Our Midas sits Lord Chancellor of Plays!
On Poets' Tombs see Benson's titles writ1!
Lo! Ambrose Philips is preferr'd for Wit!
See under Ripley rise a new White-hall,
While Jones' and Boyle's united Labours fall 3;
While Wren with sorrow to the grave descends1;
Gay dies unpension'd5 with a hundred friends;

Hibernian Politics, O Swift! thy fate1;

And Pope's, ten years to comment and translate 2.
"Proceed, great days! till Learning fly the shore,
Till Birch shall blush with noble blood no more,
Till Thames see Eton's sons for ever play,
Till Westminster's whole year be holiday,
Till Isis' Elders reel, their pupils' sport,
And Alma Mater lie dissolv'd in Port 3!"

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335

'Enough! enough!' the raptur'd Monarch cries; And thro' the Iv'ry Gate the Vision flies,

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THE DUNCIAD.

BOOK THE FOURTH.

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 shews 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 silenceth 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 Dunces, 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

the value of One hundred more. The Author only seems to lament, that he was employed in Translation at all." P.

Hibernian Politics, O Swift! thy fate;] See Book 1. ver 26. P.

2 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 Shakespear (which he undertook merely because no body else would) took up near two years more in the drudgery of comparing impressions, rectifying the Scenery, &c., and the translation of half the Odyssey employed him from that time to 1725. P.

The

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. speech of Aristarchus on this subject. They are drawn off by a band of young Gentlemen returned from Travel with their Tutors; 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, intreating her to make them Virtuoso's, 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: 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 employ ment for the Indolents before-mentioned, in the study of Butterflies, Shells, Birdsnests, 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 from the Minute Philosophers and Freethinkers, 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 t 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 Consummation of all, in the restoration of Night and Chaos, conclude the Poem.

BOOK IV.1

Yindulet, dread Chaos, and eternal Night!

7ET, yet a moment, one dim Ray of Light

Of darkness visible so much be lent,
As half to shew, half veil, the deep Intent.
Ye Pow'rs! whose Mysteries restor'd I sing,
To whom Time bears me on his rapid wing,
Suspend a while your Force inertly strong2,
Then take at once the Poet and the Song.

Now flam'd the Dog-star's unpropitious ray,
Smote ev'ry Brain, and wither'd ev'ry Bay;
Sick was the Sun, the Owl forsook his bow'r,
The moon-struck Prophet felt the madding hour:

1 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 anciently made of the Greater and Lesser Iliad. But much are they mistaken who imagine this Work in any wise inferior to the former, or of any other hand than of our Poet; of which I am much more

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certain than that the Iliad itself was the work of Solomon, or the Batrachomuomachia of Homer, as Barnes hath affirmed. 'BENTLEY.' P.

2 Force inertly strong,] Alluding to the V inertia of Matter, which, tho' it really be p Power, is yet the Foundation of all the Qualities and Attributes of that sluggish Substance. P. and Warburton.

Then rose the Seed of Chaos, and of Night,
To blot out Order, and extinguish Light,
Of dull and venal a new World1 to mould,

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And bring Saturnian days of Lead and Gold.

She mounts the Throne: her head a Cloud conceal'd,
In broad Effulgence all below reveal'd;

('Tis thus aspiring Dulness ever shines)

Soft on her lap her Laureate son reclines.

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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 Rhet'ric languish'd on the ground;
His blunted Arms by Sophistry are born,

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 word3.
Mad Mathesis alone was unconfin'd,

Too mad for mere material chains to bind,
Now to pure Space lifts her ecstatic stare,
Now running round the Circle finds it square5.
But held in ten-fold bonds the Muses lie,
Watch'd both by Envy's and by Flatt'ry's eye":
There to her heart sad Tragedy addrest
The dagger wont to pierce the Tyrant's breast;
But sober History restrain'd her rage,
And promis'd Vengeance on a barb'rous age.
There sunk Thalia, nerveless, cold, and dead,
Had not her Sister Satire held her head:

1 a new World In allusion to the Epicurean opinion, that from the Dissolution of the natural World into Night and Chaos a new one should arise; this the Poet alluding to, in the Production of a new moral World, makes it partake of its original Principles. P. and Warburton.

