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fool, that is a fit subject for a Dunciad. There must still exist some analogy, if not resemblance of qualities, between the heroes of the two poems; and this in order to admit what neoteric critics call the parody, one of the liveliest graces of the little epic. Thus it being agreed that the constituent qualities of the greater epic hero are wisdom, bravery, and love, from whence springeth heroic virtue; it followeth that those of the lesser epic hero should be vanity, impudence, and debauchery, from which happy assemblage resulteth heroic dulness, the never-dying subject of this our Poem.

This being confessed, come we now to particulars. It is the character of true wisdom, to seek its chief support and confidence within itself; and to place that support in the resources which proceed from a conscious rectitude of will.-And are the advantages of vanity, when arising to the heroic standard, at all short of this self-complacence Nay, are they not, in the opinion of the enamoured owner, far beyond it? "Let the world (will such a one say) impute to me what folly or weakness they please; but till wisdom can give me something that will make me more heartily happy, I am content to be GAZED at1." This we see is vanity according to the heroic gage or measure; not that low and ignoble species which pretendeth to virtues we have not, but the laudable ambition of being gazed at for glorying in those vices which all the world know we have. "The world may ask," says he, "why I make my follies public? Why not? I have passed my time very pleasantly with them 2." In short, there is no sort of vanity such a hero would scruple, but that which might go near to degrade him from his high station in this our Dunciad; namely, "whether it would not be vanity in him, to take shame to himself for not being a wise man 3?"

Bravery, the second attribute of the true hero, is courage, manifesting itself in every limb; while, in its correspondent virtue in the mock hero, that courage is all collected into the face. And as power when drawn together, must needs be more strong than when dispersed, we generally find this kind of courage in so high and heroic a degree, that it insults not only men, but gods. Mezentius is without doubt the bravest character in all the Æneis; but how? His bravery, we know, was a high courage of blasphemy. And can we say less of this brave man's, who, having told us that he placed "his summum bonum in those follies, which he was not content barely to possess but would likewise glory in," adds, "If I am misguided, 'TIS NATURE'S FAULT, and I follow HER 4." Nor can we be mistaken in making this happy quality a species of courage, when we consider those illustrious marks of it, which made his face "more known (as he justly boasteth) than most in the kingdom," and his language to consist of what we must allow to be the most daring figure of speech, that which is taken from the name of God.

Gentle love, the next ingredient in the true hero's composition, is a mere bird of passage, or, (as Shakspeare calls it) summer-teeming lust, and evaporates in the heat of youth; doubtless by

I Dedication to the Life of C. C.

2 Life, p. 2, octavo ed.

4 Life, p. 23, octave.

3 Life, ibid.

that refinement it suffers in passing through those certain strainers which our poet somewhere speaketh of. But when it is let alone to work upon the lees, it acquireth strength by old age: and becometh a standing ornament to the little epic. It is true, indeed, there is one objection to its fitness for such a use: for not only the ig norant may think it common, but it is admitted to be so, even by him who best knoweth its nature. "Don't you think," saith he, "to say only a man has his whore ought to go for little or nothing? Because defendit numerus, take the first ten thousand men you meet, and I believe you would be no loser if you betted ten to one, that every single sinner of them, one with another, had been guilty of the same frailty." But here he seemeth not to have done himself justice: the man is sure enough a hero who has his lady at fourscore. How doth his modesty herein lessen the merit of a whole well-spent life: not taking to himself the commendation (which Horace accounted the greatest in a theatrical character) of continuing to the very dregs the same he was from the beginning

Servetur ad IMUM

Qualis ab incepto processerat

But let us farther remark, that the calling her his whore, implieth she was his own, and not his neighbour's. Truly a commendable continence ! and such as Scipio himself must have applauded. For how much self-denial was necessary not to covet his neighbour's whore? and what disorders must the coveting her have occasioned, in that society, where (according to this political calculator) nine in ten of all ages have their concubines?

