Fierce champion Fortitude, that knows no fears Here she beholds the chaos dark and deep, Pleased with the madness of the mazy dance: much supported by her own virtues as by the princely consciousness of having destroyed all other. Scriblerus. the moon Rising in clouded majesty— -MILTON, book iv. 1 Quem neque pauperies, neque mors, neque vincula terrent. HORAT. "This is an allusion to a text in scripture, which shows, in Mr. Pope, a delight in profaneness," said Curl upon this place. But it is very familiar with Shakspeare 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 texts from holy writ. In All's Well that Ends Well; I am no great Nebuchadnezzar; I have not much skill in grass.-Ibid. They 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 Lost, he talks of Sampson's carrying the gates on his back; in the Merry Wives of Windsor, of Goliah 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 Shakspeare Restored, p. 144. s 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 4 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 popysmata, or popysms."-DENNIS on Hom, and Daily Journal, June 11, 1728. 5 A parody on a verse in Garth, cant. i. How ductile matter new meanders takes. How Time himself stands still at her command, All these, and more, the cloud-compelling queens Beholds through fogs, that magnify the scene : She, tinsel'd o'er in robes of varying hues, With self-applause her wild creation views; Sees momentary monsters rise and fall, And with her own fools-colours gilds them all. "Twas on the day, when ** rich and grave, Like Cimon, triumph'd both on land and wave: (Pomps without guilt, of bloodless swords and maces, Glad chains 10, warm furs, broad banners, and broad faces) Now night descending, the proud scene was o'er, 6 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. 7 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. See the Guardian, No. 40, parag. 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. 8 From Homer's epithet of Jupiter, vepeλnyepéra Ζεύς. 9 Viz. a Lord Mayor's day; his name the author had left in blanks, but most certainly could never be that which the editor foisted in formerly, and which no ways agrees with the chronology of the poem.-BENT. 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. In the former editions thus: 'Twas on the day when Thorold, rich and grave. 10 The ignorance of these moderns! This was altered in one edition to gold chains, showing more regard to the metal of which the chains of aldermen are made than to the beauty of the Latinism and Græcism, nay, of figurative speech itself: Lætas segetes, glad, for making glad, &c.—SCRIBLERUS. 11 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, And in the smooth description murmur still. 12 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 show being at length frugally abolished, the employment of city poet ceased, so that upon Settle's demise there was no successor to that place. Much to the mindful queen the feast recals 1 John Heywood, whose interludes were printed in the time of Henry VIII. 2 The first edition had it, She saw in Norton all his father shine. A great mistake; for Daniel De Foe had parts, but Norton De Foe was a wretched writer, and never attempted poetry. Much more justly is Daniel himself made successor to W. Prynne, both of whom wrote verses as well as politics; as appears by the poem De jure divino, &c. of De Foe, and by these lines, in Cowley's Miscellanies, on the other: One lately did not fear (Without the muses' leave) to plant verse here; And both these authors had a resemblance in their fates as well as writings, having been alike sentenced to the pillory. 3 Laurence Eusden, poet laureate. Mr. Jacob gives a catalogue of some few only of his works, which were very numerous. Mr. Cook, in his Battle of Poets, saith of him, Eusden, a laurel'd bard, by fortune raised, By very few was read, by fewer praised. Mr. Oldmixon, in his Arts of Logic and Rhetoric, p. 413. 414, affirms, "That of all the galimatias he ever met with, none comes up to some verses of this poet, which have as much of the ridiculum and the fustian in them as can well be jumbled together; and are of that sort of nonsense, which so perfectly confounds all ideas, that there is no distinct one left in the mind." Farther he says of him, "That he hath prophesied his own poetry shall be sweeter than Catullus, Ovid, and Tibullus; but we have little hope of the accomplishment of it, from what he hath lately published." Upon which Mr. Oldmixon has not spared a reflection, "That the putting the laurel on the head of one who writ such verses, will give futurity a very lively idea of the judgment and justice of those who bestowed it."