MAC-FLECNOE AND THE DUNCIAD.

The field which we have invaded is one obviously of a vast

comprehension. Taking it up, as we have rightly done, from Dryden, more

than a century and a half of our literature lies immediately and

necessarily within it. For the fountain of criticism once opened and

flowing, the criticism of a country continually reflects its literature,

as a river the banks which yield it a channel, and through which it

winds.

But the image falls short of the thing signified; for criticism is

retrospective without limit, as well as contemporaneous. Heaven only

knows whether it may not be endowed with a gift of prophecy; and for its

horizon--is this narrower than the world? We have undertaken a field

which seems limited, only because it stretches beyond sight. Let us

hope, however, that we shall find some art of striking our own road

through it, without being obliged to study, both in the reflection and

in the original, all the books of all nations and ages, criticising, as

we go along, both originals and criticisms. Every subject, said

Burke--we remember his remark, though not the very words--branches out

into infinitude. The point of view draws a horizon--the goal determines

a track. "The British Critics" themselves are a host,

"Innumerable as the stars of night,

Or stars of morning; dewdrops which the sun

Impearls on every leaf and every flower."

But discreet conscientious Oblivion has infolded under his loving

pinions nine hundred and ninety-nine in every thousand; while we think

of concerning ourselves with those only whose names occupy some notable

niche, pedestal, or other position, in the august house of the great

goddess, Fame. We desire to show the spirit and power of British

criticism, to display the characteristic working of the British

intellect in this department of intellectual activity. Therefore, among

known names, we shall dwell the most upon those writers whose works the

mind of the nation has the most frankly, cordially, and unreservedly

taken to itself, recognising them, as it were, for its own

productions--those writers whose reputation the country has the most

distinctly identified with her own renown.

We have taken hold upon two such names, Dryden and Pope. And tens of

thousands have experienced with us the pleasures that arise from a

renewed or new intimacy with powerful spirits. The acquaintance is not

speedily exhausted. It grows and unfolds itself. When you think to have

done with them, and lift up your bonnet with a courteous gesture of

leave-taking, your host draws your arm within his, and leads you out

into his garden, and threading some labyrinthine involution of paths,

conducts you to some hidden parterre of his choicest flowers, or to the

aerial watch-tower of his most magnificent prospect.

The omnipotent setter of limits, Death, freezes the tuneful tongue,

unnerves the critical hand, from which the terrible pen drops into dust.

Shakspeare has written his last play--Dryden his last tale. You may

dream--if you like--of what projected and unwritten--what unprojected

but possible comedies, histories, tragedies, went into the tomb in the

church of Stratford upon Avon! In the meanwhile, you will find that what

is written is not so soon read. Read for the first time it soon is--not

for the last. For what is "to read?" "_Legere_" is "to gather."

Shakspeare is not soon gathered--nor is Dryden.

Walk through a splendid region. Do you think that you have seen it? You

have begun seeing it. Live in it fifty years, and by degrees you may

have come to know something worth telling of Windermere! Our vocation

now, gentles all, is not simply the knowing--it is the showing too; and

here, too, the same remark holds good. For we think ten times and more,

that now surely we have shown poet or critic. But not so. Some other

attitude, some other phasis presents itself; and all at once you feel

that, without it, your exposition of the power, or your picture of the

man, is incomplete.

You have seen how the critics lead us a dance. Dryden and Pope criticise

Shakspeare. We have been obliged to criticise Shakspeare, and this

criticism of him. Dryden measures himself with Juvenal, Lucretius, and

Virgil. We, somewhat violently perhaps--with a gentle violence--construe

a translation into a criticism, and prate too of those immortals.

Glorious John modernizes Father Geoffrey; and to try what capacity of

palate you have for the enjoyment of English poetry some four or five

centuries old, we spread our board with a feast of veritable Chaucer.

Yet not a word, all the while, of the Wife of Bath's Tale of Chivalry

and Faery, which is given with fine spirit by Dryden--nor of the Cock

and the Fox, told by the Nun's priest, which is renewed with infinite

life and gaiety, and sometimes we are half-inclined to say, with

fidelity in the departure, by the same matchless pen. Good old father

Chaucer! Can it be true that century rolling after century thickens the

dust upon Adam Scrivener's vellum! Can it be true that proceeding time

widens the gulf yawning betwixt thee and ourselves, thy compatriots of

another day, thy poetical posterity! The supposition is

unnatural--un-English--un-Scottish. Thou hast been the one popular poet

of England. Shakspeare alone has unseated thee. Thou hast been taken to

the heart of Scottish poets, as though there were not even a dialectical

shadow of difference distinguishing thine and their languages. A dim

time, an eclipsing of light and warmth fell upon the island, and to read

thee was a feat of strange scholarship, a study of the more learned. But

happier years shall succeed. As Antaeus the giant acquired life and

strength by dropping back upon the bosom of his mother earth--she, the

universal parent, was, you know, in a more private and domestic meaning

his mother--so, giants of our brood, dropping back upon they bosom, O

Father Chaucer! shall from that infusive touch renew vitality and

vigour, and go forth exultingly to scale, not Olympus, but Parnassus.

And now, in illustration of the ruling spirit--known and felt in its

full power only by ourselves--of this series--NORTH'S SPECIMENS OF THE

BRITISH CRITICS--we invite unexpectedly--(for who can foresee the

ensuing segment of our orbit?)--the people of these realms to admire

with us the critical genius of Dryden and of Pope, displayed in their

matchless satires--MAC-FLECNOE and the DUNCIAD.

In regard to these poems, shall we seek to conciliate our countrymen by

admitting, at the outset, that there is something in both to be

confessed and forgiven? That there is something about them that places

them upon a peculiar footing--that is not quite right? They must be

distinguished from the legitimate poems, in which the poet and the

servant of the Muses merely exercises his ministry. He then furnishes to

the needs of humanity, and is the acknowledged benefactor of his kind.

