"'Ye Critics! in whose heads, as equal scales,
I weigh what author's heaviness prevails;
Which most conduce to sooth the soul in slumbers,
My H--ley's periods, or my Blackmore's numbers;
Attend the trial we propose to make:
If there be man who o'er such works can wake,
Sleep's all-subduing charms who dares defy,
And boasts Ulysses' ear with Argus' eye;
To him we grant our amplest pow'rs to sit
Judge of all present, past, and future wit;
To cavil, censure, dictate, right or wrong,
Full and eternal privilege of tongue.'
"Three college sophs, and three pert Templars came,
The same their talents, and their tastes the same;
Each prompt to query, answer, and debate,
And smit with love of poesy and prate.
The pond'rous books two gentle readers bring;
The heroes sit, the vulgar form a ring.
The clam'rous crowd is hush'd with mugs of mum,
Till all, tun'd equal, send a gen'ral hum.
Then mount the clerks, and in one lazy tone
Through the long, heavy, painful page drawl on;
Soft creeping, words on words, the sense compose,
At ev'ry line they stretch, they yawn, they doze.
As to soft gales top-heavy pines bow low
Their heads, and lift them as they cease to blow;
Thus oft they rear, and oft the head decline,
As breathe, or pause, by fits, the airs divine.
And now to this side, now to that they nod,
As verse, or prose, infuse the drowsy god.
Thrice Budgel aim'd to speak, but thrice supprest
By potent Arthur, knock'd his chin and breast.
Toland and Tindal, prompt at priests to jeer,
Yet silent bow'd to _Christ's no kingdom here_.
Who sat the nearest, by the words o'ercome,
Slept first; the distant nodded to the hum;
Then down are roll'd the books, stretch'd o'er 'em lies
Each gentle clerk, and mutt'ring seals his eyes.
As what a Dutchman plumps into the lakes,
One circle first, and then a second makes;
What dulness dropt among her sons imprest,
Like motion from one circle to the rest:
So from the midmost the nutation spreads,
Round and more round, o'er all the _sea of heads_.
At last Centlivre felt her voice to fail,
Motteux himself unfinish'd left his tale.
Boyer the state, and Law the stage gave o'er,
Morgan and Mandeville could prate no more;
Norton from Daniel and Ostroea sprung,
Bless'd with his father's front and mother's tongue,
Hung silent down his never-blushing head,
And all was hush'd, as Folly's self lay dead.
"Thus the soft gifts of Sleep conclude the day,
And stretch'd on bulks, as usual, poets lay.
Why should I sing what bards the nightly Muse
Did slumb'ring visit, and convey to stews;
Who prouder march'd, with magistrates in state,
To some fam'd round-house, ever-open gate!
How Henley lay inspir'd beside a sink,
And to mere mortals seem'd a priest in drink:
While others, timely, to the neighb'ring Fleet
(Haunt of the Muses) made their safe retreat."
Ulysses and AEneas presented themselves alive and in the body, as
visitors in the land of departed souls. A descent to the shades is not
wanting in our Epos. It fills the whole Third Book. But our poet again
manages a discreet difference in his imitation. Our Dunce hero visits
Elysium _in a dream_; whilst he sleeps, his head recumbent on the lap of
the goddess, in the innermost recess of her sanctuary. His vision
resembles the Trojan's rather than the Greek's adventure. "A slipshod
sibyl,"
"In lofty madness meditating song,
leads him. She seems to be typical of the half-crazed human poetess, in
usual sublime dishabille. Venerable shades of the Dull greet him. As in
Virgil's Elysian fields a glimpse is afforded into the dark philosophy
of human existence, and we see the Lethean bank crowded with spirits,
who taste and become prepared to live again--so here. And as AEneas finds
Anchises engaged in taking cognizance of the ghosts that are to animate
Roman bodies, so here Cibber sees a great Patriarch of Dulness, Bavius,
(him of old classical renown,) dipping in Lethe the souls that are to be
born dull upon the earth. The poet cannot resist a slight deviation from
the doctrine of his original. By the ancient theory the Lethean dip
extinguishes the memory of a past life, of its faults, and of their
punishment; and thence the willingness to inhabit the gross, earthy
frame, as generated anew. But the dip of Bavius is more powerful; it
quenches the faculties that are innate in a spirit, fitting it
"for a skull
Of solid proof, impenetrably dull."
The subterranean traveller then falls in with the ghost of Elkanah
Settle, who properly represents Anchises, and expounds the glories of
the Kingdom of Dulness. Something is borrowed also from the vision of
Adam, in the Eleventh Book of _Paradise Lost_. And something is
original; for that which has been is declared as well as that which
shall be; and the kingdom of intellectual darkness to the earth's verge
displayed in visible presentment, which the speaker interprets. The
Emperor Chi Ho-am-ti, who ordered a universal conflagration of books
throughout his celestial dominions--the multitude of barbarous sons
which the populous North poured from her frozen loins to sweep in deluge
away the civilization of the South--figure here. Here is Attila with his
Huns. Here is the Mussulman. Here is Rome of the dark ages. Great
Britain appears last--the dulness which has blessed, which blesses, and
which shall bless her. We extract the prophetical part. The visioned
progress of Dulness has reached the theatres; and some sixteen verses
which contain--says Warton, well and truly--"some of the most lively and
forcible descriptions any where to be found, and are perfect pattern of
a clear picturesque style," call up into brilliant and startling
apparition the ineffable monstrosities and impossibilities which
constituted the theatrical spectacles of the day. The sight extorts the
opening exclamation--
"What pow'r, he cries, what pow'r these wonders wrought?