-Ibid. p. 417. But the well-known learning of that noble person, who was then lord chamberlain, might have screened him from this unmannerly reflection. Nor ought Mr. Oldmixon to complain, so long after, that the laurel would have better become his own brows, or any others'. It were more decent to acquiesce in the opinion of the Duke of Buckingham upon this matter: In rush'd Eusden, and cried, Who shall have it In merry Old England it once was a rule, But now we're so frugal, I'd have you to know it, Of Blackmore, see book ii. Of Phillips, book i. ver. 262, and book iii. prope fin. Nahum Tate was poet laureate, a cold writer, of no invention; but sometimes translated tolerably when be She saw slow Phillips creep like Tate's poor page, And all the mighty mad in Dennis rage. friended by Mr. Dryden. In his second part of Absalom and Achitophel are above two hundred admirable lines together of that great hand, which strongly shine through the insipidity of the rest. Something parallel may be observed of another author here mentioned. 4 This is by no means to be understood literally, as if Mr. Dennis were really mad, according to the narrative of Dr. Norris, in Swift and Pope's Miscellanies, vol. iii. No-it is spoken of that excellent and divine madness, 80 often mentioned by Plato; that poetical rage and enthusiasm with which Mr. D. hath, in his time, been highly possessed; and of those extraordinary hints and motions whereof he himself so feelingly treats in his preface to the Rem, on Pr. Arth.-[See Notes on book ii. ver. 268.] 5 Mr. Theobald, in the Censor, vol. ii. N. 33, calls Mr. Dennis by the name of Furius. "The modern Furius is to be looked upon as more an object of pity, than of that which he daily provokes, laughter and contempt. Did we really know how much this poor man (I wish that reflection on poverty had been spared) suffers by being contradicted, or, which is the same thing in effect, by hearing another praised, we should, in compassion, sometimes attend to him with a silent nod, and let him go away with the triumph of his ill-nature.-Poor Furius (again) when any of his contemporaries are spoken well of, quitting the ground of the present dispute, steps back a thousand years to call in the succour of the ancients. His very panegyric is spiteful, and he uses it for the same reason as some ladies do their commendations of a dead beauty, who would never have had their good word, but that a living one happened to be mentioned in their company. His applause is not the tribute of his heart, but the sacrifice of his revenge," &c. Indeed his pieces against our poet are somewhat of an angry character, and as they are now scarce extant, a taste of his style may be satisfactory to the curious. "A young, squab, short gentleman, whose outward form, though it should be that of downright monkey, would not differ so much from human shape as his unthinking immaterial part does from human understanding. He is as stupid and as venomous as a hunchbacked toad.-A book through which folly and ignorance, those brethren so lame and impotent, do ridiculously look very big and very dull, and strut and hobble, cheek by jowl, with their arms on kimbo, being led and supported, and bully-backed by that blind hector, impudence."Reflect. on the Essay on Criticism, p. 26, 29, 30. It would be unjust not to add his reasons for this fury, they are so strong and so coercive. "I regard him (saith he) as an enemy; not so much to me as to my king, to my country, to my religion, and to that liberty which has been the sole felicity of my life. A vagary of fortune, who is sometimes pleased to be frolicsome, and the epidemic madness of the times, have given him reputation, and reputation (as Hobbes says) is power, and that has made him dangerous. Therefore I look on it as my duty to King George, whose faithful subject I am; to my country, of which I have appeared a constant lover; to the laws, under whose protection I have so long lived; and to the liberty of my country, more dear to me than life, of which I have now for forty years been a constant assertor, &c. I look upon it as my duty, I say, to do-you shall see what -to pull the lion's skin from this little ass, which popular error has thrown round him; and to show that this author, who has been lately so much in vogue, has neither sense in his thoughts nor English in his expressions."DENNIS, Rem. on Hom. Pref. p. 2. 91, &c. Besides these public-spirited reasons, Mr. D. had a private one; which, by his manner of expressing it, in p. 92, appears to have been equally strong. He was even in bodily fear of his life from the machinations of the said Mr. P. "The story (says he) is too long to be told, but who would be acquainted with it, may hear it from Mr. Curl, my bookseller. However, what my reason has suggested to me, that I have with a just confidence said, in defiance of his two clandestine weapons, his slander and In each she marks her image full exprest, But chief in Bays's monster-breeding breast 1; Bays, form'd by nature stage and town to bless, And act, and be, a coxcomb, with success. Dulness with transport eyes the lively dunce, Remembering she herself was Pertness once. Now (shame to Fortune!) an ill run at play Blank'd his bold visage, and a thin third day: Swearing and supperless the hero sate1, Blasphemed his gods, the dice, and damn'd his fate. his poison." Which last words of his book plainly discover Mr. D.'s suspicion was that of