what an ancient master of wisdom affirmeth of the gods | courage manifesting itself in every limb; while its cor .n general: Si Dii non irascuntur impiis et injustis, respondent virtue, in the mock hero, is, that same nec pios utique justosque diligunt. In rebus enim courage all collected into the face. And as power, when diversis, aut in utramque partem moveri necesse drawn together, must needs have more force and spirit est, aut in neutram. Itaque qui bonos diligit, et than when dispersed, we generally find this kind of malos odit; et qui malos non odit, nec bonos diligit. | courage in so high and heroic a degree, that it insults Quia et diligere bonos ex odio malorum venit; et not only men, but gods. Mezentius is, without doubt, malos odisse ex bonorum caritate descendit. Which the bravest character in all the Æneis: but how? His in our vernacular idiom may be thus interpreted: If bravery, we know, was a high courage of blasphemy. the gods be not provoked at evil men, neither are they And can we say less of this brave man's? who, having delighted with the good and just. For contrary objects told us that he placed his 'summum bonum in these follies must either excite contrary affections, or no affections which he was not content barely to possess, but would at all. So that he who loveth good men, must at the likewise glory in,' adds, if I am misguided, 'tis nature's same time hate the bad: and he who hateth not bad fault, and I follow her.' Nor can we be mistaken in men, cannot love the good; because to love good men making this happy quality a species of courage, when proceedeth from an aversion to evil, and to hate evil men we consider those illustrious marks of it, which made from a tenderness to the good.' From this delicacy of his face, more known (as he justly boasteth) than the muse arose the little epic (more lively and choleric most in the kingdom;' and his language to consist of than her elder sister, whose bulk and complexion incline what we must allow to be the most daring figure of her to the phlegmatic): and for this, some notorious speech, that which is taken from the name of God. vehicle of vice and folly was sought out, to make thereof Gentle love, the next ingredient of the true hero's an example. An early instance of which (nor could it composition, is a mere bird of passage, or as (Shakescape the accuracy of Scriblerus) the father of epic speare calls it) summer-teeming lust, and evaporates poem himself affordeth us. From him the practice de in the heat of youth; doubtless by that refinement it scended to the Greek dramatic poets, his offspring; who, suffers in passing through those certain strainers which in the composition of their tetralogy, or set of four pieces, our poet somewhere speaketh of. But when it is let were wont to make the last a satiric tragedy. Happily, alone to work upon the lees, it acquireth strength by one of these ancient Dunciads (as we may well term it) old age; and becometh a lasting ornament to the little is come down unto us, amongst the tragedies of the poet epic. It is true, indeed, there is one objection to its Euripides. And what doth the reader suppose may be fitness for such an use: for not only the ignorant may the subject thereof? Why, in truth, and it is worthy think it comnion, but it is admitted to be so, even by observation, the unequal contest of an old, dull, debauch-him who best knoweth its value. 'Don't you think,' ed buffoon Cyclops, with the heaven-directed favourite argueth he, to say only a man has his whore, ought of Minerva; who, after having quietly borne all the to go for little or nothing? because defendit numerus. monster's obscene and impious ribaldry, endeth the Take the first ten thousand men you meet, and, I believe, farce in punishing him with the mark of an indelible you would be no loser if you betted ten to one that brand in his forehead. May we not then be excused, if, every single sinner of them, one with another, had been for the future, we consider the epics of Homer, Virgil, guilty of the same frailty.' But here he seemeth not and Milton, together with this our poem, as a complete to have done justice to himself: the man is sure enough tetralogy; in which the last worthily holdeth the place or modesty herein lessen the merit of a whole well-spent a hero who hath his lady at fourscore. How doth his Proceed we, therefore, in our subject. It hath been life! not taking to himself the commendation (which long, and, alas for pity! still remaineth a question, whe- Horace accounted the greatest in a theatrical character) ther the hero of the greater epic should be an honest of continuing to the very dregs the same he was from man; or as the French critics express it, un honnête the beginning, homme but it never admitted of a doubt, but that the Servetur ad imum hero of the little epic should be just the contrary. Hence, to the advantage of our Dunciad, we may observe, how much juster the moral of that poem must needs be where so important a question is previously decided. But then it is not every knave, nor (let me add) every 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 great epic hero, are wisdom, bravery, and love, from whence springeth heroic virtue; it followeth, that those of the lesser epic hero should be vanity, assurance, and debauchery, from which happy assemblage resulteth heroic dulness, the never-dying subject of this our poem.

station of the satiric piece?