Son, what thou seek'st is in thee! look and find
Each monster meets his likeness in thy mind.
Yet would'st thou more? in yonder cloud behold,
Whose sarsenet skirts are edg'd with flamy gold,
A matchless youth! his nod these worlds controls,
Wings the red lightning, and the thunder rolls.
Angel of Dulness, sent to scatter round
Her magic harms o'er all unclassic ground:
Yon' stars, yon' suns, he rears at pleasure higher,
Illumes their light, and sets their flames on fire.
Immortal Rich! how calm he sits at ease,
Midst snows of paper, and fierce hail of pease!
And proud his mistress' orders to perform,
Rides in the whirlwind, and directs the storm.
"But lo! to dark encounter in mid air
New wizards rise; I see my Cibber there!
Booth in his cloudy tabernacle shrin'd,
On grinning dragons thou shalt mount the wind.
Dire is the conflict, dismal is the din,
Here shouts all Drury, there all Lincoln's Inn;
Contending theatres our empire raise,
Alike their labours, and alike their praise.
"And are these wonders, Son, to thee unknown?
Unknown to thee! these wonders are thy own.
These Fate reserv'd to grace thy reign divine,
Foreseen by me, but, ah! withheld from mine.
In Lud's old walls, though long I rul'd, renown'd
Far as loud Bow's stupendous bells resound;
Though my own aldermen conferr'd the bays,
To me committing their eternal praise,
Their full-fed heroes, their pacific may'rs,
Their annual trophies, and their monthly wars:
Though long my party built on me their hopes,
For writing pamphlets, and for roasting Popes;
Yet lo! in me what authors have to brag on!
Reduc'd at last to hiss in my own dragon.
Avert in Heav'n! that thou, my Cibber, e'er
Shouldst wag a serpent-tail in Smithfield fair!
Like the vile straw that's blown about the streets,
The needy poet sticks to all he meets;
Coach'd, carted, trod upon, now loose, now fast,
And carry'd off in some dog's tail at last.
Happier thy fortunes! like a rolling stone,
Thy giddy dulness still shall lumber on,
Safe in its heaviness, shall never stray,
But lick up ev'ry blockhead in the way.
Thee shall the Patriot, thee the Courtier taste,
And ev'ry year be duller than the last;
Till rais'd from booths, to theatre, to court,
Her seat imperial Dulness shall transport.
Already Opera prepares the way,
The sure forerunner of her gentle sway:
Let her thy heart, next drabs and dice, engage,
The third mad passion of thy doting age.
Teach thou the warring Polypheme to roar,
And scream thyself as none e'er scream'd before!
To aid our cause, if Heav'n thou canst not bend,
Hell thou shalt move; for Faustus is our friend;
Pluto with Cato, thou for this shalt join,
And link the Mourning Bride to Proserpine.
Grub Street! thy fall should men and gods conspire,
Thy stage shall stand, insure it but from fire.
Another AEschylus appears! prepare
For new abortions, all ye pregnant fair!
In flames like Semele's, be brought to bed,
While op'ning hell spouts wildfire at your head.
"Now, Bavius, take the poppy from thy brow,
And place it here! here, all ye heroes, bow!
"This, this is he, foretold by ancient rhymes:
Th' Augustus born to bring Saturnian times.
Signs following signs lead on the mighty year!
See! the dull stars roll round, and reappear.
See, see, our own true Phoebus wears the bays!
Our Midas sit Lord Chancellor of plays!
On poets' tombs see Benson's titles writ!
Lo! Ambrose Philips is preferr'd for wit!
See under Ripley rise a new Whitehall,
While Jones' and Boyle's united labours fall:
While Wren with sorrow to the grave descends,
Gay dies unpension'd, with a hundred friends;
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;
Till Thames see Eton's sons for ever play,
Till Westminster's whole year be holiday;
Till Isis' elders reel, their pupils' sport,
And Alma Mater lie dissolv'd in Port!
"Enough! enough! the raptur'd Monarch cries!
And through the iv'ry gate the vision flies."
In Book Fourth the goddess occupies her throne. All the rebellious and
hostile powers--wit, logic, rhetoric, morality, the muses--lie bound;
and diverse votaries of Dulness successively move into presence. The
first is OPERA, who puts Handel to flight. Then flow in a crowd of all
sorts. A part have been described:--
"Nor absent they, no members of her state,
Who pay her homage in her sons, the great;
Who false to Phoebus, bow the knee to Baal,
Or impious, preach his word without a call.
Patrons, who sneak from living worth to dead,
Withhold the pension, and set up the head;
Or vest dull Flattery in the sacred gown,
Or give from fool to fool the laurel crown;
And (last and worst) with all the cant of wit,
Without the soul, the Muse's hypocrite.
"There march'd the bard and blockhead side by side,
Who rhym'd for hire, and patroniz'd for pride.
Narcissus, prais'd with all a parson's power,
Look'd a white lily sunk beneath a shower.
There mov'd Montalto with superior air:
His stretch'd out arm displayed a volume fair;
Courtiers and patriots in two ranks divide,
Through both he pass'd, and bow'd from side to side;
But as in graceful act, with awful eye,
Conpos'd he stood, bold Benson thrust him by:
On two unequal crutches props he came,
Milton's on this, on that one Jonson's name.