being poisoned, in like manner as Mr. Curl had been before him; of which fact see A full and true account of a horrid and barbarous revenge, by poison, on the body of Edmund Curl, printed in 1716, the year antecedent to that wherein these remarks of Mr. Dennis were published. But what puts it beyond all question is a passage in a very warm treatise, in which Mr. D. was also concerned, price two-pence, called, A true Character of Mr. Pope and his Writings, printed for S. Popping, 1716; in the tenth page whereof he is said "to have insulted people on those calamities and diseases which he himself gave them, by administering poison to them," and is called (p. 4), "a lurking way-laying coward, and a stabber in the dark." Which (with many other things most lively set forth in that piece) must have rendered him a terror, not to Mr. Dennis only, but to all christian people. For the rest, Mr. John Dennis was the son of a saddler in London, born in 1657. He paid court to Mr. Dryden; and having obtained some correspondence with Mr. Wycherley and Mr. Congreve, he immediately obliged the public with their letters. He made himself known to the government by many admirable schemes and projects, which the ministry, for reasons best known to themselves, constantly kept private. For his character, as a writer, it is given as follows: "Mr. Dennis is excellent at Pindaric writings, perfectly regular in all his performances, and a person of sound learning. That he is master of a great deal of penetration and judgment, his criticisms (particularly on Prince Arthur) do sufficiently demonstrate." From the same account it also appears that he writ plays, "more to get reputation than money."-DENNIS of himself. See Giles Jacob's Lives of Dram. Poets, p. 68, 69, compared with p. 286. 1 In the former editions thus: But chief, in Tibbald's monster-breeding breast; 2 It is hoped the poet here hath done full justice to his hero's character, which it were a great mistake to imagine was wholly sunk in stupidity; he is allowed to have supported it with a wonderful mixture of vivacity. This character is heightened, according to his own desire, in a letter he wrote to our author. "Pert and dull at least you might have allowed me. What! am I only to be dull, and dull still, and again, and for ever?" He then solemnly appealed to his own conscience, that "he could not think himself so, nor believe that our poet did; but that he spoke worse of him than he could possibly think;" and concluded it must be "merely to show his wit, or for some profit or lucre to himself."-Life of C. C., chap. vii. and Letter to Mr. P., p. 15. 40. 53. 3 Because she usually shows favour to persons of this character, who have a three-fold pretence to it. 4 It is amazing how the sense of this hath been mistaken by all the former commentators, who most idly suppose it to imply that the hero of the poem wanted a supper. In truth a great absurdity! Not that we are ignorant that the hero of Homer's Odyssey is frequently in that circumstance, and therefore it can no way derogate Then gnaw'd his pen, then dash'd it on the ground, from the grandeur of epic poem to represent such hero under a calamity, to which the greatest, not only of critics and poets, but of kings and warriors, have been subject. But much more refined, I will venture to say, is the meaning of our author: It was to give us, obliquely, a curious precept, or, what Bossu calls, a disguised sentence, that "Temperance is the life of study." The language of poesy brings all into action; and to represent a critic encompassed with books, but without a supper, is a picture which lively expresseth how much the true critic prefers the diet of the mind to that of the body, one of which he always castigates, and often totally neglects for the greater improvement of the other.-SCRIBLERUS. But since the discovery of the true hero of the Poem, may we not add that nothing was so natural, after so great a loss of money at dice, or of reputation by his play, as that the poet should have no great stomach to eat a supper? Besides, how well has the poet consulted his heroic character, in adding that he swore all the time ?-BENTL. 5 In the former editions thus: He roll'd his eyes that witness'd huge dismay, 6 A great number of them taken out to patch up his plays. 7" When I fitted up an old play, it was as a good housewife will mend old linen, when she has not better employment."-Life, p. 217, octavo. s It is not to be doubted but Bays was a subscriber to Tibbald's Shakespeare. He was frequently liberal this way; and, as he tells us, "subscribed to Mr. Pope's Homer, out of pure generosity and civility; but when Mr. Pope did so to his Nonjuror, he concluded it could be nothing but a joke." Letter to Mr. P., p. 24. This Tibbald, or Theobald, published an edition of Shakspeare, of which he was so proud himself as to say, in one of Mist's Journals, June 8, "That to expose any errors in it was impracticable." And in another, April 27. "That whatever care might for the future be taken by any other editor, he would still give above five hundred emendations, that shall escape them all." It was a ridiculous praise which the players gave to Shakspeare," that he never blotted a line." Ben Jonson honestly wished he had blotted a thousand; and Shakspeare would certainly have wished the same, if he had lived to see those alterations in his works, which, not the actors only (and especially the daring hero of this poem) have made on the stage, but the presumptuous critics of our days in their editions. 