We have now, as briefly as we could devise, gone through the three constituent qualities of that heroism properly or essentially resideth. It either hero. But it is not in any, or all of these, is a lucky result rather from the collision of these lively qualities against one another. Thus, as from wisdom, bravery, and love, ariseth magnanimity, the object of admiration, which is the aim of the greater epic; so from vanity, impudence, and debauchery, springeth buffoonery, the source of ridicule, that "laughing ornament," as he well termeth it, of the little epic.

He is not ashamed (God forbid he ever should that not reason but risibility distinguisheth the be ashamed!) of this character; who deemeth, human species from the brutal. "As nature (saith this profound philosopher) distinguished our spedesign MUST have been by that faculty as evidently cies from the mute creation by our risibility, her to raise our HAPPINESS, as by OUR os sublime (OUR ERECTED FACES) to lift the dignity of our FORM above them"." All this considered, how complete a hero must he be, as well as how happy a man, whose risibility lieth not barely in his muscles as in the common sort, but (as himself informeth us) in his very spirits? And whose os sublime is not simply an erect face, but a brazen head, as should seem by his comparing it with one of iron, said to belong to the late king of Sweden !

But whatever personal qualities a hero may have, the examples of Achilles and Æneas show 6 Ibid. p. 31.

5 Letter to Mr. P. p. 46. 7 Life, p. 23, 24.

& Letter, p. 8.

us, that all those are of small avail, without the constant assistance of the GODS: for the subversion and erection of empires have never been judged the work of man. How greatly soever then we may esteem of his high talents, we can hardly conceive his personal prowess alone sufficient to restore the decayed empire of Dulness. So weighty an achievement must require the particular favour and protection of the GREAT; who being the natural patrons and supporters of letters, as the ancient gods were of Troy, must first be drawn off and engaged in another interest, before the total subversion of them can be accomplished. To surmount, therefore, this last and greatest difficulty, we have in this excellent man a professed favourite and intimado of the great. And look of what force ancient piety was to draw the gods into the party of Æneas, that, and much stronger is modern incense, to engage the great in the party to Dulness.

Thus have we essayed to portray or shadow out this noble imp of fame. But now the impatient reader will be apt to say, if so many and various graces go to the making up a hero, what mortal shall suffice to bear this character? Ill hath he read, who sees not in every trace of this picture, that individual, ALL-ACCOMPLISHED PERSON, in whom these rare virtues and lucky circumstances have agreed to meet and concentre with the strongest lustre and fullest harmony.

The good Scriblerus indeed, nay, the world itself, might be imposed on in the late spurious editions, by I can't tell what sham-hero, or phantom: But it was not so easy to impose on HIM whom this egregious error most of all concerned. For no sooner had the fourth book laid open the high and swelling scene, but he recognized his own heroic acts: And when he came to the words,

Soft on her lap her Laureat son reclines, (though laureat imply no more than one crowned with laurel, as befitteth any associate or consort in empire) he ROARED (like a lion) and VINDICATED HIS RIGHT OF FAME. Indeed not without cause, he being there represented as fast asleep; so unbeseeming the eye of empire, which, like that of Providence, should never slumber. "Hah!" saith he, "fast asleep it seems! that's a little too strong. Pert and dull at least you might have allowed me, but as seldom asleep as any fool." However, the injured hero may comfort himself with this reflection, that though it be sleep, yet it is not the sleep of death, but of immortality. Here he will live at least, though not awake; and in no worse condition than many an enchanted warrior before him. The famous Durandarte, for instance, was, like him, cast into a long slumber by Merlin, the British bard and necromancer; and his example for submitting to it with so good a grace might be of use to our hero. For this disastrous knight being sorely pressed or driven to make his answer by several persons of quality, only replied with a sigh, Patience, and shuffle the cards3.

But now, as nothing in this world, no not the most sacred or perfect things either of religion or government, can escape the teeth or tongue of envy, methinks I already hear these carpers objecting to the clear title of our hero.

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"It would never," say they, "have been esteemed sufficient to make a hero for the Iliad or Æneis, that Achilles was brave enough to overturn one empire, or Æneas pious enough to raise another, had they not been goddess-born and princes bred. What then did this author mean by erecting a player instead of one of his patrons, (a person 'never a hero even on the stage') to this dignity of colleague in the empire of Dulness, and achiever of a work that neither old Omar, Attila, nor John of Leyden could entirely compass."

