universal, they acquaint us of certain works in a less degree of repute,
whereof, although owned by others, yet do they assure us he is the
writer. Of this sort Mr Dennis[185] ascribes to him two farces, whose
names he does not tell, but assures us that there is not one jest in
them; and an imitation of Horace, whose title he does not mention, but
assures us it is much more execrable than all his works.[186] The Daily
Journal, May 11, 1728, assures us 'He is below Tom D'Urfey in the drama,
because (as that writer thinks) the Marriage-Hater Matched, and the
Boarding School, are better than the What-d'-ye-call-it,' which is not
Mr P.'s, but Mr Gay's. Mr Gildon assures us, in his New Rehearsal, p.
48, 'That he was writing a play of the Lady Jane Grey;' but it
afterwards proved to be Mr Howe's. We are assured by another, 'He wrote
a pamphlet called Dr Andrew Tripe,'[187] which proved to be one Dr
Wagstaff's. Mr Theobald assures us in Mist of the 27th April, 'That the
Treatise of the Pro-found is very dull, and that Mr Pope is the author
of it.' The writer of Gulliveriana is of another opinion, and says, 'The
whole, or greatest part, of the merit of this treatise must and can only
be ascribed to Gulliver.'[188] (Here, gentle reader! cannot I but smile
at the strange blindness and positiveness of men, knowing the said
treatise to appertain to none other but to me, Martinus Scriblerus.) We
are assured, in _Mist_ of June 8, 'That his own plays and farces would
better have adorned the Dunciad than those of Mr Theobald, for he had
neither genius for tragedy nor comedy;' which, whether true or not, is
not easy to judge, inasmuch as he hath attempted neither--unless we will
take it for granted, with Mr Cibber, that his being once very angry at
hearing a friend's play abused was an infallible proof the play was his
own, the said Mr Cibber thinking it impossible for a man to be much
concerned for any but himself: 'Now let any man judge,' saith he, 'by
this concern, who was the true mother of the child?'[189]
But from all that hath been said, the discerning reader will collect,
that it little availed our author to have any candour, since, when he
declared he did not write for others, it was not credited; as little to
have any modesty, since, when he declined writing in any way himself,
the presumption of others was imputed to him. If he singly enterprised
one great work, he was taxed of boldness and madness to a prodigy;[190]
if he took assistants in another, it was complained of, and represented
as a great injury to the public.[191] The loftiest heroics, the lowest
ballads, treatises against the State or Church, satires on lords and
ladies, raillery on wits and authors, squabbles with booksellers, or
even full and true accounts of monsters, poisons, and murders; of any
hereof was there nothing so good, nothing so bad, which hath not at one
or other season been to him ascribed. If it bore no author's name, then
lay he concealed; if it did, he fathered it upon that author to be yet
better concealed: if it resembled any of his styles, then was it
evident; if it did not, then disguised he it on set purpose. Yea, even
direct oppositions in religion, principles, and politics, have equally
been supposed in him inherent. Surely a most rare and singular
character! Of which, let the reader make what he can.
Doubtless most commentators would hence take occasion to turn all to
their author's advantage; and, from the testimony of his very enemies,
would affirm that his capacity was boundless, as well as his
imagination; that he was a perfect master of all styles, and all
arguments; and that there was in those times no other writer, in any
kind, of any degree of excellence, save he himself. But as this is not
our own sentiment, we shall determine on nothing, but leave thee, gentle
reader, to steer thy judgment equally between various opinions, and to
choose whether thou wilt incline to the testimonies of authors avowed,
or of authors concealed--of those who knew him, or of those who knew him
not.
P.
* * * * *
MARTINUS SCRIBLERUS OF THE POEM.
This poem, as it celebrateth the most grave and ancient of things,
Chaos, Night, and Dulness; so is it of the most grave and ancient kind.