But these are _wilful_ productions. They are from the _personal_ self of

the poet. They are arbitrary acts of mighty despots. They kill, because

they choose and can. And we, alas!--we are bribed by the idolatry of

power to justify the excesses of power. Let not our maligners--our

foes--hear of it, for it is one of our vulnerable points.

Yet as long as men and women are weak and mortal, genius will possess a

privilege of committing certain peccadilloes that will be winked at and

hushed up. We proclaim poetry for an organ of the highest, profoundest

truth. But every now and then, when we are in difficulties, we shroud

the poet and ourselves under the undeniable fact, that poetry is

fiction; and under that pretext, wildly and wickedly would throw off all

responsibility from him, and from ourselves, his retainers and abettors;

and yet something, after all, is to be conceded to the mask of the poet.

All nations and times have agreed in not judging him by the prosaic

laws to which we who write and speak prose are amenable. His is a

playful part, and he has a knack of slipping from under the hand of

serious judgment. He is a Proteus, and feels himself bound to speak the

bare truth only when he is reduced to his proper person, not whilst he

is exercising his preternatural powers of illusion. He holds in his

grasp the rod of the Enchanter, Pleasure, and with a touch he unnerves

the joints that would seize and drag him before the seat of an ordinary

police. But we must remember that we are now scrawling unprivileged

prose; and beware that we do not, like other officious and uncautious

partizans, bring down upon our own defenceless heads the sword which the

delinquency of them mightier far has roused from the scabbard.

Let us see, then, how stands the case of such satirists.

War enters into the kingdom of the Muses. Rival wits assail one

another--Dryden and Shadwell. _Nec dis nec viribus aequis._ This is a

duel--_impar congressus Achillei_. But when Pope undertakes to hunt down

the vermin of literature, this is no distraction of the Parnassian realm

by civil war. This is the lawful magistrate going forth, armed perhaps

with extraordinary powers, to clear an infested district of vulgar

malefactors and notorious bad characters.

Vile publishers, vile critics, vile scribblers of every denomination, in

prose and verse--all those who turn the press, that organ of light for

the world, into an engine of darkness--who may blame the poet for

clothing them in such curses as shall make them for all time at once

loathsome and laughable in Christian lands?

Letters! sent by heaven for accomplishing the gift of speech. The

individual thinker, by turning his thoughts into words, advances himself

in the art and power of thought--unravels, clears up, and establishes

the movements of "the shadowy tribes of mind." And so the federal

republic of nations, by turning the spoken word into the written,

advance their faculty of thinking, and their acquisition of thought. The

thought has gained perpetuity when it is worded--the word has gained

perpetuity when it is written. Reason waits her completed triumph from

the written work, which converts, and alone can convert, the thought of

the individual mind into that of the universal mind; thus constituting

the fine act of one aspiring intelligence the common possession of the

species, and collecting the produce of all wits into the public treasury

of knowledge.

The misusers of letters are therefore the foes of the race. The

licentious thinker and writer prejudices the liberty of thinking and

writing. Those who excel in letters, and in the right use of letters,

are sensitive to their misapplication. Hence arises a species of satire,

or, if you will, satirist--THE SCRIBLERO-MASTIX. He must attack

individuals. A heavily-resounding lash should scourge the immoral and

the profane. Light stripes may suffice for quelling the less nocent

dunces. In commonplace prose criticism, whatever form it may take, this

can be done without supposed personal ill-will; for the Mastix is then

only doing a duty plainly prescribed. The theologian must censure, and

trample as mire, the railing assailant of the truths which in his eyes

contain salvation. The reviewer must review. But what, it may be asked,

moves any follower of the Muses to satirise a scribbler? He seems to go

_out of his way_ to do so; for verse has naturally better associations.

But the personal aggression on the wit by the dunce, may fairly

instigate the wit to flay the dunce. Now he finds the object of his

satire _in the way_. The fact is, that Dryden's poem and Pope's were

both moved in this way. The grew out of personal quarrels. Are they on

that account to be blamed? Not if the dunces, by them "damned to

everlasting fame," were the unhappy aggressors.

Dryden's times, and possibly something in his own character, trained his

muse to polemics. His pen was active in literary controversies, which

were never without a full infusion of personalities. More thoroughly

moved at one time against one offender--though the history of the feud

is in some parts imperfectly traceable--he compelled the clouds and

hurled the lightning, in verse, on the doomed head of Thomas Shadwell.

The invention of the poem entitled MAC-FLECNOE is very simple. Richard

Flecnoe was a voluminous writer, and exceedingly bad poet--a name of

scorn already in the kingdom of letters. Dryden supposes him to be the

King of Dulness, who, advanced in years, will abdicate his

well-possessed throne. He selects Shadwell from amongst his numerous

offspring, all the Dunces, as the son or Dunce the most nearly

resembling himself--hence the name of the poem--and appoints him his

successor. That is the whole plan. The verse flows unstinted from the

full urn of Dryden. The perfect ease, and the tone of mastery

characteristic of him, are felt throughout. He amuses himself with

laughing at his rival, and the amusement remains to all time; for all

who, having felt the pleasure of wit, are the foes of the Dunces. It is

not a laboured poem--it is a freak of wit. You cannot imagine him

attaching much importance to the scarcely two hundred lines, thrown off

in a few gleeful outpourings. To _us_, Shadwell is _nothing_. He is a

phantom, an impersonation. His Duncehood is exaggerated, for he was a

writer of some talent in one walk; but being selected for the throne, it

was imperative to make him Dunce all through. To us, there, he is merely

a Type; and we judge the strokes of Dryden in their universality, not

asking if they were truly applicable to his victim, but whether they

express pointedly and poignantly the repulsion entertained by Wit for

Dulness. In this enlarged sense and power we feel it as poetry. When the

father, encouraging his heir, says--

"And when false flowers of ret'ric thou wouldst cull, Trust Nature;

do not labour to be dull; But, write they best, and top"----

Nothing can be happier. The quiet assumption of Dulness for the highest

point of desirable human attainment--the good-nature and indulgent

parental concern of the wish to save the younger emulator of his own

glory from spending superfluous pains on a consummation sure to come of

itself--the confidence of the veteran Dullard in the blood of the race,

and in the tried and undegenerate worth of his successor--the sufficient

direction of a life and reign comprehended, summed up, concentrated in

the one master-precept--"do not labour to be dull"--are inimitable. You

feel the high artist, whom experience has made bold; and you feel your

own imagination roused to conceive the universe of Dunces, each yielding

to the attraction of his genius, fluttering his pinions with an

exquisite grace, and all, without labour or purpose, arriving at the

goal predestined by nature and fate.

