How fluent nonsense trickles from his tongue! VARIATIONS. Ver. 204. In former ed. But oh! with One, immortal One, dispense, The source of Newton's Light, of Bacon's sense. Content each emanation of his fires That beams on Earth, each virtue he inspires, 220 Each art he prompts, each charm he can create, Whate'er he gives, are given for you to hate. Persist, by all divine in man unaw'd, But, Learn, ye Dunces! not to scorn your God." While K**, B**, W**, preach in vain. Hell rises, Heaven descends, and dance on Earth: After ver. 212. followed in former ed. Here too, great Woolston! here exalt thy throne, And prove, no miracles can match thy own. Ver. 216. In former ed.—or a seraph's flame. REMARKS. and all that, in danger."-Welsted, Narrative in Orat. Transact. N. 1. After having stood some prosecutions, he turned his rhetoric to buffoonery upon all public and private occurrences. All this passed in the same room; where sometimes he broke jests, and sometimes that bread which he called the primitive eucharist.―This wonderful person struck medals, which he dispersed as tickets to his subscribers: the device a star rising to the meridian, with this motto, AD SVMMA; and below, INVENIAM VIAM AVT FACIAM. This man had an hundred pounds a year given him for the secret service of a weekly paper of unintelligible nonsense, called the Hyp-Doctor. Ver. 204. Sherlock, Hare, Gibson,] Bishops of Salisbury, Chichester and London; whose sermons and pastoral letters did honour to their country as well as stations. Ver. 212. Of Toland, and Tindal, see Book i Tho. Woolston was an impious madman, who wrote in a most insolent style against the miracles of the Gospel, in the year 1726, &c. Ver. 213. Yet oh, my sons, &c.] The caution against blasphemy here given by a departed son of Dulness to his yet existing brethren, is, as the poet rightly intimates, not out of tenderness to the cars of others, but their own. And so we see that when that danger is removed, on the open establishment of the goddess in the fourth book, she encourages her sons, and they beg assistance to pollute the source of light itself, with the same virulence they had before done the purest emanations from it. Ver. 215. 'Tis yours, a Bacon or a Locke to blame, Gods, imps, and monsters, music, rage and mirth, VARIATION. Ver, 231, 232. Added when the hero was changed. REMARKS. matical demonstration" (saith he) "founded upon the proportions of lines and circles to each other, and the ringing of changes upon figures, these have no more to do with the greatest part of philosophy, than they have with the man in the moon. Indeed, the zeal for this sort of gibberish [mathematical principles] is greatly abated of late: and though it is now upwards of twenty years that the Dagon of modern philosophers, sir Isaac Newton, has lain with his face upon the ground before the ark of God, scripture philosophy; for so long Moses's Principia have been published; and the Treatise of Power Essential and Mechanical, in which sir Isaac Newton's philosophy is treated with the utmost contempt, has been published a dozen years; yet is there not one of the whole society who hath had the courage to attempt to raise him up. And so let him lie.”—The philosophical principles of Moses asserted, &c. p. 2. by Julius Bate, A. M. Chaplain to the right honourable the Earl of Harrington. London, 1744, octavo. Scribl. Ver. 224. But," Learn, ye Dunces! not to scorn your God." The hardest lesson a Dunce can learn. For being bred to scorn what he does not understand, that which he understands least he will be apt to scorn most. Of which, to the disgrace of all government, and (in the poet's opinion) even of that of Dulness herself, we have had a late example in a book entitled, Philosophical Essays concerning huiman understanding. Ver. 224.-not to scorn your God."] See this subject pursued in Book iv. Ver. 232. (Not half so pleas'd, when Goodman prophesy'd.)] Mr. Cibber tells us, in his Life, p. 149. that Goodman being at the rehearsal of a A Newton's genius, or a Milton's flame:] play, in which he had a part, clapped him on Thankfully received, and freely used, is this the shoulder, and cried, "If he does not make a gracious licence by the beloved disciple of that good actor, I'll be d-d.” "And," says Mr. prince of cabalistic dunces, the tremendous Hutch- Cibber, "I make it a question, whether Alexander inson. Hear with what honest plainness he himself, or Charles the twelfth of Sweden, when treateth our great geometer, "As to mathe-at the head of their first victorious armies, conta A fire, a jig, a battle, and a ball, 240 Thence a new world, to Nature's laws unknown, Breaks out refulgent, with a heaven its own; Another Cynthia her new journey runs, And other planets circle other suns. The forests dance, the rivers upward rise, Whales sport in woods, and dolphins in the skies; And last, to give the whole creation grace, Lo! one vast egg produces human race. Joy fills his soul, joy innocent of thought; "What power," he cries, "what power these wonders wrought?" 