Homer (saith Aristotle) was the first who gave the form, and (saith
Horace) who adapted the measure, to heroic poesy. But even before this,
may be rationally presumed from what the ancients have left written, was
a piece by Homer, composed of like nature and matter with this of our
poet. For of epic sort it appeareth to have been, yet of matter surely
not unpleasant, witness what is reported of it by the learned Archbishop
Eustathius, in Odyss. x., and accordingly Aristotle, in his Poetic,
chap, iv., does further set forth, that as the Iliad and Odyssey gave
example to tragedy, so did this poem to comedy its first idea.
From these authors also it should seem that the hero or chief personage
of it was no less obscure, and his understanding and sentiments no less
quaint and strange (if indeed not more so), than any of the actors of
our poem. Margites was the name of this personage, whom antiquity
recordeth to have been Dunce the first; and surely, from what we hear of
him, not unworthy to be the root of so spreading a tree and so numerous
a posterity. The poem therefore celebrating him was properly and
absolutely a Dunciad; which, though now unhappily lost, yet is its
nature sufficiently known by the infallible tokens aforesaid. And thus
it doth appear that the first Dunciad was the first epic poem, written
by Homer himself, and anterior even to the Iliad or Odyssey.
Now, forasmuch as our poet had translated those two famous works of
Homer which are yet left, he did conceive it in some sort his duty to
imitate that also which was lost; and was therefore induced to bestow on
it the same form which Homer's is reported to have had, namely, that of
epic poem; with a title also framed after the ancient Greek manner, to
wit, that of Dunciad.
Wonderful it is that so few of the moderns have been stimulated to
attempt some Dunciad! since, in the opinion of the multitude, it might
cost less pain and oil than an imitation of the greater epic. But
possible it is also, that, on due reflection, the maker might find it
easier to paint a Charlemagne, a Brute, or a Godfrey, with just pomp and
dignity heroic, than a Margites, a Codrus, or a Flecknoe.
We shall next declare the occasion and the cause which moved our poet to
this particular work. He lived in those days, when (after Providence had
permitted the invention of printing as a scourge for the sins of the
learned) paper also became so cheap, and printers so numerous, that a
deluge of authors covered the land; whereby not only the peace of the
honest unwriting subject was daily molested, but unmerciful demands were
made of his applause, yea of his money, by such as would neither earn
the one nor deserve the other. At the same time, the licence of the
press was such, that it grew dangerous to refuse them either: for they
would forthwith publish slanders unpunished, the authors being
anonymous, and skulking under the wings of publishers, a set of men who
never scrupled to vend either calumny or blasphemy, as long as the town
would call for it.
Now our author,[192] living in those times, did conceive it an endeavour
well worthy an honest satirist to dissuade the dull and punish the
wicked, the only way that was left. In that public-spirited view he laid
the plan of this poem, as the greatest service he was capable (without
much hurt, or being slain) to render his dear country. First, taking
things from their original, he considereth the causes creative of such
authors--namely, dulness and poverty; the one born with them, the other
contracted by neglect of their proper talents, through self-conceit of
greater abilities. This truth he wrappeth in an allegory[193] (as the
construction of epic poesy requireth), and feigns that one of these
goddesses had taken up her abode with the other, and that they jointly
inspired all such writers and such works. He proceedeth to show the
qualities they bestow on these authors,[194] and the effects they
produce;[195] then the materials, or stock, with which they furnish
them;[196] and (above all) that self-opinion[197] which causeth it to
seem to themselves vastly greater than it is, and is the prime motive of
their setting up in this sad and sorry merchandise. The great power of
these goddesses acting in alliance (whereof as the one is the mother of
industry, so is the other of plodding) was to be exemplified in some one
great and remarkable action:[198] and none could be more so than that
which our poet hath chosen, viz., the restoration of the reign of Chaos
and Night, by the ministry of Dulness their daughter, in the removal of
her imperial seat from the city to the polite world; as the action of
the Æneid is the restoration of the empire of Troy, by the removal of
the race from thence to Latium. But as Homer singing only the wrath of
Achilles, yet includes in his poem the whole history of the Trojan war;
in like manner our author hath drawn into this single action the whole
history of Dulness and her children.