To all this we have, as we conceive, a sufficient answer from the Roman historian, Fabrum esse sua quemque fortunæ: Every man is the Smith of his own fortune. The politic Florentine Nicholas Machiavel goeth still farther, and affirms that a man needs but to believe himself a hero to be one of the best. "Let him," saith he, "but fancy himself capable of the highest things, and he will of course be able to achieve them." Laying this down as a principle, it will certainly and incontestably follow, that, if ever hero was such a character, OURS is: for if ever man thought himself such, OURS doth. Hear how he constantly paragons himself, at one time to ALEXANDER THE GREAT and CHARLES XII. of Sweden, for the excess and delicacy of his ambition; to HENRY IV. of France, for honest policy; to the first BRUTUS for love of liberty; and to SIR ROBERT WALPOLE, for good government while in powers. At another time, to the godlike SOCRATES, for his diversions and amusements; to HORACE, MONTAIGNE, and SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE, for an elegant vanity that makes them for ever read and admired 10; to TWO LORD CHANCELLORS, for law, from whom, when confederate against him at the bar, he carried away the prize of eloquence"; and, to say all in a word, to the right reverend the LORD BISHOP OF LONDON himself, in the art of writing pastoral letters 12.

Nor did his actions fall short of the sublimity of his conceptions. In his early youth he met the revolution at Nottingham 13 face to face, at a time when his betters contented themselves with follouing her. But he shone in courts as well as camps. He was called up when the nation fell in labour of this revolution, and was a gossip at her christening with the bishop and the ladies.

As to his birth, it is true he pretendeth no relation either to heathen god or goddess; but, what is as good, he was descended from a maker of both 16. And that he did not pass himself on the world for a hero, as well by birth as education, was his own fault; for his lineage he bringeth into his life as an anecdote, and is sensible he had it in his power to be thought nobody's son at all \7: and what is that but coming into the world a hero?

There is in truth another objection of greater weight, namely, "That this hero still existeth, and hath not yet finished his earthly course.

For

if Solon said well, that no man could be called

happy till his death,' surely much less can any one, till then, be pronounced a hero; this species of men being far more subject than others to the

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caprices of fortune and humour." But to this also we have an answer, that will be deemed (we hope) decisive. It cometh from himself, who, to cut this dispute short, hath solemnly protested that he will never change or amend.

With regard to his vanity, he declareth that nothing shall ever part them. "Nature," saith he, "hath amply supplied me in vanity; a pleasure which neither the pertness of wit nor the gravity of wisdom will ever persuade me to part with." Our poet had charitably endeavoured to administer a cure to it, but he telleth us plainly, My superiors perhaps may be mended by him, but for my part I own myself incorrigible. I look upon my follies as the best part of my fortune." And with good reason.-We see to what they have brought him!

66

Secondly, as to buffoonery. "Is it," saith he, 66 a time of day for me to leave off these fooleries, and set up a new character? I can no more put

off my follies than my skin; I have often tried, but they stick too close to me; nor am I sure my friends are displeased with them, for in this light I afford them frequent matter of mirth3," &c. &c. Having then so publicly declared himself incorrigible, he is become dead in law, (I mean the law Epopeian) and descendeth to the poet as his property, who may take him, and deal with him, as if he had been dead as long as an old Egyptian hero; that is to say, embowel and embalm him for posterity.

Nothing therefore, we conceive, remains to hinder his own prophecy of himself from taking immediate effect. A rare felicity! and what few prophets have had the satisfaction to see alive! Nor can we conclude better than with that extraordinary one of his, which is conceived in these oraculous words, MY DULNESS WILL FIND SOMEBODY TO DO IT RIGHT1.

THE DUNCIAD'.

TO DOCTOR JONATHAN SWIFT.

BOOK THE FIRST.

ARGUMENT.

