The Cave of Poverty and Poetry.' (q)

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 (r) spring, the weekly boast

Of Curl's chaste press and Lintot's rubric post:2 (s)
Hence hymning Tyburn's elegiac lines,*

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Hence Journals, Medleys, (t) Merc'ries, (u) MAGAZINES ;*(v) Sepulchral Lies, our holy walls to grace,'

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].

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 dung hill, 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].

5 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,
So very much is said:

O e half will never be believ'd,
The other never read.
-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

2

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 th' approaching jail :
Poetic Justice, with her lifted scale, (x)

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, (y)
'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,

Rising in clouded Majesty. -Milton, Book iv. POPE [1729].

2 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. All's Well that ends Well, "I am no great Nebuchadnezzar, I have not much skill in grass." Ibid: "They

In

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are for the flowery way that leads to the broad gate and the great fire : Matt. vii. 13. In Much Ado about Nothing, "All, all, and moreover God saw him when he was hid in the garden" Gen. iii. 8 (in a very jocose scene). In Love's Labour's Lost, he talks of Samson's carrying the gates on his back; in the Merry Wives of Windsor, of Goliath and the weaver's beam; and in Henry IV. Falstaff's soldiers are compared to Lazarus and the prodigal son.

The first part of this note is Mr. Curl's, the rest is Mr. Theobald's Appendix to Shakespear Restored, p. 144.-POPE [1729].

4 That is to say, unformed things, which are either made into poems or plays, as the booksellers or the players bid most. These lines allude to the following in Garth's Dispensary, Cant. vi. :

Within the chambers of the globe they spy
The beds where sleeping vegetables lie,
"Till the glad summons of a genial ray
Unbinds the glebe, and calls them out to
day.-POPE [1729].

Maggots half-form'd in rhyme exactly meet,
And learn to crawl upon poetic feet.

Here one poor word an hundred clenches makes,' (aa)
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,
Pleas'd with the madness of the mazy dance;
How Tragedy and Comedy embrace; (bb)
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 show'rs,'
Or gives to Zembla fruits, to Barca flow'rs;
Glitt'ring with ice here hoary hills are seen,
There painted valleys of eternal green;

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 popyta, or popisms." -Dennis on h .d 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].

3 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].

4 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.e.-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'
Beholds thro' fogs, that magnify the scene.
She, tinsell'd o'er in robes of varying hues,

With self-applause her wild creation views;
Sees momentary monsters rise and fall,

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And with her own fools-colours gilds them all. (cc)
'Twas on the day when
rich and grave,

Like Cimon, triumph'd both on land and wave: (dd)
(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 liv'd in Settle's numbers one day more,"

Now May'rs and Shrieves all hush'd and satiate lay,
Yet ate, 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;

1 From Homer's Epithet of Jupiter, νεφεληγερέτα Ζεύς. —POPE [1729].

2 Viz., a Lord Mayor's Day; his hame 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

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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
throng,

I look for streams immortaliz'd in song,
That lost in silence and oblivion lie,
Dumb are their fountains, and their chan-
nels dry;

Yet run for ever by the Muses' skill,
And in the smooth description murmur
still.

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

Much she revolves their arts, their ancient praise,
And sure succession down from Heywood's days.' (ee)
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. (ƒƒ)
She saw old Prynne in restless Daniel shine,' (gg)
And Eusden (hh) eke out Blackmore's endless line;