The decent Knight retir'd with sober rage,
Withdrew his hand, and clos'd the pompous page:
But (happy for him as the times went then)
Appear'd Apollo's may'r and aldermen,
On whom three hundred gold-capt youths await,
To lug the pond'rous volume off in state.
"When Dulness, smiling--'Thus revive the wits!
But murder first, and mince them all to bits!
As erst Medea (cruel, so to save!)
A new edition of old AEson gave;
Let standard authors thus, like trophies borne,
Appear more glorious as more hack'd and torn.
And you my Critics! in the chequer'd shade,
Admire new light through holes yourselves have made.
"'Leave not a foot of verse, a foot of stone,
A page, a grave, that they can call their own,
But spread, my sons, your glory thin or thick,
On passive paper, or on solid brick.
So by each bard an alderman shall sit,
A heavy lord shall hang at ev'ry wit,
And while on Fame's triumphal car they ride,
Some slave of mine be pinion'd to their side.'"
A dreadful figure appears--THE SCHOOLMASTER. He eulogizes the system of
education, which teaches nothing but words and verse-making.
"A hundred head of Aristotle's friends"
pour in from the colleges--Aristarchus (Richard Bentley) at their head.
He displays his own merits as a critic, and extols the system of
teaching in the universities; but strides away disgusted on seeing
approach a band of young gentlemen returned from their travels on the
Continent, and accompanied by their travelling tutors and their
mistresses. One of the tutors reports at large to the goddess on the
style and advantages of their travels, and presents his own pupil. Where
is such another passage to be found in English poetry? It surpasses
Cowper's celebrated strain on the same subject.
"In flow'd at once a gay embroider'd race,
And titt'ring push'd the pedants off the place:
Some would have spoken, but the voice was drown'd
By the French horn, or by the op'ning hound.
The first came forwards with as easy mien,
As if he saw St James's and the Queen.
When thus the attendant Orator begun;
Receive, great Empress! thy accomplish'd son:
Thine from the birth, and sacred from the rod,
A dauntless infant! never scar'd with God.
The sire saw, one by one, his virtues wake;
The mother begg'd the blessing of a rake.
Thou gav'st that ripeness which so soon began,
And ceas'd so soon, he ne'er was boy nor man;
Through school and college, thy kind cloud o'ercast,
Safe and unseen the young AEneas past;
Thence bursting glorious, all at once let down,
Stunn'd with his giddy larum half the town.
Intrepid then, o'er seas and lands he flew;
Europe he saw, and Europe saw him too.
There all thy gifts and graces we display,
Thou, only thou, directing all our way!
To where the Seine, obsequious as she runs,
Pours at great Bourbon's feet her silken sons;
Or Tiber, now no longer Roman, rolls,
Vain of Italian arts, Italian souls:
To happy convents, bosom'd deep in vines,
Where slumber abbots, purple as their wines;
To isles of fragrance, lily silver'd vales,
Diffusing languor in the panting gales:
To lands of singing, or of dancing slaves,
Love-whisp'ring woods, and lute-resounding waves.
But chief her shrine where naked Venus keeps,
And Cupids ride the Lion of the deeps;
Where, eas'd of fleets, the Adriatic main
Wafts the smooth eunuch and enamour'd swain.
Led by my hand, he saunter'd Europe round,
And gather'd ev'ry vice on Christian ground;
Saw ev'ry court, heard ev'ry king declare
His royal sense, of op'ras or the fair;
The stews and palace equally explor'd,
Intrigu'd with glory, and with spirit whor'd;
Tried all _hors d'oeuvres_, all _liqueurs_ defin'd,
Judicious drank, and greatly-daring din'd;
Dropt the dull lumber of the Latin store,
Spoil'd his own language, and acquir'd no more;
All classic learning lost on classic ground;
And last turn'd Air, the echo of a sound!
See now, half-cur'd, and perfectly well-bred,
With nothing but a solo in his head;
As much estate, and principle, and wit,
As Jansen, Fleetwood, Cibber shall think fit;
Stol'n from a duel, follow'd by a nun,
And, if a borough choose him, not undone;
See, to my country happy I restore
This glorious youth, and add one Venus more.
Her too receive, (for her my soul adores,)
So may the sons of sons of sons of whores,
Prop thine, O Empress! like each neighbour throne,
And make a long posterity thy own.
Pleas'd she accepts the hero, and the dame
Wraps in her veil, and frees from sense of shame."
A set of pure idlers appear loitering about. Annius, an antiquary, begs
to have them made over to him, to turn into virtuosos. Mummius, another
antiquary, quarrels with him, and the goddess reconciles them. The
minute naturalists follow "thick as locusts."
"Each with some wondrous gift approach'd the Power,
A nest, a toad, a fungus, or a flower."
A florist lodges a heavy complaint against an entomologist. The singular
beauty of the pleading on both sides has often been noticed, and by the
best critics, from Thomas Gray to Thomas De Quincey.
"The first thus open'd: Hear thy suppliant's call,
Great Queen, and common mother of us all!
Fair from its humble bed I rear'd this flow'r,
Suckl'd, and cheer'd with air, and sun, and show'r,
Soft on the paper ruff its leaves I spread,
Bright with the gilded button tipt its head.
Then thron'd in glass, and nam'd it Caroline:
Each maid cry'd, Charming; and each youth, Divine!
Did Nature's pencil ever blend such rays,
Such vary'd light in one promiscuous blaze?