The Proposition, the Invocation, and the Inscription. Then the original of the great empire of Dulness, and cause of the continuance thereof. The College of the. Goddess in the City, with her private Academy for Poets

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5 The DUNCIAD, sic MS. It may well be disputed whether this be a right reading. Ought it not rather to be spelled Dunceiad, as the etymology evidently demands? Dunce with an e, therefore Dunceiad with an e. That accurate and punctual man of letters, the restorer of Shakespeare, constantly observes the preservation of this very letter e, in spelling the name of his beloved author, and not like his common careless editors, with the omission of one, nay sometimes of two ees, (as Shakspear) which is utterly unpardonable. "Nor is the neglect of a single letter so trivial as to some it may appear; the alteration whereof in a learned language is an achievement that brings honour to the critic who advances it; and Dr. Bentley will be remembered to posterity for his performances of this sort as long as the world shall have any esteem for the remains of Menander and Philemon."-THEOBALD.

This is surely a slip in the learned author of the foregoing note, there having been since produced by an accurate antiquary, an autograph of Shakspeare himself, whereby it appears that he spelled his own name without the first e. And upon this authority it was that those most critical curators of his monument in Westminster Abbey erased the former wrong reading, and restored the true spelling on a new piece of old Egyptian granite. Nor for this only do they deserve our thanks, but for exhibiting on the same monument the first specimen of an edition of an author in marble; where (as may be seen on comparing the tomb with the book) in the space of five lines, two words and a whole verse are changed, and it is to be hoped will there stand, and outlast whatever hath been hitherto done in paper; as for the future, our learned sister university (the other eye of England) is taking care to perpetuate a total new Shakespear at the Clarendon press.-BENTL.

It is to be noted that this great critic also has omitted one circumstance, which is, that the inscription with the name of Shakspeare was intended to be placed on the

in particular; the governors of it, and the four Cardinal Virtues. Then the Poem hastes into the midst of things, presenting her, on the evening of a Lord Mayor's day, revolving the long succession of her sons, and the glories past and to come. She fixes her eye on Bays to be the instrument of that great event which is the subject of the poem. He is described pensive among his books, giving up the cause, and apprehending the period of her

marble scroll to which he points with his hand; instead of which it is now placed behind his back, and that specimen of an edition is put on the scroll, which indeed Shakspeare hath great reason to point at.-ANON.

Though I have as just a value for the letter E as any grammarian living, and the same affection for the name of this poem as any critic for that of his author, yet cannot it induce me to agree with those who would add yet another e to it, and call it the Dunceiade; which being a French and foreign termination, is no way proper to a word entirely English and vernacular. One e therefore in this case is right, and two e's wrong. Yet upon the whole I shall follow the manuscript, and print it without any e at all; moved thereto by authority (at all times, with critics, equal, if not superior, to reason). In which method of proceeding I can never enough praise my good friend, the exact Mr. Tho. Hearne, who, if any word occur which to him and all mankind is evidently wrong, yet keeps he it in the text with due reverence, and only remarks in the margin sic MS. In like manner we shall not amend this error in the title itself, but only note it obiter, to evince to the learned that it was not our fault, nor any effect of our ignorance or inattention -Scriblerus.

This poem was written in the year 1726. In the next year an imperfect edition was published at Dublin, and reprinted at London in twelves; another at Dublin, and another at London in octavo; and three others in twelves the same year. But there was no perfect edition before that of London in quarto, which was attended with notes. -SCHOL. VET.

It was expressly confessed in the preface to the first edition that this poem was not published by the author himself. It was printed originally in a foreign country: and what foreign country? Why, one notorious for blunders; where finding blanks only instead of proper names, these blunderers filled them up at their pleasure.

The very hero of the poem hath been mistaken to this hour, so that we are obliged to open our notes with a discovery who he really was. We learn from the former

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empire: after debating whether to betake himself to the Church, or to Gaming, or to Party-writing, he raises an altar of proper books, and (making first his solemn prayer and declaration) purposes thereon to sacrifice all his unsuccessful writings. As the pile is kindled, the Goddess beholding the flame from her seat, flies and puts it out by casting upon it the poem of Thule. She forthwith reveals herself to him, transports him to her temple, unfolds her arts, and initiates him into her mysteries; then announcing the death of Eusden, the Poet Laureate, anoints him, carries him to court, and proclaims him

successor.