We know of no good reason why, for the delectation of myriads in their

minority, Maga should not give MAC-FLECNOE entire; but lest old and

elderly gentlemen should think it too much extract, she gives all she

can, and lets you dream the rest.

"Now Empress Fame had publish'd the renown

Of Shadwell's coronation though the Town.

Rouz'd by report of fame, the nations meet,

From near Bunhill, and distant Watling-street.

No Persian carpets spread th' imperial way,

But scatter'd limbs of mangled poets lay;

From dusty shops neglected authors come,

Martyrs of pies, and reliques of the bum.

Much Heywood, Shirley, Ogleby, there lay,

But loads of Shadwell almost chok'd the way.

Bilk'd stationers, for yeomen, stood prepar'd,

And Herringman was captain of the guard.

The hoary prince in majesty appear'd,

High on a throne of his own labours rear'd;

At his right hand our young Ascanius sate,

Rome's other hope, and pillar of the state:

His brows thick fogs, instead of glories, grace,

And lambent Dulness play'd around his face.

As Hannibal did to the altars come,

Sworn by his sire a mortal foe to Rome;

So Shadwell swore, nor should his vow be vain,

That he till death true Dulness would maintain;

And, in his father's right, and realm's defence,

Ne'er to have peace with wit, nor truce with sense.

The king himself the sacred unction made,

As king by office, and as priest by trade.

In his sinister hand, instead of ball,

He plac'd a mighty mug of potent ale;

Love's kingdom to his right he did convey,

At once his sceptre, and his rule of sway;

Whose righteous lore the Prince had practis'd young,

And from whose loins recorded Psyche sprung.

His temples, last, with poppies were o'erspread,

That, nodding, seem'd to consecrate his head.

Just at the point of time, if Fame not lie,

On his left hand twelve rev'rend owls did fly.

So Romulus, 'tis sung by Tiber's brook,

Presage of sway from twice six vultures took.

Th' admiring throng loud acclamations make,

And omens of his future empire take.

The sire then shook the honours of his head,

And, from his brows, damps of oblivion shed,

Full on the filial Dulness: long he stood,

Repelling from his breast the raging god;

At length burst out in the prophetic mood.

'Heav'ns bless my son, from Ireland let him reign

To fair Barbadoes on the western main;

Of his dominion may no end be known,

And greater than his father's be his throne;

Beyond Love's kingdom let him stretch his pen!'

He paus'd, and all the people cry'd, 'Amen.'

Then thus continu'd he: 'My son, advance

Still in new impudence, new ignorance.

Success let others teach; learn thou from me

Pangs without birth, and fruitless industry.

Let virtuosos in five years be writ;--

Yet not one thought accuse thy toil--of wit.

Let gentle George in triumph tread the stage,

Make Dorimant betray, and Loveit rage;

Let Cully, Cockwood, Fopling, charm the pit,

And, in their folly, show the writer's wit:

Yet still thy fools shall stand in thy defence,

And justify their author's want of sense.

Let them be all by thy own model made

Of dulness, and desire no foreign aid;

That they to future ages may be known,

Not copies drawn, but issue of thy own.

Nay, let thy men of wit, too, be the same,

All full of thee, and diff'ring but in name.

But let no alien Sedley interpose,

To lard with wit thy hungry Epsom prose.

And when false flowers of rhet'ric thou wouldst cull,

Trust Nature; do not labour to be dull;

But, write thy best, and top; and, in each line,

Sir Formal's oratory will be thine:

Sir Formal, though unsought, attends thy quill,

And does thy northern dedications fill.

Nor let false friends seduce thy mind to fame,

By arrogating Johnson's hostile name.

Let father Flecnoe fire thy mind with praise,

And uncle Ogleby thy envy raise.

Thou art my blood, where Johnson has no part:

What share have we--in nature or in art?

Where did his wit on learning fix a brand,

And rail at arts he did not understand?

Where made he love in Prince Nicander's vein,

Or swept the dust in Psyche's humble strain?

Where sold he bargains, Whip-stitch, Kiss me ----,

Promis'd a play, and dwindled to a farce?

When did his muse from Fletcher scenes purloin,

As thou whole Eth'rege dost transfuse to thine?

But so transfus'd as oil and waters flow;

His always floats above, thine sinks below.

This is thy province, this thy wondrous way.

New humours to invent for each new play;

This is that bloated bias of thy mind,

By which, one way, to dulness 'tis inclin'd:

Which makes thy writings lean, on one side, still;

And in all changes, _that_ way bends thy will.

Not let thy mountain-belly make pretence

Of likeness; thine's a tympany of sense.

A tun of man in thy large bulk is writ,

But sure thou art but a kilderkin of wit.

Like mine, thy gentle numbers feebly creep;

Thy Tragic Muse gives smiles, thy Comic sleep.

With whate'er gall thou sett'st thyself to write,

Thy inoffensive satires never bite.

In thy felonious heart though venom lies,

It does but touch thy Irish pen, and dies.

Thy genius calls thee not to purchase fame

In keen Iambics, but mild Anagram.

