On poets' tombs see Benson's titles writ!".
Lo! Ambrose Philips + is preferr'd for wit!
See under Ripley rise a new Whitehall,
While Jones' and Boyle's united labours fall:
While Wren with sorrow to the grave descends,
Gay dies unpension'd with a hundred friends;

REMARKS,

W-m

On poets tombs see Benson's titles writ!] Benson (Surveyor of the buildings to his Majesty King George 1.) gave in a report to the Lords, that their house and the Painted Chamber adjoining were in immediate danger of falling; whereupon the Lords met in a committee to appoint some other place to sit in while the house should be taken down. But it being proposed to cause some other builders first to inspect it, they found it in very good condition. The Lords upon this had him removed. In favour of this man, the famous Sir Christopher Wren, who had been architect to the Crown for above fifty years, who built most of the churches in London, laid the first stone of St. Paul's, and lived to finish it, had been displaced from his employment at the age of near ninety years.

Sir Christopher died in 1723, at the age of 91; and was buried under his own great fabric, with four words that comprehend his merit and his fame: "Si quæras monumentum, circumspice !" Walpole's Anecdotes.

+Ambrose Philips.] "He was (saith Mr. Jacob) one of the wits at Button's, and a justice of the peace." But he met with higher preferment in Ireland: and a much greater character we have of him in Mr. Gildon's complete Art of Poetry, Vol. I. p. 157. "Indeed, he confesses, he dares not set him quite on the same foot with Virgil, lest it should seem flattery, but he is much mistaken if posterity does not afford him a greater esteem than he at present enjoys." He endeavoured to create some misunderstanding between our author and Mr. Addison, whom also soon after he abused as much.

Gay dies unpension'd, &c.] See Mr. Gay's fable of the Hare and many Friends. This gentleman was early in the friendship of our author, which continued to his death. He wrote several works of humour with great success: The Shepherd's Week, Trivia, That What-d'ye call it, Fables; and, lastly, that prodigy of fortune, the Beggar's Opera.

Hibernian politics, O Swift - thy fate;

And Pope's, ten years to comment and translate.
"Proceed, great days! till learning fly the shore,
Till Birch shall blush with noble blood no more;
Till Thames see Eton's sons for ever play,
Till Westminster's whole year be holiday;
Till Isis' elders reel, their pupils' sport,
And Alma Mater lie dissolv'd in port!"

"Enough! enough!" the raptur'd monarch cries! And through the ivory gate the vision flies.

REMARKS.

• Proceed great days! &c.-Till Birch shall blush, &c.] Another great prophet of Dulness, on this side Styx, promiseth those days to be near at hand. "The devil (saith he) licensed bishops to license masters of schools to instruct youth in the knowledge of the heathen gods, their religion, &c. The schools and universities will soon be tired and ashamed of classics, and such trumpery." Hutchinson's Use of Reason recovered." Scribi.

THE

DUNCIA D.

BOOK IV.

ARGUMENT.

A new invocation. The goddess coming to destroy order and science, and to substitute her kingdom upon earth. She leads captive the sciences, and silences the muses; and who succeed in their stead. All her children are drawn about her with divers others, who promote her empire; such as half-wits, tasteless admirers, pretenders, flatterers of dunces, or their patrons. The first who speak are the geniuses of the schools, who promise to advance her cause by confining youth to words, and keeping them from real knowledge. Their address, and her answer. The universities, by their deputies, assure her that the same method is observed in the progress of education. They are driven off by a band of young gentlemen returned from travel with their tutors; one of whom delivers to the goddess an ac count of the conduct and fruits of their travels presenting her at the same time a young nobleman perfectly accomplished. She receives him graciously, and endues him with the quality of want of shame. She sees about her a number of indolent persons abandoning all duty to these approaches the antiquary Annius, intreating her to make them virtuosos, and assign them over to him; but Mummius, another antiquary, complaining of his proceeding, she reconciles their dif ⚫ference. Then enter a troop fantastically adorned, offering her strange presents: one demands justice on. another who had deprived him of great curiosity; but he justifying himself, the goddess gives them both her approbation. She recommends them to find proper employment for the indolents, but with particular caution not to proceed beyond trifles, to any useful views of nature or its Author. Against the last apprehension, she is secured by an address for the minute phi losophers and free-thinkers. The youth thus instructed, are delivered to her by Silenus; and then admitted to taste the cup of her high priest, which causes an oblivion of all obligations. To these she sends priests, attendants, and comforters; confers on them orders, and degrees; and then dismissing them with a speech, concludes with a yawn of extraordinary virtue: the effect whereof, and the consummation of all, in the restoration of night and chaos, conclude the poem.