250 Son; what thou seekst is in thee! Look, and find Each monster meets his likeness in thy mind. Yet wouldst thou more in yonder cloud behold, Whose sarsenet skirts are edg'd with flaming gold, A matchless youth! his nod these worlds controls, Wings the red lightning, and the thunder rolls. Angel of Dulness sent to scatter round Her magic charms o'er all unclassic ground: Yon stars, yon sons, he rears at pleasuré higher, Illumes their light, and sets their flames on fire. Immortal Rich! how calm he sits at ease 'Midst snows of paper, and fierce hail of pease; And, proud his mistress' orders to perform, Rides in the whirlwind, and directs the storm. But lo! to dark encounter in mid air, New wizards rise; I see my Cibber there! VARIATIONS. Ver. 266. In former edit. 261 New wizards rise: here Booth, and Cibber there. REMARKS. feel a greater transport in their bosoms than I did in mine." Ver. 233. a sable sorcerer] Dr. Faustus, the subject of a set of farces, which lasted in vogue two or three seasons, in which both playhouses strove to outdo each other for some years. All the extravagancies in the sixteen lines following were introduced on the stage, and frequented by persons of the first quality in England, to the twentieth and thirtieth time. Ver. 237. Hell rises, Heaven descends, and dance on Earth.] This monstrous absurdity was actually represented in Tibbald's Rape of Proserpine. Ver. 248. Lo! one vast egg] In another of these farces Harlequin is hatched upon the stage, out of a large egg. Ver. 261. Immortal Rich!] Mr. John Rich, master of the theatre royal in Covent-garden, was the first that excelled this way. Ver. 266. I see my Cibber there!] The history of the foregoing absurdities is verified by himself, in these words, (Life, chap. xv.) "Then sprung forth that succession of moustrous medleys that have so long infested the stage, which arose upon one another alternately at both houses, out-vying each other in expense." He then proceeds to excuse his own part in them, as follows: "If I am asked why I assented? I have no better excuse for my errour than to confess I did it against my conscience, and had not virtue enough to starve. Had Henry IV. of Frange a better for changing his religion? I was still in my heart as much as he could be, on the side of truth and sense; but with this difference, that I had their leave to quit, Booth in his cloudy tabernacle shrin'd On grinning dragons thou shalt mount the wind. 271 And are these wonders, son, to thee unknown? Unknown to thee? These wonders are thy own. These Fate reserv'd to grace thy reign divine, Foreseen by me, but ah! withheld from mine. In Lud's old walls though long I rul'd, renown'd Far as loud Bow's stupendous bells resound: Though my own aldermen conferr'd the bays, To me committing their eternal praise, Their full-fed heroes, their pacific mayors, Their annual trophies, and their monthly wars: Though long my party built on me their hopes, For writing pamphlets, and for roasting popes! VARIATION. 280 Ver. 268. Cibber mounts the wind. Try what repentance can: what can it not? Resides not in the man who does not think, &c. It is granted they are all of a piece, and no man doubts but herein he is able to imitate Shakespeare. After ver. 284. in the former edit. followed, Different our parties, but with equal grace REMARKS. But let them when they could not support me. the question go which way it will, Harry IVth be confessed a full answer; only the question still has always been allowed a great man." This must seems to be, 1. How the doing a thing against one's be hard to prove how he got the leave of truth conscience is an excuse for it? and, 2dly, It will and sense to quit their service, unless he can produce a certificate that he ever was in it. managers of the theatre in Drury-lane. Ver. 266, 267. Booth and Cibber were joint Ver. 268. On grinning dragons thou shalt mount the wind. In his letter to Mr. P. Mr. C. solemnly declares this not to be literally true. We hope cally only. therefore the reader will understand it allegori day; and monthly wars in the artillery ground. Ver. 282. Annual trophies on the lord-mayor's Ver. 283. Though long my party] Settle, like most party-writers, was very uncertain in his 290 Yet lo! in me what authors have to brag on! 300 political principles. He was employed to hold the pen in the character of a popish successor, but afterwards printed his narrative on the other side. He had managed the ceremony of a famous popeburning on Nov. 17, 1610; then became a trooper in king James's army, at Hounslow-heath. After the Revolution he kept a booth at Bartholomewfair, where, in the droll called St. George for England, he acted in his old age in a dragon of green leather of his own invention; he was at last taken into the Charter-house, and there died, aged sixty years. To aid our cause, if Heaven thou canst not bend, And link the Mourning Bride to Proserpine. 