A person must next be fixed upon to support this action. This phantom in
the poet's mind must have a name:[199] He finds it to be ----; and he
becomes, of course, the hero of the poem.
The fable being thus, according to the best example, one and entire, as
contained in the proposition, the machinery is a continued chain of
allegories, setting forth the whole power, ministry, and empire of
Dulness, extended through her subordinate instruments, in all her
various operations.
This is branched into episodes, each of which hath its moral apart,
though all conducive to the main end. The crowd assembled in the second
book demonstrates the design to be more extensive than to bad poets
only, and that we may expect other episodes of the patrons, encouragers,
or paymasters of such authors, as occasion shall bring them forth. And
the third book, if well considered, seemeth to embrace the whole world.
Each of the games relateth to some or other vile class of writers: the
first concerneth the Plagiary, to whom he giveth the name of More; the
second the libellous Novelist, whom he styleth Eliza; the third, the
flattering Dedicator; the fourth, the bawling Critic, or noisy Poet; the
fifth, the dark and dirty Party-writer; and so of the rest; assigning to
each some proper name or other, such as he could find.
As for the characters, the public hath already acknowledged how justly
they are drawn: the manners are so depicted, and the sentiments so
peculiar to those to whom applied, that surely to transfer them to any
other or wiser personages would be exceeding difficult: and certain it
is, that every person concerned, being consulted apart, hath readily
owned the resemblance of every portrait, his own excepted. So Mr Cibber
calls them 'a parcel of poor wretches, so many silly flies;' but adds,
'our author's wit is remarkably more bare and barren whenever it would
fall foul on Cibber, than upon any other person whatever.'[200]
The descriptions are singular, the comparisons very quaint, the
narration various, yet of one colour. The purity and chastity of diction
is so preserved, that in the places most suspicious, not the words but
only the images have been censured, and yet are those images no other
than have been sanctified by ancient and classical authority (though, as
was the manner of those good times, not so curiously wrapped up), yea,
and commented upon by the most grave doctors and approved critics.
As it beareth the name of Epic, it is thereby subjected to such severe
indispensable rules as are laid on all neoterics--a strict imitation of
the ancients; insomuch that any deviation, accompanied with whatever
poetic beauties, hath always been censured by the sound critic. How
exact that imitation hath been in this piece, appeareth not only by its
general structure, but by particular allusions infinite, many whereof
have escaped both the commentator and poet himself; yea, divers by his
exceeding diligence are so altered and interwoven with the rest, that
several have already been, and more will be, by the ignorant abused, as
altogether and originally his own.
In a word, the whole poem proveth itself to be the work of our author
when his faculties were in full vigour and perfection, at that exact
time when years have ripened the judgment without diminishing the
imagination; which by good critics is held to be punctually at forty.
For at that season it was that Virgil finished his Georgics; and Sir
Richard Blackmore at the like age composing his Arthurs, declared the
same to be the very _acmè_ and pitch of life for epic poesy--though
since he hath altered it to sixty, the year in which he published his
Alfred.[201] True it is, that the talents for criticism--namely,
smartness, quick censure, vivacity of remark, certainty of asseveration,
indeed all but acerbity--seem rather the gifts of youth than of riper
age. But it is far otherwise in poetry; witness the works of Mr Rymer
and Mr Dennis, who, beginning with criticism, became afterwards such
poets as no age hath paralleled. With good reason, therefore, did our
author choose to write his essay on that subject at twenty, and reserve
for his maturer years this great and wonderful work of the Dunciad.
P.
RICARDUS ARISTARCHUS OF THE HERO OF THE POEM.