Now prostrate! dead! behold that Caroline:
No maid cries charming! and no youth divine!
And lo the wretch! whose vile, whose insect lust
Laid this gay daughter of the Spring in dust,
Oh punish him, or to th' Elysian shades
Dismiss my soul, where no carnation fades.
He ceas'd, and wept. With innocence of mien
The accus'd stood forth, and thus address'd the Queen:
"Of all th' enamel'd race, whose silv'ry wing
Waves to the tepid zephyrs of the spring,
Or swims along the fluid atmosphere,
Once brightest shin'd this child of heat and air.
I saw, and started from its vernal bow'r
The rising game, and chas'd from flow'r to flow'r.
It fled, I follow'd, now in hope, now pain;
It stopt, I stopt; it mov'd, I mov'd again.
At last it fixed, 'twas on what plant it pleas'd,
And where it fixed, the beauteous bird I seiz'd:
Rose, or carnation, was below my care;
I meddle, Goddess! only in my sphere.
I tell the naked feet without disguise,
And, to excuse it, need but show the prize;
Whose spoils this paper offers to our eye,
Fair ev'n death! this peerless butterfly."
The mighty mother cannot find it in her heart to pronounce a decision
which must aggrieve one of such a devoted pair. She extols them both,
and makes over to their joint care and tuition the _faineants_
aforesaid. The subject leads her into a more serious strain of thinking.
There is an evident danger; for the studies which she recommends are
studies of nature, and the study of nature tends to rise out of nature.
The goddess, accordingly, is strenuous in cautioning her followers to
keep within the pale of trifles, and of the sensible. The suggestion of
the hazard fires a clerk, a metaphysician, who, on the behalf of the
metaphysicians, undertakes for a theology that shall effectually shut
out and keep down religion. Gordon, the translator of Tacitus, and
publisher of the irreligious "Independent Whig," being mentioned by the
orator of the metaphysicians with praise, under the name of Silenus,
rises and advances, leading up, apparently, the Young England of the
day. He presents them as liberated from priest-craft, and ready for
drinking the cup of a "Wizard old," attached to the suite of the
goddess. This "Magus" extends to them the cup of self-love.
"Which whoso tastes, forgets his former friends,
Sire, ancestors, HIMSELF."
There is philosophy enough in the last piece of oblivion.
Impudence, pure mild Stupidity, Self-conceit, Interest, the
Accomplishment of Singing, under the auspicious smile of the goddess,
take possession, sundrily, of her children; and the two great arts of
Gastronomia, scientific Eating and Drinking.
The Queen confers her titles and degrees, assisted by the two
universities. She then dismisses the assembly with a solemn charge:--
"Then, blessing all, Go, children of my care!
To _practice_ now from _theory_ repair.
All my commands are easy, short, and full;
My sons! be proud, be selfish, and be dull.
Guard my prerogative, assert my throne:
This nod confirms each privilege your own.
The cap and switch be sacred to his Grace;
With staff and pumps the Marquis leads the race;
From stage to stage the licens'd Earl may run,
Pair'd with his fellow-charioteer, the Sun;
The learned Baron butterflies design,
Or draw to silk Arachne's subtle line;
The Judge to dance his brother sergeant call!
The Senator at cricket urge the ball;
The Bishop stow (pontific luxury!)
An hundred souls of turkeys in a pie;
The sturdy Squire to Gallic masters stoop,
And drown his lands and manors in a soup.
Others import yet nobler arts from France,
Teach kings to fiddle, and make senates dance.
Perhaps more high some daring son may soar,
Proud to my list to add one monarch more;
And, nobly conscious, princes are but things
Born for first ministers, as slaves for kings,
Tyrant supreme! shall three estates command,
_And make one mighty Dunciad of the land_!
"More she had spoke, but yawn'd--All Nature nods:
What mortal can resist the yawn of gods?
Churches and Chapels instantly it reach'd;
(St James's first, for leaden G---- preach'd;)
Then catch'd the Schools; the Hall scarce kept awake;
The Convocation gap'd, but could not speak:
Lost was the Nation's sense, nor could be found,
While the long solemn unison went round: Wide, and
more wide, it spread o'er all the realm;
Ev'n Palinurus nodded at the helm;
The vapour mild o'er each Committee crept;
Unfinish'd treaties in each office slept;
And chiefless Armies doz'd out the campaign;
And Navies yawn'd for orders on the main.
"O Muse! relate, (for you can tell alone,
Wits have short memories, and dunces none,)
Relate who first, who last, resign'd to rest;
Whose heads she partly, whose completely blest,
What charms could faction, what ambition lull,
The venal quiet, and intrance the dull;
Till drown'd was Sense and Shame, and Right and Wrong--
O sing, and hush the nations with thy song!
* * * * *
In vain, in vain--the all-composing hour
Resistless falls; the Muse obeys the pow'r.
She comes! she comes! the sable throne behold
Of Night primeval, and of Chaos old!
Before her fancy's gilded clouds decay,
And all its varying rainbows die away.
Wit shoots in vain its momentary fires,
The meteor drops, and in a flash expires.
As one by one, at dread Medea's strain,
The sick'ning stars fade off the ethereal plain;
As Argus's eyes, by Hermes' wand opprest,
Clos'd one by one to everlasting rest,
Thus at her felt approach, and secret might,
Art after Art goes out, and all is night.
See skulking Truth to her old cavern fled,
Mountains of Casuistry heap'd o'er her head!