310 For new abortions, all ye pregnant fair! This, this is he, foretold by ancient rhymes: subscribing to the English translation of Homer's Iliad) had not that merit with respect to the Odyssey, or he might have been better instructed in the Greek Punnology. Ver. 308, 309. Faustus, Pluto, &c.] Names of miserable farces, which it was the custom to act at the end of the best tragedies, to spoil the digestion of the audience. Ver. 312. ensure it but from fire.] In Tibbald's farce of Proserpine, a corn-field was set on fire: whereupon the other playhouse had a barn burnt down for the recreation of the spectators. They also rivalled each other in showing the burnings of hell-fire, in Dr. Faustus. Ver. 313. Another Eschylus appears!] It is reported of Eschylus, that when his tragedy of the Furies was acted, the audience were so terrified that the children fell into fits, and the big-bellied women miscarried. Ver. 297. Thee shall the patriot, thee the courtier taste,] It stood in the first edition with blanks, ** and **. Concanen was sure they must needs mean no body but king George and queen Caroline; and said he would insist it was so, till the poet cleared himself by filling up the blanks Ver. 325. On poets tombs see Benson's titles otherwise, agreeably to the context, and con-writ!] W-m Benson (surveyor of the buildings sistent with his allegiance." Pref. to a collection of verses, essays, letters, &c. against Mr. P. printed for A. Moor, p. 6. Ver. 305. Polypheme] He translated the Italian opera of Polifemo; but unfortunately lost the whole jest of the story. The Cyclops asks Ulysses his name, who tells him his naine is Noman : After his eye is put out, he roars and calls the brother Cyclops to his aid: they inquire who has hurt him? he answers Noman: whereupon they all go away again. Our ingenious translator made Ulysses answer, I take no name; whereby all that followed became unintelligible. Hence it appears that Mr. Cibber (who values himself on to his majesty K. George I.) 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, were going upon an address to the king against Benson, for such a misrepresentation; but the earl of Sunderland, then secretary, gave them an assurance that his majesty would remove him, which was done accordingly. In favour of this man, the famous sir Christopher Wren, who had See under Ripley rise a new White-hall, REMARKS. 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. Ver. 326. Ambrose Philips] "He was" (saith Mr. Jacob)" one of the wits at Button's, and a justice of the peace:" but he hath since met with higher preferment in Ireland: and a much greater character we have of him in Mr. Gildon's Com plete 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. His constant cry was, that Mr. P. was an enemy to the government; and in particular he was the avowed author of a report very industriously spread, that he had a hand in a party paper called the Examiner: a falschood well known to those yet living, who had the direction and publication of it The Ver. 328. While Jones' and Boyle's united labours fall:] At the time when this poem was written, the banquetting-house of Whitehall, the church and piazza of Covent-garden, and the palace and chapel of Somerset-house, the works of the famous Inigo Jones, had been for many years so neglected, as to be in danger of ruin. portico of Covent-garden church had been just then restored and beautified at the expense of the earl of Burlington; who, at the same time, by his publication of the designs of that great inaster and Palladio, as well as by many noble buildings of his own, revived the true taste of architecture in this kingdom. Ver. 330. 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, the What d'ye call it, Fables; and lastly, the celebrated Beggar's Opera; a piece of satire which hit all tastes and degrees of men, from those of the highest quality to the very rabble: that verse of Horace: Primores populi arripuit, populumque tributim, could never be so justly applied as to this. The vast success of it was unprecedented, and almost incredible: what is related of the wonderful effects of the ancient music or tragedy hardily came up to it: Sophocles and Euripides were less followed and famous. It was acted in London sixty-three days, uninterrupted; and renewed the next season with equal applauses. It spread into all the great towns of England, was played in many places to the thirtieth and fortieth time, and at Bath and Bristol fifty, &c. It made its progress into Wales, Scotland, and Ireland, where it was performed twenty-four days together: it was last anted in Minorca. The fame of it was not con Hibernian politics, O Swift! thy