing, the first who brings

The Smithfield Muses to the ears of Kings.

Alluding, says Curll, in his Key to the Dunciad, to the Royal Privilege before Theobald's play the "Double Falsehood." In the present text the allusion is of course to Cibber in his capacity of Laureate,

d. VERSE 4.

He calls the Great the instruments of Dulness as being the patrons of bad writers, and therefore the promoters of bad taste. The sixth line. shows that there is probably also a secret allusion to the Whig aristocracy, who had been instrumental in establishing the House of Hanover.

e. VERSE 6.

We can scarcely doubt that Pope meant this couplet for a reflection on the two first Georges, whose contempt for letters was notorious.

f. VERSE 12.

Conformably to Milton's doctrine, Par. Lost, ii. 894, and 960:

Where eldest Night

And Chaos, ancestors of Nature, hold
Eternal Anarchy:

When straight behold the throne

Of Chaos, and his dark pavilion spread

Wide on the wasteful deep: with him enthroned.

Sat sable-vested Night, eldest of things,

The Consort of his reign.-WAKEFIELD.

g. VERSE 14.

A parody on a verse of Dryden, Æn. vii. 1044 :

Famed as his sire, and as his mother fair.—WAKEFIELD.

h. VERSE 18.

So Sloth, in the Dispensary, i. 116:

With Godhead born but cursed that cannot die.

Our poet in his Iliad, v. 1091:

Condemned to pain though fated not to die.-WAKEFIELD.

i. VERSE 20.

Drapier, Bickerstaff, or Gulliver, the several names and characters he assumed in his ludicrous, his splenetic, or his party writings, which take in all his works.-WARBURTON, 1751.

This note shows traces of the ill-feeling which Warburton entertained for Swift. The triple division does not comprise every class of Swift's writings. Neither Cadenus and Vanessa, nor The Rhapsody on Poetry, nor the Imitations of Horace, can be classified under the three names on which Warburton comments. Pope, with his usual discrimination, no doubt, meant to point to poems of this kind in the word "Dean," a title to which Warburton makes no reference. "Drapier" refers to Swift's political writings; "Bickerstaff" to his lighter squibs against Partridge, &c.

k. VERSE 21.

"Cervantes' serious air "expresses the irony of Gulliver's Travels.

1. VERSE 22.

The imagery is exquisite; and the equivoque in the last words gives a peculiar elegance to the whole expression. The easy chair suits his age: Rab'lais' chair marks his character: and he fills and possesses it as the heir and successor of that original genius. -WARBURTON, 1751.

By "Rabelais' easy chair," he means the broader (as compared with Cervantes) humour in the Tale of a Tub, which led Voltaire, as Warton says, to call Swift "Rabelais in his senses."

m. VERSE 25.

See Editor's Note to iii. 50. The term "Boeotia" had before been applied to Ireland, by Gay in his "Welcome" :

Thou too, my Swift, dost breathe Boeotian air,

When wilt thou bring back wit and humour here?

n. VERSE 28.

The old Saturnian race was of gold. So Hall, Book iii., Sat. 1, from Juvenal, vi. 1:

Time was, and that was termed the time of gold,
When World and Time were young that now are old:
When quiet Saturn swayed the mace of lead,
And Pride was yet unborn and yet unbred.

0. VERSE 30.

Compare Imitations of

Dr. Monroe, one of the doctors in Bedlam. Horace, Epistle ii. 2, 70. It is said that on one occasion some of Monroe's patients seized him, and endeavoured to thrust him into a great kettle in which their soup was boiling. Nichols' Literary Anecdotes, iv. p. 609.

P. VERSE 32.

The statues were not bronze but stone. Pope seems to have discovered this after he had published the revised edition of the Dunciad, making Cibber the hero, and he endeavoured to minimise the consequence of his mistake in an ironical note to Book ii. ver. 3; but it is evident that the point lies in the epithet "brazen." It is said that Gabriel Cibber took as his original for one of these figures Cromwell's mad Porter. See Tatler, No. 51, and note by J. Nichols.

9. VERSE 34.

In the early editions, this line had a more pointed application than at present. Theobald had published a poem called "The Cave of Poverty."

T. VERSE 39.

Both Curl and Lintot had published Miscellanies, the latter in 1712, the former in 1727, but these were not periodicals, nor can I discover any journal of the name of the Weekly Miscellany in the exhaustive list of papers given in Nichols' Literary Anecdotes. There was indeed a “Weekly Miscellany" in existence when the Dunciad assumed its final shape (see note to ver. 258 of Book ii.) but not when the line was first written. It is probable that Pope did not intend his sneer to be taken literally.

3. VERSE 40.

The post was the sign-post in front of the booksellers' shops on which advertisements were placed. Curll in his Key to the Dunciad, says: "Mr. Lintot, in Fleet Street, is so fond of red-letter title pages to the books he prints, that his show-boards and posts before his door are generally be daubed with them." Compare Prologue to Satires, vv. 215-216.

t. VERSE 42.

It appears from the note to ver. 286 of this Book that there was a paper called the Weekly Medley, which sided with the Dunces.

u. VERSE 42.

"Mercury" was the generic name of almost all the earliest English newspapers. There were "Mercurius Civicus," ," "Mercurius Rusticus," "Mercurius Domesticus,' "Mercurius Aulicus," and twenty others.

v. VERSE 42.

The "Gentleman's Magazine," which soon afterwards gained so high a reputation, had not been founded when the "Dunciad" was first written. 2. VERSE 52.

Here his forsaken seat old Chaos keeps;
And undisturbed by Form in silence sleeps:

Which is an imitation of a fine passage in Cowley, Dav. i. 9:
Where their vast court the mother-waters keep,

And, undisturbed by moons, in silence sleep.—WAKEFIELD.
The hint for this passage was taken from Dryden's Mac-Flecknoe.

2. VERSE 57.

i.e., the author's night, when he received the whole profits of the perform"Genial Jacob" is of course Jacob Tonson, the bookseller.

ance.

aa. VERSE 63.

The word "clench" is frequently used in the seventeenth and at the beginning of the eighteenth century. Dryden speaks in his MacFlecknoe of

Pure clinches the Suburbian Muse affords,

And Panton waging harmless war with words.

bb. VERSE 69.

Pope expresses the general view of the eighteenth century critics on this class of play. Addison says: "The tragi-comedy, which is the product of the English theatre, is one of the most monstrous inventions that ever entered into a poet's thoughts. An author might as well think of weaving the adventures of Eneas and Hudibras into one poem, as of writing such a motley piece of mirth and sorrow."-Spectator, No. 40.

cc. VERSE 84.

i.e., Sets off unnatural conceptions in false and tumid expression. — WARBURTON [1751].

dd. VERSE 86.

In the early editions the name "Thorold" was inserted. Thorold was Lord Mayor in 1720.

ee. VERSE 98.

He had in view Dryden's translation of Virgil, Georg. iv. 303:

The immortal line in sure succession runs.

Sir George

Knight in his "London," Vol. 6, 158, says: The last City Poet was