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To the same notes thy sons shall hum, or snore,
And all thy yawning daughters cry encore.
Another Phoebus, thy own Phoebus, reigns,
Joys in my jigs, and dances in my chains.
But soon, ah! soon, rebellion will commence,
If music meanly borrows aid from sense:
Strong in new arms, lo! giant Handel stands,
Like bold Briareus, with an hundred hands;
To stir, to rouse, to shake the soul he comes,
And Jove's own thunders follow Mars's drums.
Arrest him, empress, or you sleep no more"-
She heard, and drove him to th' Hibernian shore. 70
And now had Fame's posterior trumpet blown,
And all the nations summon'd to the throne:
The young, the old, who feel her inward sway,
One instinct seizes, and transports away.
None need a guide, by sure attraction led,
And strong impulsive gravity of head:
None want a place, for all their centre found,
Hung to the goddess, and coher'd around.
Not closer, orb in orb, conglob'd are seen
The buzzing bees about their dusky queen,

The gathering number, as it moves along,
Involves a vast involuntary throng,

Who gently drawn, and struggling less and less,
Roll in her vortex, and her power confess.
Not those alone who passive own her laws,
But who, weak rebels, more advance her cause:
Whate'er of dunce in college or in town
Sneers at another, in toupee or gown;
Whate'er of mungrel no one class admits,
A wit with dunces, and a dunce with wits.

Nor absent they, no members of her state,
Who pay her homage in her sons, the great;
Who false to Phoebus, bow the knee to Baal,
Or impious, preach his word without a call.
Patrons, who sneak from living worth to dead,
Withhold the pension, and set up the head:
Or vest dull flattery in the sacred gown,
Or give from fool to fool the laurel crown;

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And (last and worst) with all the cant of wit,
Without the soul, the muse's hypocrite.

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There march'd the bard and block head side by side,
Who rhym'd for hire, and patroniz'd for pride.
Narcissus, prais'd with all a parson's power,
Look'd a white lily sunk beneath a shower.
There mov'd Montalto with superior air;
His stretch'd-out arm display'd a volume fair;
Courtiers and patriots in two ranks divide,
Through both he pass'd, and bow'd from side to side;
But as in graceful act, with awful eye,

Compos'd he stood, bold Benson thrust him by: 110
On two unequal crutches propt he came,
Milton's on this, on that one Johnston's name.
The decent knight retir'd with, sober rage,
Withdrew his hand, and clos'd the pompous page:
But (happy for him as the times went then)
Appear'd Apollo's may'r and aldermen,

On whom three hundred gold-capt youths await,
To lug the ponderous volume off in state.

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When Dulness, smiling-" Thus revive the wits! But murder first, and mince them all to bits; As erst Medea (cruel, so to save!)

A new edition of old Eson gave;

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Let standard-authors thus, like trophies borne,
Appear inore glorious as more hack'd and torn.
And you, my critics! in the chequer'd shade,
Admire new light through holes yourselves have made.
Leave not a foot of verse, a foot of stone,
A page, a grave, that they can call their own;

REMARKS.

v. 115, &c.] These four lines were printed in a separate leaf by Mr. Pope, in the last edition which he himself gave of the Dunciad, with directions to the printer to put this leaf into its place, as soon as Sir T. Hanmer's Shakspeare should be published.

IMITATIONS.

.126. Admire new light, &c.]

"The soul's dark cottage, batter'd and decay'd,

Lets in new light through chinks that time has made."

Waller.

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But spread, my sons, your glory thin or thick,
On passive paper, or on solid brick.
So by each bard an alderman shall sit,
A heavy lord shall hang at every wit,
And while on Fame's triumphal car they ride,
Some slave of mine be pinion'd to their side.”
Now crowds on crowds around the goddess press,
Each eager to present the first address.

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Dunce scorning dunce beholds the next advance,
But fop shews fop superior complaisance.
When lo! a spectre rose, whose index-hand
Held forth the virtue of the dreadful wand;
His beaver'd brow a birchen garland wears,
Dropping with infants' blood and mothers' tears.
O'er every vein a shuddering horror runs,
Eton and Winton shake through all their sons.
All flesh is humbled, Westminster's bold race
Shrink, and confess the Genius of the place:
The pale boy-senator yet tingling stands,
And holds his breeches close with both his hands.
Then thus: "Since man from beast by words is
known,

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Words are man's province, words we teach alone. 150
When reason doubtful, like the Samian letter,
Points him two ways, the narrower is the better.
Plac'd at the door of learning, youth to guide,
We never suffer it to stand too wide.