Philosophy, that lean'd on Heav'n before,
Shrinks to her second cause, and is no more.
Physic of Metaphysic begs defence,
And Metaphysic calls for aid on Sense!
See Mystery to Mathematics fly!
In vain! they gaze, turn giddy, rave, and die.
Religion, blushing, veils her sacred fires,
And unawares Morality expires.
Nor public flame, nor private, dares to shine;
Nor human spark is left, nor glimpse Divine;
Lo! thy dread empire, Chaos! is restor'd;
Light dies before thy uncreating word:
Thy hand, great Anarch! lets the curtain fall;
And universal Darkness buries All."
Mr Bowles, himself a true poet, thinks the Fourth Book the best. "The
objects of satire," he says, "are more general and just: the one is
confined to persons, and those of the most insignificant sort; the other
is directed chiefly to things, such as faults of education, false
habits, and false taste. In polished and pointed satire, in richness of
versification and imagery, and in the happy introduction of characters,
speeches, figures, and every sort of poetical ornament adapted to the
subject, this Book yields, in my opinion, to none of Pope's writings of
the same kind." Excellently well said. But what inconsistency in saying,
at the same time, "These observations of Dr Warton are, in general, very
just and sensible." And again, "I by no means _think so meanly_ of it as
Dr Warton." Meanly, indeed! Why, he has just told us he thinks it equal
to any thing of the same kind Pope ever wrote. But the distinguished
Wintonian chose to speak nonsense, rather than speak harshly of old Joe.
What are Dr Warton's "in general very just and sensible observations?"
"Our poet was persuaded by Dr Warburton, unhappily enough, to add a
Fourth Book to his finished piece, of such a very different cast and
colour, as to render it at last one of the most motley compositions
there is, perhaps, any where to be found in the works of so exact a
writer as Pope. For one great purpose of this Fourth Book (where, by the
way, the hero does nothing at all) was to satirize and proscribe
infidels and freethinkers, to leave the ludicrous for the serious, Grub
Street for theology, the mock-heroic for metaphysics--which occasion a
marvellous mixture and jumble of images and sentiments, pantomime and
philosophy, journals and moral evidence, Fleet Ditch and the High Priori
road, Curl and Clarke." That reads like a bit of a prize-essay by a
bachelor of arts in the "College of the Goddess in the City." The
_Dunciad_ is rendered not only a motley, but, perhaps, the most motley
composition of an exact writer, by a Book added to it when it was in a
state of perfection--for as a Poem in Three Books, "it was clear,
consistent, and of a piece." This is not the way to make a poem motley,
nor a man. "Motley's the suit I wear," might have taught the Doctor
better. They who don't like the Fourth Book can stop at the end of the
Third, and then the Poem is motley no more. It is in a higher strain
than the Three, and why not? The goddess had a greater empire than
Warton, who was a provincial, had ever dreamt of in his philosophy; but,
in Pope's wide imagination, it stood with all its realms. The hero had
no more to say or to do--Cibber was banished to Cimmeria for life, to
work in the mines--and Dulness had forgotten she ever saw his face.
"Then rose the seed of Chaos, and of Night,
To blot out order, and extinguish light,
Of dull and venal a new world to mould,
And bring Saturnian days of lead and gold."
That long clumsy sentence about "a marvellous mixture and jumble of
images and sentiments," &c. &c. &c., is pure nonsense. In itself, the
Fourth Book is most harmoniously constructed as a work of art, and it
rises out of, and ascends from the Third, a completed creation. To call
that YAWN mock-heroic, would be profane--it is sublime!
"Speaking of the _Dunciad_," continues the Doctor, "as a work of art, in
a critical, not religious light, I must venture to affirm, that the
subject of this Fourth Book was foreign and heterogeneous, and the
addition of it is injudicious, ill-placed, and incongruous, as any of
those similar images we meet with in Pulci or Ariosto." The addition of
a Fourth Book to a poem, previously consisting of Three, is not an image
at all, look at it how you will, and cannot therefore be compared with
"any of those dissimilar images we meet with in Pulci or Ariosto." We
much admire Pulci and Ariosto, especially Ariosto, but they and their
dissimilar images have no business here; and were Dr Joseph alive any
where in the neighbourhood, we should whistle in his ear not to be so
ostentatious in displaying his Italian literature, which was too thin to
keep out the rain.
"It is," he keeps stuttering on, "like introducing a crucifix into one
of Teniers's burlesque conversation pieces." We see no reason why a
crucifix should not be in the room of a good Catholic during a burlesque
conversation; and Teniers, if he never have, might have painted one in
such a piece without offence, had he chosen to do so; but the question
we ask, simply is, what did Doctor Joseph Warton mean? Just nothing at
all.
"On the whole," stammereth the Doctor further on, "the chief fault of
the _Dunciad_ is the violence and vehemence of its satire." The same
fault may be found with vitriolic acid, nay, with Richardson's Ultimate
Result. No doubt, that for many domestic purposes water is
preferable--for not a few, milk--and for some, milk and water. But not
with that latter amalgam did Hannibal force his way through the Alps.
But, softly--the Doctor compares the violence and vehemence of Pope's
satire--no--not the violence and vehemence, but the height--to
water--but to water rare among the liquid elements. "And the excessive
height to which it is carried, and which therefore I may compare to that
marvellous column of boiling water near Mount Hecla in Iceland, thrown
upwards, _above ninety feet_, by the force of subterraneous fire." And
he adds in a note, to please the incredulous, "Sir Joseph Banks, our
great philosophical traveller, had the satisfaction of seeing this
wonderful phenomenon."