Leave writing Plays, and chuse for thy command

Some peaceful province in Acrostic land:

There thou may'st wings display, and altars raise,

And torture one poor word ten thousand ways:

Or if thou would'st thy diff'rent talents suit,

Set thy own songs, and sing them to thy lute.'

He said; but his last words were scarcely heard; }

For Bruce and Longvil has a trap prepar'd }

And down they sent the yet-declaiming bard. }

Sinking, he left his drugget robe behind,

Borne upwards by a subterranean wing:

The mantle fell to the young prophet's part,

With double portion of his father's art."

The _Mac-Flecnoe_ of Dryden suggested--no more--the _Dunciad_ of Pope.

There is nothing of transcript. Flecnoe, who,

"In prose and verse, was own'd without dispute,

THROUGH ALL THE REALMS OF NONSENSE, ABSOLUTE,"

settles the succession of the state on Shadwell. That idea Pope adopts;

but the Kingdom of Dulness is re-modelled. It is no longer an aged

monarch, who, tired out with years and the toils of empire, gladly

transfers the sceptre to younger and more efficient hands, but the

GODDESS OF DULNESS who is concerned for her dominion, and elects her new

vice-regent on the demise of the Crown. The scale is immeasurably

aggrandized--multitudes of dunces are comprehended--the composition is

elaborate--the mock-heroic, admirable in Dryden, is carried to

perfection, and we have, _sui generis_, a regular epic poem.

In the year 1727, amongst the works first given to the public in the

Miscellancies of Pope and Swift, was the treatise of Martinus

Scriblerus, ~Peri Bathous~, or the _Art of Sinking in Poetry_.

The exquisite wit and humour of this piece, which was almost wholly

Pope's, enraged the Dunces to madness; and the mongrel pack opened in

full cry, with barbarous dissonance, against their supposed whipper-in.

Never was there such a senseless yell: for the philosophical treatise

"On the Profund" overflows with amenity and good-nature. Pope is all the

while at play--diverting himself in innocent recreation; and, of all the

satires that ever were indited, it is in spirit the most inoffensive to

man, woman, and child. The Dunces, however, swore that its wickedness

went beyond the Devil's, and besought the world to pay particular

attention to the sixth chapter as supra-Satanic. Therein Martinus ranges

"the confined and less copious geniuses under proper classes, and, the

better to give their pictures to the reader, under the name of animals."

The animals are Flying Fishes, Swallows, Ostriches, Parrots, Didappers,

Porpoises, Frogs, Eels, and Tortoises. Each animal is characterized in a

few words, that prove Pope to have been a most observant zoologist; and

some profundists, classified according to that arrangement, are

indicated by the initial letters of their names. The chapter is short,

and the style concise--consisting of but four pages. Some of the initial

letters had been set down at random; but profundists rose up, with loud

vociferation, to claim them for their own; and _gli animali parlanti_,

on foot, wing, fin, "or belly prone," peopled the booksellers' shops. C.

G., "perplexed in the extreme," was the cause of perplexity to others,

figuring now as a flying-fish, and now as a porpoise. While J. W. was

not less problematical--now an Eel, and now a Didapper.

"Threats of vengeance," says Roscoe, "resounded from all quarters, and

the press groaned under the various attempts at retaliation to which

this production gave rise. Before the publication of the _Dunciad_,

upwards of sixty different libels, books, papers, and copies of verses,

had been published against Pope." The allied forces--_vae

victis!_--published _a Popiad_. Threats of personal violence were

frequently held out--a story was circulated of his having been whipped

naked with rods; and, to extent the ridicule, an advertisement, with his

initials, was inserted in the _Daily Post_, giving the lie to the

scandal. Were such brutalities to be let pass unpunished? Dr Johnson

says that "Pope was by his own confession the aggressor"--and so say Dr

Warton and Mr Bowles. The aggressor! Why, the Dunces had been maligning

him all their days, long before the treatise on the _Profund_. And that

is bad law, indeed, that recognises a natural right in blockheads to be

blackguards, and gives unlimited license of brutality towards any man of

genius who may have been ironical on the tribe. But then, quoth some

hypocritical wiseacre, is not satire wicked? Pope was a Christian; and

should have learned to forgive. Stop a bit.

We talk of poets and books, as if we who occupy the tribunal were,

during that moment at least, miracles of clear-sighted incorruptible

justice, and of all the virtues generally. Conscience reasserts her

whole sway in our minds as soon as we sit on other men's merits and

demerits; almost the innocence of Eden re-establishes itself in our

breasts. Self-delusion! Men we are at the guilty bar--Men on the

blameless bench. There is a disorderly spirit in every one of us--a

spice of iniquity. Human nature forgives a crime for a jest. Not that

crimes and jests are commensurable or approximable; but they are before

the same judge. He dislikes, or professes to dislike, the crime.

Indubitably, and without a pretence, he likes the jest. Here, then, is

an opportunity given of balancing the liking against the disliking; and,

under that form, the jest against the crime. If he likes the jest more

than he dislikes the crime, the old saw holds good--

"Solvuntur risu tabulae, tu missus abibis."

Well, then, the wit of Dryden and Pope is irresistible. What follows?

For having contented our liking, we let them do any thing that they

like. Poor Og! poor Shadwell! poor Bayes, poor Cibber! He sprawls and

kicks in the gripe of the giant, and we--as if we had sat at bull-fights

and the shows of gladiators--when the blood trickles we are tickled,

and--oh, shame!--we laugh.

The DUNCIAD suffers under the law of compensations. As the renown of the

actor is intense whilst he lives, and languishes with following

generations, so is it with poems that embrace with ardour the Present.

When the Present has become the Past, they are, or at least their

liveliest edge is, past too. No commentary can restore the fiery hates

of Dante--nor the repellent scorn of Hudibras--nor the glow of laughter

to MAC-FLECNOE and the DUNCIAD. Eternal things are eternal--transitory

things are transitory. The transitory have lost their zest--the eternal

have their revenge.

