BOOK IV.

ARGUMENT.

The poet being, in this book, to declare the completion of the prophecies mentioned at the end of the former, makes a new invocation; as the greater poets are wont, when some high and worthy matter is to be sung. He shows the goddess coming in her majesty, to destroy order and science, and to substitute the kingdom of the Dull upon earth. How she leads captive the Sciences, and silences the Muses; and what they be who succeed in their stead. All her children, by a wonderful attraction, are drawn about her; and bear along with them divers others, who promote her empire by connivance, weak resistance, or discouragement of arts; such as half-wits, tasteless admirers, vain pretenders, the flatterers of dances, or the patrons of them. All these crowd round her; one of them offering to approach her, is driven back by a rival, but she commends and encourages both. The first who speak in form are the geniuses of the schools, who assure her of their care to advance her cause by confining youth to words, and keeping them out of the way of real knowledge. Their address, and her gracious answer; with her charge to them and the universities. The universities appear by their proper deputies, and assure her that the same method is observed in the progress of education. The speech of Aristarchus on this subject. They are driven off by a band of young gentlemen returned from travel with their tutors; one of whom delivers to the god. dess, in a polite oration, an account of the whole conduct and fruits of their travels; presenting to her at the same time a young nobleman perfectly accomplished. She re ceives him graciously, and endures him with the bappy quality of want of shame. She sees loitering about her a number of indolent persons abandoning all business and duty, and dying with laziness: 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 fraudulent proceeding, she finds a method to reconcile their difference. Then enter a troop of people fantastically adorned, offering her strange and exotic presents; among them, one stands forth, and demands justice on another who had deprived him of one of the greatest curiosities in nature; but he justifies himself so well, that the goddess gives them both

her approbation. She recommends to them to find proper employment for the indolents before mentioned, in the study of butterflies, shells, birds nests, moss, &c. but with particular caution not to proceed beyond trifles, to any useful or extensive views of nature, or of the Author of nature. Against the last of these apprehensions, she is secured by a hearty address for the minute philosophers and free-thinkers, one of whom speaks in the name of the rest. The youth thus instructed and principled, are delivered to her in a body, by the hands of Silenus; and then admitted to taste the cap of the Magus, her high priest, which causes a total oblivion of all obligations, divine, civil, moral, or rational. To these her adepts she sends priests, attendants, and comforters, of various kinds; confers on them orders and degrees; and then dismissing them with a speech, confirming to each his privileges, and telling what she expects from each. concludes with a yawn of extraordinary virtue: the progress and effect whereof on all orders of men, and the consummation of all, in the restoration of Night and Chaos, conclude the poem.

2

YET, yet a moment, one dim ray of light
Indulge, dread Chaos, and eternal Night!
Of darkness visible so much be lent,
As half to show, half veil the deep intent.
Ye powers! 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 flan'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,

REMARKS.

14

2-Dread Chaos and eternal Night!] Invoked, as the restoration of their empire is the action of the poem. P.* 14 To blot out order, and extinguish light.] The two great ends of her mission; the one in quality of daughter of

Of dull and venal a new world to mold, 's
And bring Saturnian days of lead and gold.

[ceal'd,

She mounts the throne: her head a cloud con-
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.
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. 3o
Mad Mathesis alone was uncontin'd, 31

Too mad for mere material chains to bind,
Now to pure space lifts her ecstatic stare,
Now running round the circle, finds it square.

REMARKS.

Chaos, the other as daughter of Night. Order here is to he understood extensively, both as civil and moral; the dis tinctions between high and low in society, and true and false in individuals: light as intellectual only; wit, science,

arts.

P.

15 Of dull and venal,] The allegory continued; dull re ferring to the extinction of light or science; venal to the destruction of order and the truth of things.

P.. 15-a new world.] In allusion to the Epicurean opinion, that from the dissolution of the natural world inte night and chaos, a new one should arise; this the poet alluding to, in the production of a new world, makes it par take of its original principles.

P...

50 There was a judge of this name, always ready_to_bang any man that came in his way.

P. *

1 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

1

But held in tenfold bonds the Muses lie,
Watch'd both by envy's and by flattery's eye:
There to her heart sad Tragedy address'd

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 could'st 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 patchwork fluttering, and her head aside;
By singing peers upheld on either hand,

She trip'd and laugh'd, too pretty much to stand;
Cast on the prostrate Nine a scornful look,
Then thus in quaint recitativo spoke:

54

"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; 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 :

IMITATIONS.

4 Joy to great Chaos!]

'Joy to great Cæsar!'

The beginning of a famous old song.

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 the' Hibernian shore.
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 pow'r 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 dances, 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;