"What are the impressions," eloquently asks the inspired Joseph "left
upon the mind after a perusal of this poem? Contempt, aversion vexation,
and anger. No sentiments that enlarge, ennoble, move, or mend the heart!
Insomuch so, that I know a person whose name would be an ornament to
these papers, if I were suffered to insert it, who, after reading a book
of the _Dunciad_, always soothes himself, as he calls it, by turning to
a canto of the _Faery Queene_." There is no denying that satire is apt
to excite the emotions the Doctor complains of, and few more strongly
than the _Dunciad_. Yet what would it be without them--and what should
we be? But other emotions, too, are experienced at some of the games;
and some of an exalted kind, by innumerable passages throughout the
poem. Were it not so, this would be a saturnine world indeed. Would we
have had the name of the wise gentleman, that it might ornament these
papers, who so frequently indulged in "contempt, aversion, vexation, and
anger" over Pope, that he might soothe himself, as he called it, with
Spenser. We wonder if he occasionally left the bosom of the _Faery
Queene_ for that of the Goddess of Dulness.
"This is not the case with that very delightful poem _Mac-Flecnoe_, from
which Pope has borrowed many hints and images and ideas. But Dryden's
poem was the offspring of contempt, and Pope's of indignation; one is
full of mirth, and the other of malignity. A vein of pleasantry is
uniformly preserved through the whole of _Mac-Flecnoe_, and the piece
begins and ends in the same key." That very beautiful and delightful
poem, _Mac-Flecnoe!_ That very pretty and agreeable waterfall, Niagara!
That very elegant and attractive crater of Mount Vesuvius! That very
interesting and animated earthquake, vulgarly called the Great
Earthquake at Lisbon! Having ourselves spoken of the good-humour of
Dryden, (some twenty pages back, about the middle of this article,) we
must not find fault with Warton for saying that a vein of pleasantry is
preserved through the whole of _Mac-Flecnoe_; but what thought
Mac-Flecnoe himself? "Ay, there's the rub." Then what a vein of
pleasantry is preserved through the whole of _Og_! So light and delicate
is the handling, that you might be charmed into the soft delusion, that
you beheld Christopher with his Knout.
"Since the total decay," innocently exclaims this estimable man, "was
foretold in the _Dunciad_, how many very excellent pieces of criticism,
poetry, history, philosophy, and divinity, have appeared in this
country, and to what a degree of perfection has almost every art, either
useful or elegant, been carried?" Mr Bowles--_mirabile dictu_--backs his
old schoolmaster against the goddess. "Can it be thought," says the
Canon--standing up for the age of Pope himself--"that this period was
enlightened by Young, Thomson, Glover, and many whose characters
reflected equal lustre on religion, morals, and philosophy? But such is
satire, when it is not guided by truth." All this might have been said
in fewer words--"LOOK AT BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE." There is not, in the
_Dunciad_ itself, an instance of such stupidity recorded, as this
indignant attribution of blindness to the present, and to the future,
"as far off its coming shone," to "the seed of Chaos and old night," by
two divines, editors both of the works of Alexander Pope, Esq. in eight
(?) and in ten volumes.
Lord Kames, in his _Elements of Criticism_, urges an objection to the
opening of the _Dunciad_, which, if sustained, is sufficient to prove
the whole poem vicious on beginning to end. "This author (Pope) is
guilty of much greater deviation from the rule. Dulness may be imagined
a Deity or Idol, to be worshipped by bad writers; but then some sort of
disguise is requisite, some bastard virtue must be bestowed, to give
this Idol a plausible appearance. Yet, in the _Dunciad_, Dulness,
without the least disguise, is made the object of worship. The mind
rejects such a fiction as unnatural." Warburton meets this objection
with his usual _fierte_ and acumen. "But is there no bastard virtue in
the mighty Mother of so numerous an offspring, which she takes care to
bring to the ears of kings? Her votaries would, for this single virtue,
prefer her influence to Apollo and the Nine Muses. Is there no bastard
virtue in the peace of which the poet makes her the author?--'The
goddess bade Britannia sleep.' Is she not celebrated for her beauty,
another bastard virtue?--'Fate this _fair_ idol gave.' One bastard
virtue the poet hath given her; which, with these sort of critics, might
make her pass for a wit; and that is, her love of a joke--'For gentle
Dulness ever loved a joke.' Her delight in games and races is another of
her bastard virtues, which would captivate her nobler sons, and draw
them to her shrine; not to speak of her indulgence to young travellers,
whom she accompanies as Minerva did Telemachus. But of all her bastard
virtues, her FREE-THINKING, the virtue which she anxiously propagates
amongst her followers in the Fourth Book, might, one would think, have
been sufficient to have covered the poet from this censure. But had Mr
Pope drawn her without the least disguise, it had not signified a rush.
Disguised or undisguised, the poem had been neither better nor worse,
and he has secured it from being rejected as unnatural by ten thousand
beauties of nature." This is too Warburtonian--and Lord Kames must be
answered after another fashion, by Christopher North.
What would his lordship have? That she should be called by some other
more specious name? By that of some quality to which writers and other
men do aspire, and under the semblance of which Dulness is actually
found to mask itself--as Gravity, Dignity, Solemnity? Why, two losses
would thus be incurred. First, the whole mirth of the poem, or the
greater part of it, would be gone. Secondly, the comprehensiveness of
the present name would be forfeited, and a more partial quality taken.