10 This library is divided into three parts; the first con Such with their shelves as due proportion hold, sists of those authors from whom he stole, and whose works he mangled; the second, of such as fitted the shelves, or were gilded for show, or adorned with pictures; the third class our author calls solid learning, old bodies of divinity, old commentaries, old English printers, or old English translations; all very voluminous, and fit to erect altars to Dulness. 1 "John Ogilby was one, who, from a late initiation into literature, made such a progress as might well style him the prodigy of his time in sending into the world so many large volumes! His translations of Homer and Virgil done to the life, and with such excellent sculptures! And (what added great grace to his works) "he printed them all on special good paper, and in a very good letter."-WINSTANLY, Lives of Poets. 2 The Duchess of Newcastle was one who busied herself in the ravishing delights of poetry; leaving to posterity in print three ample volumes of her studious endeavours." WINSTANLY, ibid. Langbaine reckons up eight folios of her Grace's; which were usually adorned with gilded covers, and had her coat of arms upon them. The poet has mentioned these three authors in particular, as they are parallel to our hero in his three capacities: 1. Settle was his brother laureate; only indeed upon half-pay, for the city instead of the court; but equally famous for unintelligible flights in his poems on public occasions, such as shows, birth-days, &c. 2. Banks was his rival in tragedy; though more successful in one of his tragedies, the Earl of Essex, which is yet alive: Anna Boleyn, the Queen of Scots, and Cyrus the Great, are dead and gone. These he dressed in a sort of beggar's velvet, or a happy mixture of the thick fustian and thin prosaic; exactly imitated in Perolla and Isidora, Cæsar in Egypt, and the Heroic Daughter. 3. Broome was a serving-man of Ben Jonson, who once picked up a comedy from his betters, or from some cast scenes of his master, not entirely contemptible. 4 In the first edition it was, Well purged, and worthy W-y, W-s, and Bl—. And in the following, altered to Withers, Quarles, and Blome. 5 Some have objected, that books of this sort suit not so well the library of our Bays, which they imagine consisted of novels, plays, and obscene books; but they are to consider, that he furnished his shelves only for ornament, and read these books no more than the dry bodies of divinity, which, no doubt, were purchased by his father when he designed him for the gown. See the note on ver. 200. 6A printer in the time of Ed. IV., Rich. III., and Hen. VII.; Wynkyn de Worde, his successor, in that of Hen. VII. and VIII. The former translated into prose Virgil's Eneis, as a history; of which he speaks, in his Proeme, in a very singular manner, as of a book hardly known. "Happened that to my hande cam a lytyl book in frenche, whiche late was translated out of latyn by some noble clerke of fraunce, whiche booke is named Eneydos (made in latyne by that noble poete and grete clerk Vyrgyle) whiche booke I sawe over and redde therein, How after the general destruccyon of the grete Troy, Eneas departed berynge his olde fader anchises upon his shol There, saved by spice, like mummies, many a year, De Lyra' there a dreadful front extends, dres, his lytyl son yolas on his hande, his wyfe with moche other people followynge, and how he shipped and departed; wyth alle thystorye of his adventures that he had er he came to the atchievement of his conquest of ytalye, as all alonge shall be shewed in this present booke. In whiche booke I had grete playsyr, by cause of the fayr and honest termes and wordes in frenche, whiche I never sawe to fore lyke, ne none so playsaunt ne so well ordred; whiche booke as me semed sholde be moche requysite to noble men to see, as wel for the eloquence as the hystoryes. How wel that many hondred yerys passed was the sayd booke of Eneydos wyth other workes made and lerned dayly in scolis, especyally in ytalye and other places, which hystorye the sayd Vyrgyle made in metre." 7 Nich. de Lyra, or Harpsfield, a very voluminous commentator, whose works, in five vast folios, were printed in 1472. 8 Philemon Holland, doctor in physic. He translated so many books, that a man would think he had done nothing else; insomuch that he might be called translator general of his age. The books alone of his turning into English are sufficient to make a country gentleman a complete library.-WINSTANLY. 9 In the former editions thus: And last, a little Ajax tips the spire. 10 A te principium, tibi desinet.