THE mighty mother, and her son who brings 2 The Smithfield muses to the ear of kings,

editor, that this piece was presented by the hands of Sir Robert Walpole to King George II. Now the author directly tells us, his hero is the man

who brings

The Smithfield muses to the ear of kings,

And it is notorious who was the person on whom this prince conferred the honour of the laurel.

It appears as plainly from the apostrophe to the great in the third verse, that Tibbald could not be the person, who was never an author in fashion, or caressed by the great; whereas this single characteristic is sufficient to point out the true hero; who, above all other poets of his time, was the peculiar delight and chosen companion of the nobility of England; and wrote, as he himself tells us, certain of his works at the earnest desire of persons of quality.

Lastly, the sixth verse affords full proof; this poet being the only one who was universally known to have had a son so exactly like him in his poetical, theatrical, political, and moral capacities, that it could justly be said of him Still Dunce the second reign'd like Dunce the first. -BENT.

In the first edition it was thus,

Books and the man I sing, the first who brings
The Smithfield muses to the ear of kings.
Say, great Patricians! since yourselves inspire
These wondrous works (so Jove and fate require)
Say, for what cause, in vain decried and curst,
Still-

Say, great Patricians! since yourselves inspire
These wondrous works——

-"Dii coeptis (nam vos mutastis et illas)."-OVID. Met. 1. The reader ought here to be cautioned, that the mother and not the son is the principal agent of this poem: the latter of them is only chosen as her colleague (as was anciently the custom in Rome before some great expedition), the main action of the poem being by no means the coronation of the Laureate, which is performed in the very first book, but the restoration of the empire of Dulness in Britain, which is not accomplished till the last.

2 Wonderful is the stupidity of all the former critics and commentators on this work! It breaks forth at the very first line. The author of the critique prefixed to Sawney, a poem, p. 5, hath been so dull as to explain the man who brings, &c., not of the hero of the piece, but of our poet himself, as if he vaunted that kings were to be his readers; an honour which though this poem hath had, yet knoweth he how to receive it with more modesty.

We remit this ignorant to the first lines of the Æneid, assuring him that Virgil there speaketh not of himself, but of Eneas:

Arma virumque cano, Troje qui primus ab oris
Italiam, fato profugus, Lavinaque venit
Littora: multum ille et terris jactatus et alto, &c.

I cite the whole three verses, that I may by the way offer a conjectural emendation, purely my own, upon each: first, oris should be read aris, it being, as we see Æn. ii. 513, from the altar of Jupiter Hercæus that Æneas fled as soon as he saw Priam slain. In the second line I would read flatu for fato, since it is most clear it was by winds that he arrived at the shore of Italy. Jactatus, in the

I sing. Say you, her instruments the great!
Call'd to this work by Dulness, Jove, and Fate 4;
You by whose care, in vain decried and curst,
Still Dunce the second reigns like Dunce the first;
Say how the goddess bade Britannia sleep,
And pour'd her spirit o'er the land and deep.

In eldest time, ere mortals writ or read,
Ere Pallas issued from the Thunderer's head,
Dulness o'er all possess'd her ancient right,
Daughter of Chaos and eternal Night 5:
Fate in their dotage this fair idiot gave,
Gross as her sire, and as her mother grave,
Laborious, heavy, busy, bold, and blind,
She ruled, in native anarchy, the mind 7.

Still her old empire to restore she tries,
For, born a goddess, Dulness never dies.

O thou! whatever title please thine ear, Dean, Drapier, Bickerstaff, or Gulliver!

third, is surely as improperly applied to terris, as proper to alto: to say a man is toss'd on land, is much at one with saying he walks at sea: risum teneatis, amici? Correct it, as I doubt not it ought to be, vexatus.-SCRIBLERUS.