The vigour and strength of the fiction requires exactly what Pope has
done--the barefaced acceptance of Dulness as the imperial power. The
poet acts, in fact, under a logical necessity. She is really the goddess
under whose influence and virtue they, her subjects, live; whose
inspiration sustains and governs their actions. But it would be against
all manners that a goddess should not be known and worshipped under her
own authentic denomination. To cheat her followers out of their worship,
by showing herself to them under a diversity of false appearances, would
have been unworthy of her divinity.
As to the probability of the fiction, the answer is plain and ready.
Nobody asks for probability. Far otherwise. The bravery of the jest is
its improbability. There is a wild audacity proper to the burlesque Epos
which laughs at conventional rules, and the tame obligations of ordinary
poetry. The absurd is one legitimate source of the comic.
For example, are the GAMES probable? Take the reading to sleep--which is
purely witty--a thing which the poet does not go out of his way to
invent. It lies essentially on the theme, being a literary ~agon~; and
it is indeed only that which is continually done, (oh, us miserable!)
thrown into poetical shape. But it is perfectly absurd and improbable,
done in the manner in which it is represented--not therefore to be
blamed, but therefore to be commended with cachinnation while the world
endures.
The truth is, that the Dunces are there, not for the business of saying
what they think of themselves, or not that alone, but they must say that
which we think of them. They must act from motives from which men do not
act. They must aspire to be dull, and be proud of their dulness. They
must emulate one another's dulness, or they are unfaithful votaries. In
short, they are poetically made, and should be so made, to do,
consciously and purposely, that which, in real life, they do
undesignedly and unawares.
Lord Kames goes wrong--and very far wrong indeed--though Warburton was
not the man to set him right--through applying to a composition
extravagantly conceived--an epic extravaganza--rules of writing that
belong to a sober and guarded species. In a comedy, you make a man play
the fool without his knowing that he is one; because that is an
imitation of human manners. And if you ironically praise the virtues of
a villain, you keep the veil of irony throughout. You do not now and
then forget yourself, and call him a villain by that name. But the
spirit and rule of the poem here is, that discretion and sobriety are
thrown aside. Here is no imitation of manners--no veil. The persons of
the poem, under the hand of the poet, are something in the condition of
the wicked ghosts who come before the tribunal of the Gnossian
Rhadamanthus; and whom he, by the divine power of his judgment-seat,
constrains to bear witness against themselves. The poor ghosts do it,
knowing that they condemn themselves. Here the mirth of the poet makes
the Dull glorify themselves by recounting each misdeed under its proper
appellation.
Joseph Warton mistakes the whole matter as much as Lord Kames. "Just
criticism," says he, "calls on us also to point out some of the passages
that appear exceptionable in the _Dunciad_. Such is the hero's first
speech, in which, contrary to all decorum and probability, he addresses
the goddess Dulness, without disguising her as a despicable being, and
even calls himself fool and blockhead. For a person to be introduced
speaking thus of himself, is in truth unnatural and out of character."
Would that the Doctor had been alive to be set at ease on this point by
our explanations--but he is dead. They would have quieted his mind, too,
about the celebrated speech of Aristarchus. "In Book IV.," he adds, "is
such another breach of truth and decorum, in making Aristarchus
(Bentley) abuse _himself_, and laugh at his _own_ labours.
"The mighty scholiast, whose unweary'd pains
Made Horace dull, and humbled Maro's strains,
Turn what they will to verse, their toil is vain,
Critics like me shall make it prose again.
For Attic phrase in Plato let them seek,
I poach in Suidas for unlicens'd Greek.
For thee we dim the eyes, and stuff the head
With all such reading as was never read:
For thee explain a thing till all men doubt it,
And write about it, Goddess, and about it."
If Bentley has turned Horace and Milton (Warton blunderingly reads Maro)
into prose by his emendations, (Milton assuredly he has--Pope may be
wrong about Horace?) he has rendered vast service to the empire of
Dulness; and it would be quite unreasonable that he should not claim of
the goddess all merited reward and honour, by announcing exactly this
achievement. With what face could he pretend to her favour by telling
her that he had restored the text of two great poets to its original
purity and lustre? She would have ordered him to instant execution or to
a perpetual dungeon.
Finally, how happened it that such perspicacious personages as Lord
Kames and Dr Warton, to say nothing of their hoodwinked followers,
should have thus objected to the passages and speeches singled out for
condemnation, as if they alone deserved it, without perceiving that the
whole poem, from the first line to the last, was, on their principle,
liable to the same fatal objection? And what, on their principle, would
they have thought, had they ever read it, of _Mac-Flecnoe_?
Pope takes the name Dulness largely, for the offuscation of heart and
head. He said, long before,
"Want of decency is want of _sense_;"
and he now seems to think himself warranted in attributing vices and
corruptions to a clouded understanding--so to Dulness. At least, the
darkness and weakness of the moral reason came under the protection of
the mighty mother--the daughter of Chaos and of Night. She fosters the
disorder and the darkness of the soul. Mere bluntness and inertness of
intellect, which the name would suggest, he never confines himself to.
Of sharp misused power of mind, too, she is the tutelary goddess. Errors
which mind arrives at by too much subtlety, by self-blinding activity,
serve her purpose and the poet's; and so some names of powerful
intellects are included, which, on a question of their merits, indeed,
had better been left out. So the science of mathematics, far
overstepping, as the poet conceives, the boundary of its legitimate
activity--
"Mad Mathesis alone----
Now running round the circle, finds it square."