-VIRG. Ecl. viii. -THEOC. Prima dicte mihi, summa dicende Camæna.-HORAT. The first visible cause of the passion of the town for our hero, was a fair flaxen full-bottom'd periwig, which, he tells us, he wore in his first play of the Fool in Fashion. It attracted, in a particular manner, the friendship of Colonel Brett, who wanted to purchase it. "Whatever contempt (says he) philosophers may have for a fine periwig, my friend, who was not to despise the world, but to live in it, knew very well that so material an article of dress upon the head of a man of sense, if it became him, could never fail of drawing to him a more partial regard and benevolence, than could possibly be hoped for in an ill-made one. This, perhaps, may soften the grave censure which so youthful a purchase might otherwise have laid upon him. In a word, he made his attack upon this periwig, as your young fellows generally do upon a lady of pleasure, first by a few familiar praises of her person, and then a civil enquiry into the price of it: and we finished our bargain that night over a bottle."-See Life, octavo, p. 303. This remarkable periwig usually made its entrance upon the stage in a sedan, brought in by two chairmen, with infinite approbation of the audience. O! ever gracious to perplex'd mankind, Some demon stole my pen (forgive the offence) Yet sure had heaven decreed to save the state3, 1 In the former editions thus: Ah! still o'er Britain stretch that peaceful wand, ? For wit or reasoning are never greatly hurtful to Dulness, but when the first is founded in truth, and the other in usefulness. 3 In the former editions thus: Had heaven decreed such works a longer date, Me si calicolæ voluissent ducere vitam, Defendi possent, etiam hac defensa fuissent.-VIRG. ibid. * A familiar manner of speaking, used by modern critics, of a favourite author. Bays might as justly speak thus of Fletcher, as a French wit did of Tully, seeing his works in a library, "Ah! mon cher Cicéron! Je le connois bien; c'est le même que Marc Tulle." But he had a better title to call Fletcher his own, having made so free with him. 5 When, according to his father's intention, he had been a clergyman, or (as he thinks himself) a bishop of the church of England. Hear his own words: "At the time that the fate of King James, the Prince of Orange, and myself, were on the anvil, Providence thought fit to postpone mine, till theirs were determined: But had my father carried me a month sooner to the University, who Or tread the path by venturous heroes trod, knows but that purer fountain might have washed my imperfections into a capacity of writing, instead of plays and annual odes, sermons and pastoral letters ?"-Apology for his Life, chap. iii. • Dextra mihi Deus, et telum quod missile libro. Virgil of the Gods of Mezentius. 7 "These doctors had a modest and fair appearance, and, like true masters of arts, were habited in black and white; they were justly styled subtiles and graves, but not always irrefragabiles, being sometimes examined, laid open, and split." SCRIBLERUS. This learned critic is to be understood allegorically: the doctors in this place mean no more than false dice, a cant phrase used amongst gamesters. So the meaning of these four sonorous lines is only this, "Shall I play fair, or foul?" 8 George Ridpath, author of a Whig paper, called the Flying Post; Nathaniel Mist, of a famous Tory journal. 9 Relates to the well-known story of the geese that saved the Capitol; of which Virgil, Æn. viii. Atque hic auratis volitans argenteus anser A passage I have always suspected. Who sees not the antithesis of auratis and argenteus to be unworthy the Virgilian majesty? And what absurdity to say a goose sings? canebat. Virgil gives a contrary character of the voice of this silly bird, in Ecl. ix. -argutos interstrepere anser olores. Read it, therefore, adesse strepebat. And why auratis porticibus ? does not the very verse preceding this inform us, Romulcoque recens horrebat regia culmo. Is this thatch in one line, and gold in another, consistent? I scruple not (repugnantibus omnibus manuscriptis) to correct it auritis. Horace uses the same epithet in the same sense, -Auritas fidibus canoris Ducere quercus. And to say that walls have ears is common even to a proverb.-SCRIBLERUS. 10 Not out of any preference or affection for the Tories. For what Hobbes so ingenuously confesses of himself, is true of all party-writers whatsoever: "That he defends the supreme powers, as the geese by their cackling defended the Romans, who held the Capitol; for they favoured them no more than the Gauls their enemies, but were as ready to have defended the Gauls if they had been possessed of the Capitol."-Epist. Dedic. to the Levia than. 11 In the former editions thus: Yes, to my country I my pen consign, Yes, from this moment, mighty Mist! am thine. 12 A band of ministerial writers, hired at the price mentioned in the note on book ii. ver. 316, who, on the very day their patron quitted his post, laid down their paper, and declared they would never more meddle in politics. L |