This being settled, 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 selfcomplacence? nay, are they not, in the opinion of the enamoured owner, far beyond it? 'Let the world,' will such an one say, impute to me what folly or weakness they please; but till wisdom can gave me something that will make me more heartily happy, I am content to be gazed at.' 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 every body knows we have. The world may ask,' says he, why I make my follies public? Why not? I have passed my life very pleasantly with them. 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 ?'§

Bravery, the second attribute of the true hero, is

Si un heros poëtique doit être un honnête homme. Bossu, du Poëme Epique, liv, v. ch. 5.

Ded. to the Life of C. C. Life, p. 2, 8vo. edit. § Ibid.

Qualis ab incepto processerat.

But here, in justice both to the poet and the hero, let plied she was his own, and not his neighbour's. Truly us farther remark, that the calling her, his whore ima 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 either hero. But it is not in any, or in all of these, that heroism properly or essentially resideth. It 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, assurance, and debauchery, springeth buffoonery, the source of ridicule, that laughing ornament,' as he well termeth it,s of the little epic.

He is not ashamed (God forbid he ever should be ashamed!) of this character, who deemeth that not reason but risibility distinguisheth the human species losopher, distinguished our species from the mute creafrom the brutal. 'As nature,' saith this profound phition by our risibility, her design must have been by that faculty as evidently 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 bafely 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 preferring it to 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 shew 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 adjudged 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 Eneas, that, and much stronger, is modern incense, to engage the great in the party of dulness.

Thus have we essayed to portray or shadow out this noble imp of fame. But not 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 his character?' Ill bath he read who seeth 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 loudly resented this indignity to violated Majesty. Indeed, not without cause, he being there represented as fast asleep; so misbeseeming the eye of empire, which, like that of Providence, should never doze nor 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 a 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 Durandante, 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 a good grace, might be of use to our hero. For that 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 cards.'t

But now, as nothing in this world, no not the most sacred and perfect things, either of religion or government, can escape the sting of envy, methinks I already hear these carpers objecting to the clearness of our

hero's title.

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 Aneas 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,"S) 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 bring to pass?'

To all this we have, as we conceive, a sufficient answer from the Roman historian. fabrum esse suæ. quemque fortuna: that every man is the smith of his own fortune. The politic Florentine, Nicholas Machiavel, goeth still further, and affirmeth that a man needeth but to believe himself a hero to be one of the worthiest. Let him,' saith he, but fancy himself capable of the highest things, and he will of course be able to achieve them.' From this principle it follows, that nothing can exceed our hero's prowess, as nothing ever equalled the greatness of his conceptions. 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

+ Letter, p. 1. Letter to Mr. P. p. 53. Don Quixote, part ii. book ii. ch. 22. § See Life, p. 148. P. 149.

honest policy; to the first Brutus, for love of liberty; and to sir Robert Walpole, for good government while in power: at another time, to the godlike Socrates, for his diversions and amusements ;§ to Horace, Montaigne, and sir William Temple, for an elegant vanity that maketh them for ever read and admired: 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.**

Nor did his actions fall short of the sublimity of his conceit. In his early youth he met the Revolution++ face to face in Nottingham; at a time when his betters contented themselves with following her. It was here he got acquainted with Old Battle-array, of whom he hath made so honourable mention in one of his immortal odes. But he shone in courts as well as in 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. 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:¶¶ and what is that but coming into the world a hero?

But be it (the punctilious laws of epic poesy so requiring) that a hero of more than mortal birth must needs be had; even for this we have a remedy. We can easily derive our hero's pedigree from a goddess of no small power and authority amongst men; and legitimate and instal him after the right classical and authentic fashion for, like as the ancient sages found a son of Mars in a mighty warrior; a son of Neptune in a skilful seaman; a son of Phoebus in a harmonious poet; so have we here, if need be, a son of Fortune in an artful gamester. And who fitter than the offspring of Chance, to assist in restoring the empire of Night and Chaos?

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, 'ultima semper

Expectanda dies homini: dicique beatus Ante obitum nemo supremaque funera debet! if no inan 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 caprices of fortune and humour.' But to this also we have an answer, that will (we hope) be deemed decisive. It cometh from himself; who, to cut this matter 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,' said 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!

Secondly; as to buffoonery. Is it,' saith he, '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 mirth, &c. &c.' Having then so publicly declared himself incorrigible, he is become dead in law (I mean the law epopoeian) and devolveth upon the poet as his property; who may take hin, 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) remaineth 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 con* P. 424. + P. 366. P. 457. & P. 18. | P. 425. ¶ P. 436, 437. **P. 52. ++See Life, p. 47. ‡‡ P. 57. §§ P. 58. 59 TT Life, p. 6. ttt P. 19. #tt P. 17

A statuary.
*** See Life, p. 424.

REMARKS.

10

• Nor is

By virtue of the authority in us vested by the act for subjecting poets to the power of a licenser, we have re- with the omission of one, nay, sometimes of two ee's (as vised this piece; where, finding the style and appellation Shakspear,) which is utterly unpardonable. of King to have been given to a certain pretender, pseudo- the neglect of a single letter so trivial as to some it may poet, or phantom, of the name of Tibbald; and appre-appear; the alteration whereof in a learned language is hending the same may be deemed in some sort a reflecan achievement that brings honour to the critic who adtion on majesty, or at least an insult on that legal authority which has bestowed on another person the crown of terity for his performances of this sort, as long as the vances it; and Dr. Bentley will be remembered to pos poesy: We have ordered the said pretender, pseudo-world shall have any esteem for the remains of Menan poet, or phantom, utterly to vanish and evaporate out der and Philemon.' of this work; and do declare the said throne of poesy from henceforth to be abdicated and vacant, unless duly and lawfully supplied by the laureate himself. And it is hereby enacted that no other person do presume to fill the same. OC. CH.

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 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 glory past and to come. She fixes her eyes on Bays to be the instrument of that great event which is the subject of the poem. He is described pensive amonghisbooks, giving up the cause, and apprehending the period of her empire. After debating whether to betake himself to the church, or to gaming, or to party-writing, he raises an alter 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 Thulé. 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.

BOOK I.

THE mighty mother, and her son, who brings
The Smithfield muses to the ear of kings,
I sing. Say you, her instruments, the great!
Call'd to this work by Dulness, Jove, and Fate;

REMARKS.

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 Shakespear, constantly observes the preservation of this very letter e, in spelling the name of his Deloved author, and not like his common careless editors,

See Life, p. 243, 8vo. eait.

Ovid, of the serpent biting at Orpheus's head.

Theobald,

going note; there having been since produced by an This is surely a slip in the learned author of the foreaccurate antiquary, an autograph of Shakespeare him. self, 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 Shakespeare 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 Shakespeare was intended to be placed on the 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 Shakespeare 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 ee'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. Thomas 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. Scribl.

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. We are willing to acquaint posterity, that this poem was presented to King George the Second and his queen, by the hands of sir Robert Walpole, on the 12th of March, 1728-9. 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 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

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.

Still her old empire to restore she tries,
For, born a goddess, Dulness never dies.
Oh thou! whatever title please thine ear
Dean, Drapier, Bickerstaff, or Gulliver!
Whether thou choose Cervantes' serious air,
Or laugh and shake in Rabelais' easy chair,
Or praise the court, or magnify mankind,
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.

REMARKS.

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 hand,
Great Cibber's brazen, brainless brothers stand;
One cell there is, conceal'd from vulgar eye,
The cave of poverty and poetry.

Keen, hollow winds howl through the bleak recess, 20 Emblen of music caused by emptiness.

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,

Bentl.

'Still Dunce the second reigns like Dunce the first' Ver. 1. The mighty mother, and her son, &c.] 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.

Ver. 2. The Smithfield Muses.] Smithfield is the place where Bartholomew fair was kept, whose shows, machines, and dramatical entertainments, formerly agreeable 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 inn-fields, and the Hay-market, to be the reigning pleasures of the court and town. This happened in the reigns of King George I. and II. Sec Book iii.

Ver. 4. By Dulness, Jove, and Fate:] i. e. by their judgments, their interests, and their inclinations.

Hence bards, like Proteus, long in vain tied down.
Escape in monsters, and amaze the town.
Hence Miscellanies spring, the weekly boast
Of Curll's chaste press, and Lintot's rubric post:
Hence hymning Tyburn's elegiac lines,
Hence journals, medleys, Mercuries, magazines
Sepulchral lies, our holy walls to grace,
And new-year odes, and all the Grub street race.
In clouded majesty here Dulness shone;
Four guardian virtues, round, support her throne:
Fierce champion Fortitude, that knows no fears
Of hisses, blows, or want, or loss of ears:
Calm Temperance, whose blessings those partake
Who hunger and who thirst, for scribbling' sake:
Prudence, whose glass presents the approaching jail :
Poetic Justice, with her lifted scale,

REMARKS.

30

40

50

Ver. 23. Or praise the court, or magnify mankind.] Ironicè, 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 most graciously pleased to recall.

Ver. 26. Mourn not, my Swift, at aught our realm acquires.] Ironice iterum. The politics of England and Ireland were at this time by some thought to be opposite, or interfering with each other. Dr. Swift of course was in the interest of the latter, our author of the former.

Ver. 31. By his famed father's hand.] 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.

Ver. 34. Poverty and poetry.] I cannot here omit a remark that will greatly endear our author to every one, who shall attentively observe that humanity and candour, which every where appears in him towards those unhappy objects of the ridicule of all mankind, the bad poets. He there imputes all scandalous rhymes, scurrilous weekly papers, base flatteries, wretched elegies, songs, and verses (even from those sung at court, to ballads in the street), 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 satirized.

The

er. 40. Curll's chaste press, and Lintot's rubric post:] Two booksellers, of whom see Book ii. 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.

Ver. 41. Hence hymning Tyburn's elegiac lines.] It is an ancient English custoin 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

Ver. 15. Laborious, heavy, busy, bold, &c.] 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 degrees of activity and bold-time, or before. ness; a ruling principle not inert, but turning topsyturvy 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.'

Ver. 43. Sepulchral lies,] is a just satire on the flatteries and falsehoods admitted to be inscribed on the walls of churches, in epitaphs; which occasioned the following epigram:

Friend in your epitaphs, I'm grieved,
So very much is said;
One half will never be believed

The other never read.'

Ver. 44.-new year odes,] Made by the poet-laureate for the time being, to be sung at court on every newyear'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 cast distinguished from all that preceeded him, and made a conspicuous part of his character as a writer, which doubtless induced our author to mention them here so particularly.

Ver. 45. In clouded majesty here Dulness shone.] 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 much supported by her own virtues, as by the princely consciousness of having destroyed all other.

Ver. 104. And Eusden eke out, &c.]
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 rais'd,
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 70 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, Óvid, 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 80 futurity a very lively idea of the judgement 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 other's: 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,
But I the true laureate, to whom the king gave it?'
Apollo begg'd pardon, and granted his claim,
But vow'd that till then he ne'er heard of his name.'
Session of Poets

The same plea might also serve for his successor, Mr.
Cibber and is further strengthened in the following
epigram made on that occasion:

In merry Old England it once was a rule,
The king had his poet, and also his fool;

But now we're so frugal, I'd have you to know it,

100 That Cibber can serve both for fool and for poet.'