3 Smithfield is the place where Bartholomew Fair was kept, whose shows, machines, and dramatical entertainments, formerly agrecable only to the taste of the rabble, were, by the hero of this poem and others of equal genius, brought to the theatres of Covent-Garden, Lincoln's Innfields, and the Haymarket, to be the reigning pleasures of the court and town. This happened in the reigns of King George I. and II.-See book iii.

4 i. e. By their judgments, their interests, and their inclinations.

5 The beauty of this whole allegory being purely of the poetical kind, we think it not our proper business, as a scholiast, to meddle with it; but leave it (as we shall in general all such) to the reader, remarking only, that Chaos (according to Hesiod's ✪eoyovía) was the progenitor of all the gods.-SCRIBLERUS.

6 I wonder the learned Scriblerus has omitted to advertise the reader, at the opening of this poem, that Dulness here is not to be taken contractedly for mere stupidity, but in the enlarged sense of the word, for all slowness of apprehension, shortness of sight, or imperfect sense of things. It includes (as we see by the poet's own words) labour, industry, and some degree of activity and boldness: a ruling principle not inert, but turning topsy-turvy the understanding, and inducing an anarchy or confused state of mind. This remark ought to be carried along with the reader throughout the work, and without this caution he will be apt to mistake the importance of many of the characters, as well as of the design of the poet. Hence it is that some have complained he chooses too mean a subject, and imagined he employs himself, like Domitian, in killing flies; whereas those who have the true key will find he sports with nobler quarry, and embraces a larger compass, or (as one saith, on a like occasion)

Will see his work, like Jacob's ladder, rise, Its foot in dirt, its head amid the skies. -BENT.

7 The native anarchy of the mind is that state which precedes the time of reason's assuming the rule of the passions. But in that state, the uncontrolled violence of the passions would soon bring things to confusion, were it not for the intervention of Dulness in this absence of reason; who, though she cannot regulate them like reason, yet blunts and deadens their vigour, and, indeed, produces some of the good effects of it: hence it is that Dulness has often the appearance of reason. This is the only good she ever did; and the poet takes particular care to tell it in the very introduction of his poem. It is to be observed, indeed, that this is spoken of the universal rule of Dulness in ancient days, but we may form an idea of it from her partial government in later times.

8 This restoration makes the completion of the poem.Vide book iv.

Whether thou choose Cervantes' serious air,
Or laugh and shake in Rabelais' easy chair,
Or praise the court', or magnify mankind 2,
Or thy grieved country's copper chains unbind ;
From thy Boeotia though her power retires,
Mourn not, my Swift, at aught our realm acquires,
Here pleased behold her mighty wings outspread
To hatch a new Saturnian age of lead 3.

Close to those walls where Folly holds her throne',
And laughs to think Monroe would take her down,
Where o'er the gates, by his famed father's hands
Great Cibber's brazen brainless brothers stand;
One cell there is", conceal'd from vulgar eye,
The cave of Poverty and Poetry7.

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.

1 In the MS. it followed thus:

Or in the graver gown instruct mankind,
Or silent let thy morals tell thy mind.

2 Ironice, alluding to Gulliver's representations of both. -The next line relates to the papers of the Drapier against the currency of Wood's copper coin in Ireland, which, upon the great discontent of the people, his majesty was graciously pleased to recal.

3 The ancient golden age is by poets styled Saturnian; but in the chemical language Saturn is lead. She is said here only to be spreading her wings to hatch this age, which is not produced completely till the fourth book.

4 In the former editions thus:

Where wave the tatter'd ensigns of Rag-fair,
A yawning ruin hangs and nods in air;

Keen, hollow winds howl through the bleak recess,
Emblem of music caused by emptiness;
Here in one bed two shivering sisters lie,
The cave of Poverty and Poetry.

5 Mr. Caius Gabriel Cibber, father of the poet laureate. The two statues of the lunatics over the gates of Bedlam Hospital were done by him, and (as the son justly says of them) are no ill monuments of his fame as an artist.