Yet, a hundred years and more after the DUNCIAD, a critic may wish that

the matter had been a little more diligently moulded, with more

consideration of readers to come--that there had been less of mere

names--that every Gyas and Cloanthus had somewhat unfolded his own

individuality upon the stage--had been his own commentary--had, by a

word or two, painted himself to everlasting posterity, in hue, shape,

and gesture, as he stood before the contemporary eye. 'Tis an idle

speculation! The thing, by its inspiring passion, personal anger and

offence, belonged to the day. The poet gives it up to the day. He uses

his poetical machinery to grace and point a ridicule that is to tell

home to the breasts of living men--that is to be felt tingling by living

flesh--that is to tinge living cheeks, if they can still redden, with

blushes.

Yet, for all that, the Dunciad still lives; ay, in spite of seeming

inconsistency, we declare it to be immortal. For, build with what

materials she may, the works of genius that stand in the world of

thought survive all time's mutations, cemented by a spirit she alone can

interfuse. It must not be said that a poem shelved is dead and buried.

Open it at midnight, and the morning is in your chamber.

We love to commune with the rising and new-risen generations; elderly

people we do not much affect; and, for that we are old ourselves, we are

averse from the old. Now, of our well-beloved rising and new-risen

generations, how many thousands may there be in these islands who have

read the Dunciad? Not so many as to make needless in our pages a few

explanatory sentences respecting its first appearance, and the not

inconsiderable changes of form it was afterwards made to assume. At the

head of the Dunces at first stood one Theobald, who, with some of the

requisite knowledge and aptitude for a reviser of the text of

Shakspeare, was a poor creature, and a dishonest one, but too feeble and

too obscure for the place. Fifteen years afterwards, (1742,) at the

instigation of Warburton, Pope added to the Dunciad a Fourth Book. In it

there was _one line, and one line only_, about Colley Cibber.

"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._"

Dr Johnson calls that an acrimonious attack! "to which the provocation

is not easily discoverable;" and says, "that the severity of this satire

left Cibber no longer any patience." The Doctor speaks, too, of the

"incessant and unappeasable malignity" of Pope towards Cibber, and takes

the part of that worthy in the quarrel. Colley was absolutely

poet-laureate of England; and having no longer any patience in his

pride, "gave the town" an abusive pamphlet, in which he swore that he

would no longer tamely submit to such insults, but fight Pope with his

own weapons. Dr Johnson says--"Pope had now been enough acquainted with

human life to know, _if his passion had not been too powerful for his

understanding_, that from a contention like his with Cibber, the world

seeks nothing but diversion, which is given at the expense of the higher

character." Pope had no contention with Cibber. Two or three times he

had dropped him a blistering word of contempt--once a word of praise to

the _Careless Husband_. But now Pope eyed the brazen bully, and saw in

him the proper hero of the Dunciad. Theobald vacated the throne, and

retired into private life. Cibber was made to reign in his stead--and in

the lines written by Pope on the coronation, the monarch's character is

drawn, if we mistake not, in a style that sufficiently vindicates the

Poet from the Doctor's charge, "that his passion had been too powerful

for his understanding." True, "the world seeks diversion," and she had

it here to her heart's content; but not from any undignified

"contention" with Cibber, which Pope disdained, but from matchless

poetry that "damned to everlasting fame." "Cibber," says Johnson, "had

nothing to lose. When Pope had exhausted all his malignity upon him, he

would rise in the esteem both of his friends and his enemies." Cibber,

then, in the Dunciad, had a triumph over Pope!! Good.

But how, you ask, did Pope contrive to place Cibber in Theobald's shoes,

without injury to the rest of the poem? Why, he did not place Cibber in

Theobald's shoes. Theobald walked off in his shoes into the shades.

Samuel says, that by the substitution, Pope has "depraved his

poem"--inasmuch as he has given to Cibber the "old books, the cold

pedantry and sluggish pertinacity of Theobald." That is not true.

Compare the places in the original Dunciad, in which Theobald figures at

large, with that now filled by Cibber, and you will admire by what

wizard power the transformation is effected. Many lines, far too good to

be lost, are retained--and among them there may be a few more

characteristic of the old Dunce than the new. But Cibber is Cibber all

over--notwithstanding; nor needed Joseph Warton, who was as ready to

indulge in a nap as any one we have known, to object that "to slumber in

the goddess's lap was adapted to Theobald's stupidity, not to the

vivacity of his successor." Pope knew better--

"Dulness with transport eyes the lively Dunce,

Remember she herself was Pertness once."

Here he comes.

"In each she marks her image full exprest,

But chief in Bayes's monster-breeding breast;

Bayes, form'd by Nature's Stage and Town to bless,

And act, and be, a coxcomb with success.

Dulness with transport eyes the lively Dunce,

Remembering she herself was Pertness once.

Now (Shame to Fortune!) an ill run at play

Blank'd his bold visage, and a thin third day;

Swearing and supperless the hero sate,

Blasphem'd his gods, the dice, and damn'd his fate;

Then gnaw'd his pen, then dasht it on the ground,

Sinking from thought to thought, a vast profound!

Plung'd for his sense, but found no bottom there,

Yet wrote and flounder'd on in mere despair.

Round him much embryo, much abortion lay,

Much future ode, and abdicated play;

Nonsense precipitate, like running lead,

That slipt through cracks and zigzags of the head;

All that on Folly Frenzy could beget,

Fruits of dull heat, and sooterkins of wit.

Next, o'er his books his eyes began to roll,

In pleasing memory of all he stole;

How here he sip'd, how there he plunder'd snug,

And suck'd all o'er like an industrious bug.

Here lay poor Fletcher's half-eat scenes, and here

The frippery of crucify'd Moliere;

There hapless Shakspeare, yet of Tibbald sore,

Wish'd he had blotted for himself before.

The rest on outside merit but presume,

Or serve (like other fools) to fill a room;

Such with their shelves as due proportion hold,

Or their fond parents dress'd in red and gold;

Or where the pictures for the page atone,

And Quarles is saved by beauties not his own.