fate; And Pope's, ten years to comment and translate VARIATION. Ver. 331. in the former edition thus: [Broome, And Pope's translating ten whole years with On which was the following Note: "He concludes his irony with a stroke upon himself: for whoever imagines this a sarcasm on the other ingenious person, is surely mistaken. The opinion our author had of him was sufficiently shown by his joining him in the undertaking of the Odyssey; in which vions agreement, discharged his part so much to Mr. Broome, having engaged without any preMr. Pope's satisfaction, that he gratified him with the full sum of five hundred pounds, and a present of all those books for which his own interest could procure him subscribers, to the value of one hundred more. The author only seems to lament, that he was employed in translation at all." REMARKS. The fined to the author only; the ladies carried about with them the favourite songs of it in fans; and houses were furnished with it in screens. person who acted Polly, till then obscure, became all at once the favourite of the town; her pictures life written, books of letters and verses to her, were engraved, and sold in great numbers, her published; and paniphlets made even of her sayings and jests. Furthermore, it drove out of England, for that season, the Italian opera, which had carried all before it for ten years. That idol of the nobility and people, which the great critic Mr. Dennis by the labours and outeries of a whole life could not overthrow, was demolished by a single stroke of this gentleman's pen. This happened in the year 1728. Yet so great was his modesty, that he constantly prefixed to all the editions of it this motto, Nos hæc novimus esse nibil. Ver. 332. And Pope's, ten years to comment and translate.] The author here plainly laments that he was so long employed in translating and commenting. He began the Iliad in 1713, and finished it in 1719. The edition of Shakespeare (which he undertook merely because nobody else would) took up near two years more in the drudgery of comparing impressions, rectifying the scenery, &c. and the translation of half the Odys sey employed him from that time to 1725. Ver. 333. Proceed, great days! &c.] It may perhaps seem incredible, that so great a revolution in learning as is here prophesied, should be brought. about by such weak instruments as have been [hitherto] described in our poem: but do not thou, gentle reader, rest too secure in thy contempt of these instruments. Remember what the Dutch stories somewhere relate, that a great part of their provinces was once overflowed, by a small opening made in one of their dykes by a single water-rat. Enough! enough! the raptur'd monarch cries! And thro' the ivory gate the vision flies. REMARKS. However, that such is not seriously the judgment of our Poet, but that he conceiveth better hopes from the diligence of our schools, from the regularity of our universities, the discernment of our great men, the accomplishments of our nobility, the encouragement of our patrons, and the genius of our writers of all kinds (notwithstanding some few exceptions in each), may plainly be seen from his conclusion; where, causing all this vision to pass through the ivory gate, he expressly, in the language of poesy, declares all such imaginations to be wild, ungrounded, and fictitious. Scribl. VARIATIONS. After ver. 338. in a former edit. were the following lines: Signs following signs lead on the mighty year; In vain! they gaze, turn giddy, rave, and die. BOOK IV. ARGUMENT. 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 tu tors, one of whom delivers to the goddess, 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 receives him graciously, and endues him with the happy 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, entreating 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 dif ference. Then enter a troop of people fautastically adorned, offering her strange and exotic presents: amongst 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 ufeful or extensive views of Nature, or of the Author of Nature. Against the last of these apprehensions, she is secured by a hearty address from 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 cup 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 effects whereof on all orders of men, and the consumination of all, in the restoration of Night and Chaos, conclude the poem. ET. BOOK IV. Yer, yet a moment, one dim ray of light Tar poet being, in this book, to declare the com- REMARKS. The Dunciad. Rook IV. This book may properly be distinguished from the former, by the name of the Greater Dunciad, not so indeed in size, but in subject; and so far contrary to the distinction antiently made of the Greater and Lesser Iliad. But much are they mistaken who imagine this work in any wise inferior to the foror of any other hand than of our poet; of 2 |