YET, yet a moment, one dim ray of light

Indulge, dread Chaos, and eternal Night!
REMARKS.

dread Chaos and eternal Night!] Invok'd, as the restoration of their empire is the action of the poem.

Of darkness visible so much be lent,

As half to show, half veil the deep intent.
Ye pow'rs! whose mysteries restor'd I sing,
To whom Time bears me on his rapid wing,
Suspend a while your force inertly strong,
Then take at once the poet and the song.

Now flam'd the dog-star's unpropitious ray,
Smote every brain, and wither'd every bay;
Sick was the sun, the owl forsook his bow'r,
The moon-struck prophet felt the madding hour:
Then rose the seed of Chaos, and of Night,
To blot out order, and extinguish light,*
Of dull and venalt a new world to mould,
And bring Saturnian days of lead and gold.
She mounts the throne: her head a cloud conceal'd,
In broad effulgence all below reveal'd,

("Tis thus aspiring Dulness ever shines)
Soft on her lap her laureate son reclines.
Beneath her footstool Science groans in chains,
And Wit dreads exile, penalties, and pains.
There foam'd rebellious Logic, gagg'd and bound;
There, stript, fair Rhetoric languish'd on the ground;
His blunted arms by Sophistry are borne,
And shameless Billingsgate her robes adorn.

REMARKS.

To blot out order, and extinguish light.] The two great ends of her mission; the one in quality of daughter of Chaos, the other as daughter of Night. Order here is to be understood extensively, both as civil and moral; the distinctions between high and low in society, and true and false in individuals: light as intellectual only; wit, science, arts,

+ Of dull and venal.] The allegory continued; du referring to the extinction of light or science: venal to the destruction of order and the truth of things.

a new world.] In allusion to the Epicurean opinion, that from the dissolution of the natural world into night and chaos, a new one should arise; this the poet alluding to, in the production of a new world, makes it partake of its original principles.

Morality, by her false guardians drawn,
Chicane in furs, and Casuistry in lawn,

Gasps, as they straiten at each end the cord,

And dies when Dulness gives her Page* the word.
Mad Mathesist alone was unconfin'd,

Too mad for mere material chains to bind,
Now to pure space lifts her ecstatic stare,
Now running round the circle, finds it square.
But held in tenfold bonds the Muses lie,
Watch'd both by envy's and by flattery's eye: A
There to her heart sad Tragedy addrest
The dagger, wont to pierce the tyrant's breast;
But sober History restrain'd her rage,
And promis'd vengeance on a barbarous age.
There sunk Thalia, nerveless, cold, and dead,
Had not her sister Satire held her head:
Nor couldst thou, Chesterfield! a tear refuse,
Thou wept'st, and with thee wept each gentle muse.
When, lo! a harlot form soft sliding by,
With mincing step, small voice, and languid eye;
Foreign her air, her robe's discordant pride
In patch-work fluttering, and her head aside;
By singing peers upheld on either hand,
She tripp'd and laugh'd, too pretty much to stand;
Cast on the prostrate Nine a scornful look,
Then thus in quaint recitativo spoke :

"O Cara! Cara! silence all that train;

Joy to great Chaos! let division reign:

Chromatic tortures soon shall drive them hence, Break all their nerves, and fritter all their sense: One trill shall harmonize joy, grief, and rage, Wake the dull church, and lull the ranting stage;

REMARKS.

There was a judge of this name, always ready to hang any man that came in his way.

+ Mad Mathesis.] Alluding to the strange conclusions some mathematicians have deduced from their principles, concerning the real quantity of matter, the reality of space, &c.