Here swells the shelf with Ogilby the Great;

There, stamp'd with arms, Newcastle shines complete;

Here all his suff'ring brotherhood retire,

And 'scape the martyrdom of jakes and fire:

A Gothic library! of Greece and Rome

Well purg'd, and worthy Settle, Banks, and Broome.

"But, high above, more solid learning shone,

The Classics of an age that heard of none;

There Caxton slept, with Wynkyn at his side,

One clasp'd in wood, and one in strong cow-hide;

There, sav'd by spice, like mummies, many a year,

Dry bodies of divinity appear;

De Lyra there a dreadful front extends,

And here the groaning shelves Philemon bends.

"Of these twelve volumes, twelve of amplest size,

Redeem'd from tapers and defrauded pies,

Inspir'd he seizes: these an altar raise;

An hecatomb of pure, unsully'd lays

That altar crowns; a folio common-place

Founds the whole pile, of all his works the base:

Quartos, Octavos, shape the less'ning pyre,

A twisted birth-day ode completes the spire.

"Then he, great tamer of all human art!

First in my care, and ever at my heart;

Dulness! whose good old cause I yet defend,

With whom my Muse began, with whom shall end,

Ere since Sir Fopling's periwig was praise,

To the last honours of the Butt and Bays:

O thou! of bus'ness the directing soul!

To this our head like bias to the bowl,

Which, as more pond'rous, made its aim more true,

Obliquely waddling to the mark in view:

O! ever gracious to perplex'd mankind,

Still spread a healing mist before the mind;

And, lest we err by Wit's wild dancing light,

Secure us kindly in our native night.

Or, if to wit a coxcomb make pretence,

Guard the sure barrier between that and sense;

Or quite unravel all the reas'ning thread,

And hang some curious cobweb in its stead!

As, forc'd from wind-guns, lead itself can fly,

And pond'rous slugs cut swiftly through the sky;

As clocks to weight their nimble motion owe,

The wheels above urg'd by the load below;

Me Emptiness and Dulness could inspire,

And were my elasticity and fire.

Some daemon stole my pen (forgive th' offence)

And once betray'd me into common sense:

Else all my prose and verse were much the same;

This prose on stilts, that, poetry fall'n lame.

Did on the stage my fops appear confin'd?

My life gave ampler lessons to mankind.

Did the dead letter unsuccessful prove?

The brisk example never fail'd to move.

Yet sure, had Heav'n decreed to save the state,

Heav'n had decreed these works a longer date.

Could Troy be sav'd by any single hand,

This gray goose weapon must have made her stand.

What can I now? my Fletcher cast aside,

Take up the Bible, once my better guide?

Or tread the path by vent'rous heroes trod,

This box my thunder, this right hand my God?

Or chair'd at White's amidst the doctors sit,

Teach oaths to gamesters, and to nobles wit?

Or bidst thou rather party to embrace?

(A friend to Party thou, and all her race;

'Tis the same rope at diff'rent ends they twist;

To Dulness Ridpath is as dear as Mist.)

Shall I, like Curtius, desperate in my zeal,

O'er head and ears plunge for the commonweal?

Or rob Rome's ancient geese of all their glories,

And cackling save the monarchy of Tories?

Hold--to the minister I more incline;

To serve his cause, O Queen! is serving thine.

And see! the very Gazetteers give o'er,

Ev'n Ralph repents, and Henley writes no more.

What then remains? Ourself. Still, still remain

Cibberian forehead, and Cibberian brain.

This brazen brightness, to the 'squire so dear;

This polish'd hardness, that reflects the peer:

This arch absurd, that wit and fool delights,

This mess, toss'd up of Hockley-hole and White's;

Where dukes and butchers join to wreathe my crown,

At once the Bear and Fiddle of the Town.

"O born in sin, and forth in folly brought!

Works damn'd, or to be damn'd; (your father's fault.)

Go, purify'd by flames, ascend the sky,

My better and more Christian progeny!

Unstain'd, untouch'd, and yet in maiden sheets,

While all your smutty sisters walk the streets.

Ye shall not beg, like gratis-given Bland,

Sent with a pass and vagrant through the land;

Nor sail with Ward, to Ape-and-monkey climes,

Where vile Mundungus trucks for viler rhymes.

Not sulphur-tipt, emblaze an ale-house fire!

Not wrap up oranges, to pelt your sire!

O! pass more innocent, in infant state,

To the mild limbo of our father Tate:

Or peaceably forgot, at once be blest

In Shadwell's bosom with eternal rest!

Soon to that mass of nonsense to return,

Where things destroy'd are swept to things unborn."

The eyes of the goddess have been fixed, with sleepy fondness more than

maternal, upon him, her chosen instrument, during all his address; and

we can imagine the frowsy Frow weeping big fat tears with him as he

weeps. Pope's "passion had _not_ been too powerful for his

understanding," nor for his imagination neither, when he was inditing

the following pathetic and picturesque lines:--

"With that a tear (portentous sign of grace!)

Stole from the master of the seven-fold face,

And thrice he lifted high the Birth-day brand,

And thrice he dropt it from his quivering hand;

Then lights the structure, with averted eyes;

The rolling smoke involves the sacrifice.

The opening clouds disclose each work by turns;

Now flames the Cid, and now Perolla burns;

Great Caesar roars, and hisses in the fires;

King John in silence modestly expires;

No merit now the dear Nonjuror claims;

Moliere's old stubble in a moment flames.

Tears gush'd again, as from pale Priam's eyes,

When the last blaze sent Ilion to the skies.

Roused by the light, old Dulness heav'd the head

Then snatch'd a sheet of Thule from her bed;

Sudden she flies, and whelms it o'er the pyre,

Down sink the flames, and with a hiss expire."

What next? The compact Argument informs us _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. The close of the Book was as much improved as the opening by

the changes consequent on the substitution of Cibber for Theobald. In

1727, when the poem was composed, Eusden, "a drunken parson," wore the

laurel; but now Cibber had been for years one of the successors of

Spenser, and of the predecessors of Wordsworth--though indeed that last

fact could not be known to Pope--and well he deserved this still higher

elevation. And here again we must dissent from Dr Johnson's judgment,

"that by transferring the same ridicule (_not the same_) from one to

another, he destroyed its efficacy; for, by showing that what he said of

one he was ready to say of another, he reduced himself to the

insignificance of his own magpye, who from his cage calls cuckold at a

venture." We love and honour the sage, but here he is a Sumph.

Oh! do read the Second Book, for we can afford but a few extracts; and,

to whet you up, shall prate to you a few minutes about it.

The two ancient kings of heroic song have left us exemplars of Games.

The occasions are similar and mournful, although the contests are

inspired by, and inspire a jocund mood. At the funeral of Patroclus,

Achilles appoints eight games. He gives prizes for a chariot-race, a

cestus-fight, a wrestling-match, a foot-race, a lance-fight, a

disk-hurling, a strife of archery and of darters. AEneas, on the first

anniversary of his father's funeral, proposes five trials of skill--for

the chariot-race of Homer, suitably to the posture of the Trojan

affairs, a sailing-match; then, the foot-race, the terrible cestus,

archery, and lastly, the beautiful equestrian tournament of Young Troy.

The English Homer of the Dunces treads in the footsteps of his august

predecessors, and celebrates, with imitated solemnities, a joyous

day--that which elevates the arch-Dunce to the throne. Here too we have

games, but with a dissimilitude in similitude. He adopts an intermediate

number, six. The first is exceedingly fanciful and whimsical. The

goddess creates the phantom of a poet. It has the shape of a

contemptible swindler in literature, a plagiarist without bounds, named

More. He is pursued by two booksellers, and vanishes from the grasp of

him who has first clutched the fluttering shade. "Gentle Dulness ever

loves a joke;" and the aforesaid admirable jest having kindled

inextinguishable laughter in heaven, Gentle Dulness repeats it (she

loves to repeat herself,) and starts three phantoms in the likenesses

respectively of Congreve, Addison, Prior. Three booksellers give chase,

and catch Heaven knows what, three foolish forgotten names. For the

second exertion of talent, confined to the booksellers Osborne and Curl,

the prize is the fair Eliza, and Curl is Victor. Osborne, too, is

suitably rewarded; but as this game borders on the indelicate, it shall

be nameless. Hitherto, after the simplicity of ancient manners, there

have been contentions of bodily powers. But the games of the Dunces

belong to an advanced age of the world, and a part of them are

accordingly spiritual. The third falls under this category. A patron is

proposed as the prize. He who can best tickle shall carry him off. The

dedicators fall to their task with great zeal and adroitness. Alas!

there steps in a young thief of a competitor unknown to Phoebus, but

deep in the counsels of Venus! He, aided by the goddess, and a votaress

of her order whom the goddess deputes, avails himself of the noble

prize's most susceptible side,

"And marches off, his Grace's secretary."

The fourth game sets up a desirable rivalry with monkeys and asses. Who

shall chatter the fastest? Who the loudest shall bray?

----"Three cat-calls be the bribe

Of him whose chatt'ring shames the monkey tribe:

And his this drum, whose hoarse heroic base

Drowns the loud clarion of the braying ass."

So numerous are the monkey-mimics that the claims of the chatterers

cannot be adjusted--

"Hold (cried the Queen) a cat-call each shall win;

Equal your merits! equal is your din!

But that this well-disputed game may end,

Sound forth, my Brayers, and the welkin rend."

Sir Richard Blackmore, with his six epics and sundry other poems, brays

louder and longer than the most leathern or brazen of the other throats;

Chancery Lane and Westminster Hall taking prominent part in the

reverberating orchestra. The place is to be ranked amongst the famous

echo-descriptions, and beats Drayton's and Wordsworth's hollow.

The fifth game is DIVING.

"This labor past, by Bridewell all descend,

(As morning pray'r and flagellation end)

To where Fleet-ditch, with disemboguing streams

Rolls the large tribute of dead dogs to Thames,

The king of dykes! than whom, no sluice of mud

With deeper sable blots the silver flood.

'Here strip, my children! here at once leap in,

Here prove who best can dash through thick and thin,

And who the most in love of dirt excel,

Or dark dexterity of groping well:

Who flings most filth, and wide pollutes around

The stream, be his the Weekly Journals bound;

A pig of lead to him who dives the best;

A peck of coals a-piece shall glad the rest.'

"In naked majesty Oldmixon stands,

And, Milo-like, surveys his arms and hands;

Then sighing thus, 'And am I now threescore?

Ah, why, ye Gods! should two and two make four?'

He said, and climb'd a stranded lighter's height,

Shot to the black abyss, and plung'd downright:

The senior's judgment all the crowd admire,

Who but to sink the deeper rose the higher.

"Next Smedley div'd; slow circles dimpled o'er

The quaking mud, that clos'd and op'd no more.

All look, all sigh, and call on Smedley lost;

Smedley in vain resounds through all the coast.

"Then ** essay'd; scarce vanish'd out of sight,

He buoys up instant, and returns to light;

He bears no tokens of the sabler streams,

And mounts far off among the swans of Thames.

"True to the bottom, see Concanen creep,

A cold, long-winded, native of the deep;

If perseverance gain the diver's prize,

Not everlasting Blackmore this denies:

No noise, no stir, no motion canst thou make,

Th' unconscious stream sleeps o'er thee like a lake.

"Next plung'd a feeble, but a desperate pack,

With each a sickly brother at his back:

Sons of a day! just buoyant on the flood,

Then number'd with the puppies in the mud.

Ask ye their names? I could as soon disclose

The names of these blind puppies as of those.