2 Beneath her footstool, &c.] We are next presented with the pictures of those whom the Goddess leads in captivity. Science is only depressed and confined so as to be rendered useless; but Wit or Genius, as a more dangerous and active enemy, punished, or driven away: Dulness being often reconciled in some degree with Learning, but never upon any terms with Wit. And accordingly it will be seen that she admits something like each Science, as Casuistry, Sophistry, &c. but nothing like Wit, Opera alone supplying its place. P. and Warburton.

gives her Page the word.] There was a Judge of this name, always ready to hang any Man that came before him, of which he was suffered to give a hundred miserable examples during a long life, even to his dotage. P. and Warburton. [Cf. Epilogue to Satires, Dial. II. v. 159.]

Mad Máthesis] Alluding to the strange Conclusions some Mathematicians have deduced from their principles, concerning the real Quan

tity of Matter, the Reality of Space, &c. P. and Warburton.

5 running round the Circle finds it square.] Regards the wild and fruitless attempts of squar ing the Circle. P. and Warburton.

6 Watch'd both by Envy's and by Flatt'ry's eye.] One of the misfortunes falling on Authors from the Act for subjecting Plays to the power of a Licenser, being the false representations to which they were exposed, from such as either gratify'd their Envy to Merit, or made their Court to Greatness, by perverting general Reflections against Vice into Libels on particular Persons. P. and Warburton. [A licensing Act had been introduced by Sir John Barnard in 1735, but immediately abandoned; the Act of 1737 was occasioned by the political strokes in Fielding's Pasquin and the scurrilities of other plays. The bill was carried by Walpole, notwithstanding the vigorous opposition of Lord Chesterfield, who treated it as a first step towards a censorship of the press. Though the powers conferred by this Act are still retained by the Lord Chamberlain, they are used so sparingly and temperately (in 14 years, from 1852 to 1865, only 19 plays were rejected out of 2,816) that the restriction is practically little felt by managers, authors or public.]

Nor could'st thou, CHESTERFIELD1! a tear refuse,
Thou wept'st, and with thee wept each gentle Muse.
When lo! a Harlot form2 soft sliding by,
With mincing step, small voice, and languid eye:
Foreign her air, her robe's discordant pride

45

In patch-work flutt'ring, and her head aside:
By singing Peers up-held on either hand,

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

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"O Cara! Cara! silence all that train:

Joy to great Chaos! let Division reign3:

Chromatic tortures4 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 5,
Joys in my jigs, and dances in my chains.
But soon, ah soon, Rebellion will commence,
If Music meanly borrows aid from Sense.
Strong in new Arms, lo! Giant HANDEL stands,
Like bold Briareus, with a 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 th' 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.

When lo! a Harlot form] The Attitude given to this Phantom represents the nature and genius of the Italian Opera; its affected airs, its effeminate sounds, and the practice of patching up these Operas with favourite Songs, incoherently put together. These things were supported by the subscriptions of the Nobility. This circumstance that OPERA should prepare for the opening of the grand Sessions was prophesied of in Book III. ver. 304. P. and Warburton.

3 let Division reign:] Alluding to the false taste of playing tricks in Music with numberless divisions, to the neglect of that harmony which conforms to the Sense, and applies to the Passions. Mr Handel had introduced a great number of Hands, and more variety of Instruments into the Orchestra, and employed even Drums and Cannon to make a fuller Chorus; which proved so much too manly for the fine Gentlemen of his age, that he was obliged to remove his music into Ireland. After which they were reduced, for want of Composers, to practise the patchwork above-mentioned. P. and Warburton.

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60

65

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4 Chromatic tortures] That species of the ancient music called the Chromatic was a variation and embellishment, in odd irregularities, of the Diatonic kind. They say it was invented about the time of Alexander, and that the Spartans forbad the use of it, as languid and effeminate. Warburton.

5 thy own Phoebus reigns,

"Tuus jam regnat Apollo.'

Virg. [Ecl. v. 10]. P. 6 [Handel, who came to England in 1710, was an inmate of Lord Burlington's house from 1715 to 1718, during which time Pope must have frequently met him. His Messiah was produced in 1741.] It is remarkable, that in the earlier part of his life, Pope was so very insensible to the charms of music, that he once asked his friend, Dr Arbuthnot, who had a fine ear, 'whether, at Lord Burlington's concerts, the rapture which the company expressed upon hearing the compositions and performance of Handel did not proceed wholly from affectation.' Warton.

7 Fame's posterior Trumpet] According to Hudibras: