Another Eschylus appears! prepare REMARKS. 320 of the spectators. They also rivalled each other it. showing the burnings of hell-fire, in Dr. Faustus. Ver. 313. Another Eschylus appears! It is reported of schylus, that when his tragedy of the Furies was acted, that the audience were so terrified, that the children fell into fits, and the big-bellied women miscarried. Ver. 325. On poets' tombs see Benson's titles writ!] W-m Benson (surveyor of the buildings to his majesty K George L.) gave in a report to the lords, that their House and 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 fist to inspect it, they found it in very good condi ion. 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 been architect to the crown for above fifty years, who had built most of the churches in London, laid the first stone of St. Paul's, and lived to finish it nad been displaced from his employment at the age of near ninety years. Ver. 326. Ambrose Phillips.] '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 Complete Art of Poetry, vol. i. p. 157. 'Indeed he confesses, he dares not set him quite on the same foot with VOL. II. 18 See under Ripley rise a new Whitehall, REMARKS. 931 Virgil, lest it should seem flattery, but he is much mistaken if posterity does not afford him a greater esteem than he a present enjoys.' He endeavoured to create some misunder standing between our author and Mr. Addison, whom a'so soon after he abused as much. Is constant cry was, nat Mr. P. was an enemy to the government; and in particular he was the avowed nyhor of a report very industriously sprend, that he had a hand in a party-paper called the Es aminer: a falsehood well known to those yet living, whe had the direction and publication of it. Ver. 328. While Jones' and Boyle's united labours fall: At the time when this poem was written, the banquetinghouse of Whitehall, the church and piazza of Covent-garden, and the palace and chapel of Somerset-bouse, the works of the famous Inigo Jones, had been for many years so neglected, as to be in danger of ruin. The portico of Covent garden church had been just then resicred and beautified, at the expense of the earl of Burlington; who, at the same time, by his publication of the designs of that great master and Palladio, as well as by many noble buildings of his own, revived the true taste of architecture in this king. dom. 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 suecess, the Shepherd's Week, Trivia, the What d'ye call 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 Korace, 'Primores populi arripuit, populumque tributim,' could never be so justly applied as to this. The vast suc cess of it was unprecedented, and almost incredible: what ia related of the wonderful effects of the ancient music or tragedy hardly 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 seaDos with equal applauses. It spread into all the great lowes of England, was played in many places to the thirtieth and fortieth time, and at Bath and Bris'o' fifty, &c. made its progress into Wales, Scotland, and Ireland where Hibernian politics, O Swift! thy fate; And Pope's, ten years to comment and translate. Proceed, great days! till learning fly the shore, Till birch shall blush with noble blood no more, REMARKS. it was performed twenty-four days together; it was .ast acted in Minorca. The fame of it was not confined to the author only; the ladies carried about with them the favour ite songs of it in fans; and houses were furnished with it in screens. The person who acted Polly, till then obscure, cecame at once the favourite of the town: her pictures were engraved, and sold in great numbers, her life written, book of letters and verses to her published; and pamphlets made even of her sayings and jess. 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. Deumis by the labours and ou cries of a whole life coun 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 editious of it this motto: Nos hæc novimus esse mal. 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 Hind in 1713, and finished it in 1719. The edition of Shak speare (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 the Odyssey employed him from that time to 1723. Ver. 333. Proceed, great days! &c.] It may, perhaps, eem incredible, that so great a revolution in learning as is nere prophesied, should be brought about by such weak intruments as have been [hither o) described in our poem: eur do not thou, gentle reader, rest too secure in the conmpt of these instrumen's. 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 then dykes by a single water rat. 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 tobility, the encouragement of our patrons, and the genius of our writers of all kinds (notwithstanding some few exseptions in each,) may plamly be seen from his conclusion; where, causing all this vision to pa-s through the ivo v gatė e expressly, in the language of poesy, declares all such im ginations to be wild, ungrounded, and fictitious. Scribl Till Thames see Eton's sons for ever play, * Enough! enough !'—the raptured monarch cries, And through the very gate the vision thes. 340 BOOK THE FOURTI ARGUMENT. The poet being, in this book, to declare the completing 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. flow she leads cap tive 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, vai pretenders, the flatterers of dunces, or the patrons of them. All these crowd round her; one of them, eflering to approach her, is driven back by a rival but she commends and encourages both. The first whe speak in form are the geniuses of the schools, who as Eure her of their care to advance her cause by confin.ag 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 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 enlues him with the happy quality of want of shame. She sees loitering about ler a number of indolent persons abannoning all business and duty, and dying with laziness; to these approaches the antiquary Annins, entreating her to make them virtuosos, and assign them over to him; bat Mummius, another antiquary, complaining of his fraudulent proceeding, she finds a method to reconcils their difference. Then enter a troop of people fantastically adorned, offering her strange and exotic pre sents: amongst them, one stan is forth and demands justice on another, who had deprived him of one of the greatest curiosities in nature; but he justifies him seif so well, that the goddess gives them both her an probation. She recommends to them to find proper employment for the infolents 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 appre. hensions, 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 nus instructed and principled, are delivered to her a body, by the hands of Silenas; and then admitted to taste the cup of the Magus, her high priest, whica causes a total oblivion of all obligations, divine, civil. morai or rational. To these, her adepts, she sends priests, attendants, and comforters, of various kinds; confers on them orders and degrees; and then dismissing thein with a sprech, 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 corsummation of all in the restoration of night and chaos, concinde the poem. BOOK IV. SET, yet a inoment, one dim ray of light |