satires its distinguishing feature is its personality. For better or worse, this is what determines the whole character of the poem. Pope himself, his power, his weakness, and his passion, is felt in every line. As Ducket, after the appearance of the first authorised edition, put it, not unfairly, what was really in question was the supremacy of Pope Alexander. The Dunces who rebelled against that supremacy were no doubt both stupid and malignant, but the only evidence Pope offers of their stupidity is their failure to appreciate his own genius; the only proofs of their malignity are their libels on his character.

In certain obvious particulars the intense personality of the ‘Dunciad' is injurious both to its moral and artistic design. It gives an air of unreality to some of its finest declamation; a fault of which Pope himself was by no means insensible, and for which he sought to apologise. For instance, after the spirited address of Settle at the close of the Third Book, he has a note to the line beginning, "Proceed, great days": "It may perhaps seem incredible, that so great a revolution in learning, as is here prophesied, should be brought about by such weak instruments as have been [hitherto] described in our poem; but do not thou, gentle reader, rest too secure in thy contempt of these instruments. Remember what the Dutch stories somewhere relate, that a great part of their Provinces was once overflowed, by a small opening made in one of their dykes by a water-rat." Time has proved that the fears of the poet had no grounds but in his own imagination.

Another palpable objection to the 'Dunciad' is the frequent obscenity of its images. Here again Pope felt that he was obliged to stand on his defence, and accordingly he appended a note to the words, "Obscene with filth," in verse 75 of the Second Book: "Though this incident may seem too low and base for the dignity of an Epic poem, the learned very well know it to be but a copy of Homer and Virgil: the very words 'ovos' and 'fimus' are used by them, though our

poet, in compliance to modern nicety, has remarkably enriched and coloured his language, as well as raised the versification, in this episode and in the following one of Eliza." And then, after citing the example of Dryden, he proceeds: "But our author is more grave, and (as a fine writer says of Virgil in his Georgics') tosses about his dung with an air of majesty.' If we consider that the exercises of his authors could with justice be no higher than tickling, chattering, braying, or diving, it was no easy matter to invent such games as were proportioned to the meaner degree of booksellers. In Homer and Virgil, the persons drawn in this plight are Heroes; whereas here they are such with whom it would have been great impropriety to have joined any but vile ideas; besides the natural connection there is between libellers and common nuisances. Nevertheless I have heard our author own, that this part of his poem was (as it frequently happens) what cost him most trouble, and pleased him least; but that he hoped it was excusable, since it was levelled at such as understood no delicate satire. Thus the politest men are obliged sometimes to swear when they have to do with porters and oysterwenches." Now, even admitting that there was any necessity for Pope to take notice of the "porters and oysterwenches" who had abused him, it is evident that his plea is only good so far as his satire was directed to the extermination of such people. But the 'Dunciad' was a poem, not only ridiculing real dunces, but appealing to the highest faculties of the imagination. Juvenal has been blamed not unjustly for the elaborate filth of his details; but it may be contended in his excuse that this minuteness is indispensable to the effect of his portraits. Pope, on the other hand, by the poetical treatment of his subject, gave to the persons he attacked a dignity which they did not possess in themselves, and, so far is he from being entitled to any credit for refining his imagery by his art, that he only brings the nauseous nature of his materials into stronger relief by the beauty of the form under which he presents them. What

ever is to be urged in his behalf-the coarse standard of his own age, and the bad traditions sanctioned by Dryden in the preceding one-must be said in explanation, not in defence, of his indecency.

Again, it is undeniable that the personality of the 'Dunciad' injures it, to a certain extent, as a work of art. Dennis, with perfect justice, maintained that it was not what it professed to be-a true mock-heroic poem, because the essence of an epic poem is action, and the Dunciad' has no action. Boileau's 'Lutrin' and Pope's 'Rape of the Lock' both satisfy the condition which Dennis requires; that is to say, they celebrate a trivial action in a lofty style. The 'Dunciad' professes to do the same. Martinus Scriblerus says: "The great power of these Goddesses (Dulness and Poverty) was to be exemplified in some one great and remarkable action and none could be more so than that which our poet hath chosen, viz., the restoration of the reign of Chaos and Night by the ministry of Dulness their daughter, in the removal of her imperial seat from the city to the polite world as the action of the 'Eneid' is the restoration of the empire of Troy, by the removal of the race from thence to Latium." But the action