To ask, to guess, to know, as they commence, 155
As fancy opens the quick springs of sense,
We ply the memory, we load the brain,
Blind rebel wit, and double chain on chain,
Confire the thought, to exercise the breath,
And keep them in the pale of words till death. 160
Whate'er the talents, or howe'er design'd,
We hang one jingling padlock on the mind:

IMITATIONS.

v. 142. Dropping with infant's blood, &c.]

"First Moloch, horrid king, besmear'd with blood
Of human sacrifice and parents' tears."

Milton.

A poet the first day he dips his quill;
And what the last? a very poet still.
Pity! the charm works only in our wall,
Lost, lost too soon in yonder house or hall.
There truant Wyndham every muse gave o'er,
There Talbot sunk, and was a wit no more!
How sweet an Ovid, Murray was our boast!
How many Martials were in Pulteney lost!
Else sure some bard, to our eternal praise,
In twice ten thousand rhyming nights and days,
Had reach'd the work, the all that mortal can,
And South beheld that masterpiece of man,”

"O (cried the goddess) for some pedant reign!
Some gentle James, to bless the land again;
To stick the doctor's chair into the throne,
Give law to words, or war with words alone,
Senates and courts with Greek and Latin rule,
And turn the council to a grammar-school!
For sure if Dulness secs a grateful day,
'Tis in the shade of arbitrary sway.

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O! if my sons may learn one earthly thing,

Teach but that one, sufficient for a king;

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That which my priests, and mine alone, maintain,
Which, as it dies, or lives, we fall or reign:
May you, my Cam, and Isis, preach it long!
The right divine of kings to govern wrong."
Prompt at the call, around the goddess roll
Broad hats, and hoods, and caps, a sable shoal: 190
Thick and more thick the black blockade extends,
A hundred head of Aristotle's friends.

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Nor wert thou, Isis! wanting to the day:
[Though Christ-Church long kept prudishly away]
Each staunch polemic, stubborn as a rock,
Each fierce logician, still expelling Locke,
Came whip and spur, and dash'd thro' thin and thick,
On German Crousaz, and Dutch Burgersdyck.

REMARKS.

v. 196. still expelling Locke.] In the year 1703 there was a meeting of the heads of the university of Oxford to censure Mr. Locke's Essay on Human Understanding, and to forbid the reading of it. See his letters in the last edit,

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As many quit the streams that murmuring fall
To lull the sons of Margaret and Clare-Hall,
Where Bentley late tempestuous wont to sport
In troubled waters, but now sleeps in port.
Before them march'd that awful Aristarch;
Plow'd was his front with many a deep remark:
His hat, which never veil'd to human pride,
Walker with reverence took, and laid aside.
Low bow'd the rest: he, kingly, did but nod;
So upright quakers please both man and God.
"Mistress! dismiss that rabble from your throne:
Avauntis Aristarchus yet unknown?
Thy mighty scholiast, whose unwearied pains
Made Horace dull, and humbled Milton's strains.
Turn what they will to verse, their toil is vain,
Critics like me shall make it prose again.
Roman and Greek grammarians! know your better;
Author of something yet more great than letter; 216
While towering o'er your alphabet, like Saul,
Stands our digamma, and o'ertops them all.
'Tis true, on words is still our whole debate,
Dispute of me or te, of aut or at.
To sound or sink in cano, O or A,
Or give up Cicero to C or K.

Let Freind affect to speak as Terence spoke,
And Alsop never but like Horace joke:
For me, what Virgil, Pliny, may deny,
Manilius or Solinus shall supply:

REMARKS.

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v. 223, 224. Freind---Alsop.] Dr. Robert Freind, master of Westminster-school, and canon of Christ-church.---Dr. Anthony Alsop, a appy imitator of the Horatian style.

IMITATIONS.

v.207. He, kingly, did but nod.] "He, kingly, from his state Declin'd not."--

v.210.is Aristarchus yet unknown?] "Sic notus Ulysses?"

"Dost thou not feel me, Rome?"

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