The real foe of Dulness, then, is Truth--not simply wit or genius. The
night of mind is all that Dulness labours to produce. Misdirected wit
and genius help on this consummation, and therefore deserve her
smile--all the more that they are her born enemies, turned traitors to
their native cause; and most formidable enemies too, had they remained
faithful. Needs must she load them with dignity and emoluments. Trace
the thought. The poem begins from the real dull Dunces; and _their_
goddess is Dulness, inevitably: nothing can be gainsaid there. This is
the central origin. Go on. Pert or lively dunces, who are not real dull,
will come in of due course. And from that first foundation the poet may
lawfully go on to bring in perverted intelligence and moral vitiation of
the soul. Reclining on our swing-chair--and waiting for the devil--with
the _AEneid_ in the one hand and the _Dunciad_ in the other, we have this
moment made a remarkable discovery in ancient and in modern classic
poetry. Virgil, in his eighth book, tells us that the pious AEneas,
handling and examining with delight the glorious shield which the Sire
of the Forge has fabricated for him, wonders to peruse, storied there in
prophetical sculptures, the fates and exploits, and renown, of his
earth-subduing descendants. In one of these fore-shadowing
representations--that of the decisive sea-fight off the promontory of
Actium--you might believe that, under the similitude of the conflict and
victory which delivered the sovereignty of the Roman world into the hand
of Augustus, the sly Father of the Fire has willed by hints to prefigure
an everlasting war of light and darkness, the irreconcilable hostility
of the Wits and Dunces, and the sudden interposition of some divine
poet, clothed with preternatural power, for the "foul dissipation and
forced rout" of the miscreated multitude.
The foe, whose pretensions to the empire of the world are to be signally
defeated, advances to the combat--"ope barbarica"--helped with a
confederacy of barbarians. Queen Dulness herself is characteristically
described as heartening and harking forward her legions with pure
noise.
"REGINA in mediis _patrio_ vocat agmina
sistro,"
that is, rather with her father Chaos's drum, or the drum native to the
land of Dulness. Either interpretation forcibly marks out the most
turbulent and unintellectual of all musical instruments; and we think at
once of her mandate on a later day,
"'Tis yours to shake the soul
With thunder rumbling, from the mustard-bowl."
The contending powers are presented under a bold allegory.
"Omnigenumque Deum MONSTRA et LATRATOR Anubis,
Contra NEPTUNUM et Venerem, contraque Minervam,
Tela tenent."
Neptune prefigures this island, the confessed ruler of the waves and the
precise spot of the globe vindicated, as we have seen, by two great
poets from the reign of Dulness. Venus is here understood in her noblest
character, as the Alma Venus of Lucretius's invocation, as the Power of
Love and the Beautiful in the Universe. The Goddess of Wisdom speaks for
herself. Against them a heterogeneous rabble of monsters direct their
artillery, under a dog-headed barking protagonist, (what a chosen symbol
of an impudent, wide-mouthed, yelping Bayes!) the ringleader of the Cry
of Dunces.
Behold the striking and principal figure of the poet himself, armed and
ready to loose from his hand his unerring shafts.
"Actius haec cernens arcum intendebat Apollo
Desuper."
The poet, impersonated in the patron god of all true poets, is high
Virgilian; and the proud station and posture, and the godlike
annihilating menace of that "DESUPER" is equally picturesque and
sublime.
The same verse continued brings out the effect of the god's, or of the
poet's interposition, in the instantaneous consternation and utter
scattering of the rascal rout.
"... Omnis eo terrore AEgyptus et Indus,
Omnis Arabs, omnes vertebant terga Saboei."
The entire progeny of barbarism are off, in full precipitation, for a
place of refuge, if harbour or haven may be had. Or, as the same
inspired bard elsewhere has it--"fugere ferae"--the wild beasts have
fled.
The triumph is complete. The panic seizes their imperial mistress
herself, who, turning her prow, sweeps with all sails set from the lost
battle.
"Ipsa videbatur ventis REGINA vocatis
Vela dare et laxos jam jamque immittere funes;
Illam inter caedes, pallentem morte futura,
Fecerat Ignipotens undis et Iapyge ferri."
And why is Augustus made Victor? Does not his name stand, to all time,
as the emperor of good letters? Is an Augustan age a less precise and
potential phrase for a golden age of the arts, than a Saturnian age for
the same of the virtues? And why is Antony beaten? Surely, because he
represents the collective Antony-Lumpkinism of literature. And what has
the dear Cleopatra to do in the fight? The meretricious gipsy--the word
is Virgil's own--by her illicit attractions, and by the dusk grain of
her complexion, doubly expresses to the life the foul daughter of Night
whom the Dunces obey and worship.
Vulcan, says Virgil, made the shield, like a god, knowing the future.
But here Virgil makes Vulcan. And we have now seen enough fully to
justify the later popular tradition of his country in steadfastly
attributing to him the fame of an arch-wizard. Looking at the thing in
this light, we derive extreme consolation from the final augurous words
of our last citation--"pallentem morte futura"--which we oppose with
confidence to the appalling final prophecy of Pope, and believe that the
goddess is, as the nymphs were said to be, exceedingly long-lived, but
not immortal.
* * * * *
_Edinburgh: Printed by Ballantyne and Hughes, Paul's Work._