of the 'Eneid' is exhibited in the acts of Æneas the hero; in the 'Dunciad,' on the other hand, we are told only of one action of the hero, viz., the preparations to burn his works in the First Book; the Second Book is entirely episodical; in the Third Book the hero merely dreams; and in the Fourth he is asleep. The truth is, that the alleged action of the 'Dunciad ' is not a recognised fact, like that of the 'Lutrin,' the 'Rape of the Lock,' and the 'Secchia Rapita,' but only an inference which Pope chose to found on the real actions of the various persons whom he satirises. As there was no unity in these actions, all that the poet could do was to string together a series of episodes, parodying the heroic style of Homer, Virgil, and Milton. Though the parodies in the first three books are admirably contrived for the purpose of bringing particular dunces into contempt, they have little relevancy to

the proposed action of the poem; on the other hand, the Fourth Book-in which the satire is more general, and the objects ridiculed might at any rate be supposed to argue the progress of Dulness in the polite world-has no kind of connection with what has gone before.

The machinery of the poem suffers from the same cause. To elevate Dulness into a Goddess, and satirise the Dunces as her prophets and votaries, was in itself a happy design, Pope, however, having no real action to celebrate, and desiring above all things to ridicule his enemies, frequently lets us see that his allegorical machinery is introduced merely for the sake of intensifying his satire. Thus, in the First Book he makes Bayes say to the Goddess:

Me, emptiness and dulness could inspire,
And were my elasticity and fire.

On this Warton remarks, "This first speech of the hero is full of an impropriety that one could hardly believe our author would fall into; it being contrary to all decorum, character, and probability, that Bayes should address the Goddess Dulness, without disguising or mistaking her as a despicable being; and should even call himself fool and blockhead; it is in truth outrageously unnatural and absurd." Roscoe, who will never allow Pope to be in error, undertakes his defence. He says: "If Warton had paid sufficient attention to the nature of the poem, he would have perceived that Bayes was endeavouring to recommend himself to the Goddess of Dulness; that emptiness and stupidity were therefore his best qualifications; that to be a fool and a blockhead could alone entitle him to her favour; and that to have set up any pretence to real wit and sound sense on such an occasion would indeed have been 'outrageously unnatural and absurd.'" It is strange that Roscoe should not have seen that, in this apology, he was not confuting Warton's argument, but only re-stating it in other words. Warton does not overlook the fact that Dulness is a goddess; he only says, that it is a mistake to represent her as a deity whose influence men consciously recognise, and

that no man would ever boast of being dull. It was, indeed, Pope, and not Warton, who "paid insufficient attention to the nature of the poem." In his eagerness to satirise his enemies, the poet neglected the conditions of the mock epic which he had made the vehicle of his satire. The same objection applies to the speeches of Bentley and of the "gloomy Clerk" in the Fourth Book. し

These defects, inseparable perhaps from the personal nature of the subject, must be allowed to detract from the perfection of the Dunciad' as a work of art. But this is only one aspect of the question. Regarded from another side, the very personality of the poem gives it its greatest interest. That a satire on such a trivial subject should have produced so vast an excitement in the literary world, that it should have been translated into foreign languages, that frequent editions of it should have been demanded during Pope's lifetime, and that a century and a half after his death it should be read with scarcely diminished interest-all this speaks of itself to the astonishing character of the performance. And when a study of the work reveals the causes of its permanent popularity,, astonishment will be exchanged for admiration of the poet's resources. The felicity of invention, which assigns to each of the multitude of Dunces his place and order in the Temple of Infamy, the propriety of the parodies, the strength, vividness, and at times the grandeur of the imagery, the terseness of the language, and the harmony of the verse, must cause all genuine lovers of poetry to subordinate their sense of the faults of the poem to their appreciation of its overpowering excellence.

Nor is the satire admirable for its form alone; indeed, it may be said that its wit and beauty cannot be fully appreciated till we have fully mastered all the elaboration of its details. It is full of biographical and historical interest. Much light is thrown upon Pope's character by a review of the various causes which procured for each of the Dunces his particular punishment. And as for his ridicule of things and persons,