Fast by, like Niobe, (her children gone,)

Sits Mother Osborne, stupify'd to stone!

And monumental brass this record bears,

'These _are_, ah no! these _were_ the Gazetteers!'

"Not so bold Arnall; with a weight of scull

Furious he drives, precipitately dull.

Whirlpools and storms in circling arm invest,

With all the might of gravitation blest.

No crab more active in the dirty dance,

Downward to climb, and backward to advance,

He brings up half the bottom on his head,

And loudly claims the Journal and the Lead.

"The plunging Prelate, and his pond'rous Grace,

With holy envy gave one layman place.

When lo! a burst of thunder shook the flood,

Slow rose a form in majesty of Mud;

Shaking the horrors of his sable brows,

And each ferocious feature grim with ooze.

Greater he looks, and more than mortal stares;

Then thus the wonders of the deep declares.

"First he relates how, sinking to the chin,

Smit with his mien, the mud-nymphs suck'd him in;

How young Lutetia, softer than the down,

Nigrina black, and Merdamente brown,

Vy'd for his love in jetty bow'rs below,

As Hylas fair was ravish'd long ago.

Then sung, how shown him by the Nut-brown maids

A branch of Styx here rises from the shades,

That tinctured as it runs with Lethe's streams,

And wafting vapors from the land of dreams,

(As under seas Alpheus' secret sluice

Bears Pisa's offering to his Arethuse)

Pours into Thames; and hence the mingled wave

Intoxicates the pert, and lulls the grave:

Here brisker vapours o'er the Temple creep;

There, all from Paul's to Aldgate drink and sleep.

"Thence to the banks where rev'rend bards repose,

They led him soft; each rev'rend bard arose;

And Milbourn chief, deputed by the rest,

Gave him the cassock, surcingle, and vest.

'Receive (he said) these robes, which once were mine,

Dulness is sacred in a sound divine.'

He ceas'd, and spread the robe; the crowd confess

The rev'rend flamen in his lengthen'd dress.

Around him wide a sable army stand,

A low-born, cell-bred, selfish, servile band,

Prompt or to guard or stab, to saint or damn,

Heav'n's Swiss, who fight for any god, or man.

"Through Lud's fam'd gates, along the well-known Fleet,

Rolls the black troop, and overshades the street,

Till show'rs of sermons, characters, essays,

In circling fleeces whiten all the ways:

So clouds replenish'd from some bog below,

Mount in dark volumes, and descend in snow."

The last of the contests offers one or two difficulties. The goddess

will appoint her Supreme Judge in the Court of Criticism, and she

ordains a trial of qualifications. This is the manner of ordeal. A dull

piece in prose, and a dull piece in verse, is to be read aloud. The

auditor who remains the longest awake carries the election. The two

preparations of Morphine exhibited, are a sermon of H--ley's (Henley or

Hoadley?) and Blackmore's Prince Arthur. Six candidate heroes present

themselves, three from the University, and three from the Inns of Court.

Some explanation seems to be required of an arrangement which allots

extraordinarily high promotion in the State of Dulness to a real and

prodigious effort of mental energy. What explanation can be given? Are

the affairs of Dulness conducted, in some respects, by the same rules

which obtain in the Commonwealth of Wit? Is it held there, as here, that

the first step to be taken, in order to forming a judgment of any book,

is to read it? Was it prudently considered that the dullest of critics

can read only as long as his eyes are open? and that the function of

judge must incessantly bring under his cognisance papaverous volumes,

with which only a super-human endowment of vigilance could hope

successfully to contend? so that the goddess is driven, by the necessity

of the game, to admit within the circuit of her somnolent sway, a virtue

to which she is naturally and peculiarly hostile? Or are we mistaken in

supposing that vigour of mind really qualifies for hearing a dull book

through? Is it dulness itself that the most ably listens to dulness? We

are out of our element, we presume, for we arrive at no satisfactory

solution.

Be all this as it may, the method of competition fails of accomplishing

its end; and the chair, after all, is left vacant. Not that the divinity

has in the least misjudged the way of operation proper to her beloved

tomes; but she has miscalculated the strength of her sons. Every dull

head of the congregated multitude--of the illustrious competitors--and

of the two officiating readers, bows overcome. There is, perforce, an

end; and the chair is yet open to the whole kingdom.

The trial involves another matter of some doubt. Do the two clerks read

aloud at one and the same time? and to the same audience? The

description conveys the impression that they do. If so, one might have

been tempted to fear that the sermon and the poem might have neutralized

each other; but, on the contrary, the mixture worked like a patent.

Where has Cibber been all the while, and what has he been doing? "_What

su'd he hae been doin'? Sittin' on his nain lowpin'-on-stane--lukin'

frae him._" Joe Warton complains that he is too much of a passive hero.

Why, he is not so active as Achilles, or even Diomed; yet in Book Second

he is equal to AEneas. He is almost as long-winded, and excels the Pious

in this, that he braves a fire of his own raising, whereas the other

flies from one kindled much against his will--

"High on a gorgeous seat, that far outshone

Henley's gilt tub, or Flecknoe's Irish throne,

Or that where on her Curls the public pours

All-bounteous, fragrant grains and golden showers,

GREAT CIBBER SATE!

----All eyes direct their rays

On him, _and crowds turn coxcombs as they gaze_!"

Is that being passive? The crowds are passive--not he surely, who, in

the potent prime of coxcombhood, without shifting his seat of honour,

breathes over all his subjects such family resemblance that they seem

one brotherhood, sprung from his own royal loins. Besides, who ever

heard, in an Epic poem, of a hero contending in games instituted in his

own honour? Yet we do not fear to say, that had he, inspired by the

spectacle of Curl and Osborne displaying their prowess for the fair

Eliza, leapt from his gorgeous "seat," and amid the shouts of the

lieges, in rainbow glory jointed the contest, that infallibly he had won

the day. We have the authority of Aristotle on our side.