6 The cell of poor Poetry is here very properly represented as a little unendowed hall in the neighbourhood of the magnific college of Bedlam, and as the surest seminary to supply those learned walls with professors; for there cannot be a plainer indication of madness than in men persisting to starve themselves and offend the public by scribbling,

Escape in monsters, and amaze the town; when they might have benefited themselves and others in profitable and honest employments. The qualities and productions of the students of this private academy are afterwards described in this first book, as are also their actions throughout the second, by which it appears, how near allied dulness is to madness. This naturally prepares us for the subject of the third book, where we find them in union and acting in conjunction, to produce the catastrophe of the fourth; a mad poetical sibyl leading our hero through the regions of vision, to animate him in the present undertaking, by a view of the past triumphs of barbarism over science.

7 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 satirised.

10

Hence Miscellanies spring, the weekly boast
Of Curl's chaste press, and Lintot's rubric post 9:
Hence hymning Tyburn's " elegiac lines ",
Hence Journals, Medleys, Merc'ries, Magazines 12:
Sepulchral lies 13, our holy walls to grace,
And new-year odes, and all the Grub-street race.
In clouded majesty here Dulness shone 15;
Four guardian Virtues, round, support her throne:

8 Sunt quibus in plures jus est transire figuras :
Ut tibi, complexi terram maris incola, Proteu;
Nunc violentus aper, nunc quem tetigisse timerent,
Anguis eras, modo te faciebant cornua taurum,
Sæpe lapis poteras.-Ovid. Met. viii.

Neither Palæphatus, Phurnutus, nor Heraclides give us any steady light into the mythology of this mysterious fable. If I be not deceived in a part of learning which has so long exercised my pen, by Proteus must certainly be meant a hackneyed town scribbler; and by his transformations, the various disguises such a one assumes, to elude the pursuit of his irreconcileable enemy, the bailiff. Proteus is represented as one bred of the mud and slime of Ægypt, the original soil of arts and letters: and what is a town-scribbler, but a creature made up of the excrements of luxurious science? By the change then into a boar is meant his character of a furious and dirty partywriter; the snake signifies a libeler; and the horns of the bull, the dilemmas of a polemical answerer. These are the three great parts he acts under; and when he has completed his circle he sinks back again, as the last change into a stone denotes, into his natural state of immoveable stupidity. If I may expect thanks of the learned world for this discovery, I would by no means deprive that excellent critic of his share, who discovered before me, that in the character of Proteus was designed sophistam, magum, politicum, præsertim rebus sese accommodantem; which in English is, a political writer, a libeler, and a disputer, writing indifferently for or against every party in the state, every sect in religion, and every character in private life. See my Fables of Ovid explained.-ABBE BANIER.

9 Two booksellers, of whom see book ii. The former was fined by the Court of King's Bench for publishing obscene books; the latter usually adorned his shop with titles in red letters.

10 In the former editions thus:

Hence hymning Tyburn's elegiac lay,
Hence the soft sing-song on Cecilia's day.

11 It is an ancient English custom for the malefactors to sing a psalm at their execution at Tyburn, and no less customary to print elegies on their deaths, at the same time, or before.

-Genus unde Latinum, Albanique patres, atque altæ mania Roma.-Virg. Æn. i. 12 Miscellanies in prose and verse, in which at some times -new-born nonsense first is taught to cry;

at others dead-born Dulness appears in a thousand shapes. These were thrown out weekly and monthly by every miserable scribbler, or picked up piece-meal and stolen from any body, under the title of papers, essays, queries, verses, epigrams, riddles, &c., equally the disgrace of human wit, morality, and decency.

13 Isa just satire on the flatteries and falsehoods admitted to be inscribed on the walls of churches in epitaphs.

14 Made by the poet laureate for the time being, to be sung at court on every new-year's day, the words of which are happily drowned in the voices and instruments. The new-year odes of the hero of this work were of a caste distinguished from all that preceded him, and made a conspicuous part of his character as a writer, which, doubtless, induced our author to mention them here so particularly.

15 See this cloud removed, or rolled back, or gathered up to her head, book iv. ver. 17, 18. It is worth while to compare this description of the majesty of Dulness in a state of peace and tranquillity, with that more busy scene where she mounts the throne in triumph, and is not so

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