Of the nature of Dunciad in general, whence derived, and on what
authority founded, as well as of the art and conduct of this our poem in
particular, the learned and laborious Scriblerus hath, according to his
manner, and with tolerable share of judgment, dissertated. But when he
cometh to speak of the person of the hero fitted for such poem, in truth
he miserably halts and hallucinates. For, misled by one Monsieur Bossu,
a Gallic critic, he prateth of I cannot tell what phantom of a hero,
only raised up to support the fable. A putrid conceit! As if Homer and
Virgil, like modern undertakers, who first build their house, and then
seek out for a tenant, had contrived the story of a war and a wandering,
before they once thought either of Achilles or Æneas. We shall therefore
set our good brother and the world also right in this particular, by
assuring them, that, in the greater epic, the prime intention of the
Muse is to exalt heroic virtue, in order to propagate the love of it
among the children of men; and, consequently, that the poet's first
thought must needs be turned upon a real subject meet for laud and
celebration; not one whom he is to make, but one whom he may find, truly
illustrious. This is the _primum mobile_ of his poetic world, whence
everything is to receive life and motion. For this subject being found,
he is immediately ordained, or rather acknowledged, a hero, and put upon
such action as befitteth the dignity of his character.
But the Muse ceaseth not here her eagle-flight. For sometimes, satiated
with the contemplation of these suns of glory, she turneth downward on
her wing, and darts with Jove's lightning on the goose and serpent kind.
For we may apply to the Muse, in her various moods, what an ancient
master of wisdom affirmeth of the gods in general: 'Si Dii non
irascuntur impiis et injustis, nec pios utique justosque diligunt. In
rebusenim diversis, aut in utramque partem moveri necesse est, aut in
neutram. Itaque qui bonos diligit, et malos odit; et qui malos non odit,
nec bonos diligit. Quia et diligere bonos ex odio malorum venit; et
malos odisse ex bonorum caritate descendit.' Which, in our vernacular
idiom, may be thus interpreted: 'If the gods be not provoked at evil
men, neither are they delighted with the good and just. For contrary
objects must either excite contrary affections, or no affections at all.
So that he who loveth good men must at the same time hate the bad; and
he who hateth not bad men cannot love the good; because to love good men
proceedeth from an aversion to evil, and to hate evil men from a
tenderness to the good.' From this delicacy of the Muse arose the little
epic, (more lively and choleric than her elder sister, whose bulk and
complexion incline her to the phlegmatic), and for this some notorious
vehicle of vice and folly was sought out, to make thereof an example. An
early instance of which (nor could it escape the accurate Scriblerus)
the father of epic poem himself affordeth us. From him the practice
descended to the Greek dramatic poets, his offspring, who, in the
composition of their tetralogy, or set of four pieces, were wont to make
the last a satiric tragedy. Happily one of these ancient Dunciads (as we
may well term it) is come down unto us amongst the tragedies of the poet
Euripides. And what doth the reader suppose may be the subject thereof?
Why, in truth, and it is worthy observation, the unequal contention of
an old, dull, debauched buffoon Cyclops, with the heaven-directed
favourite of Minerva; who, after having quietly borne all the monster's
obscene and impious ribaldry, endeth the farce in punishing him with the
mark of an indelible brand in his forehead. May we not then be excused,
if for the future we consider the epics of Homer, Virgil, and Milton,
together with this our poem, as a complete tetralogy, in which the last
worthily holdeth the place or station of the satiric piece?
Proceed we therefore in our subject. It hath been long, and, alas for
pity! still remaineth a question, whether the hero of the greater epic
should be an honest man? or, as the French critics express it, _un
honnête homme_:[202] but it never admitted of any doubt, but that the
hero of the little epic should be just the contrary. Hence, to the
advantage of our Dunciad, we may observe how much juster the moral of
that poem must needs be, where so important a question is previously
decided.
But then it is not every knave, nor (let me add) every fool, that is a
fit subject for a Dunciad. There must still exist some analogy, if not
resemblance of qualities, between the heroes of the two poems, and this
in order to admit what neoteric critics call the parody, one of the
liveliest graces of the little epic. Thus, it being agreed that the
constituent qualities of the greater epic hero are wisdom, bravery, and
love, from whence springeth heroic virtue; it followeth that those of
the lesser epic hero should be vanity, impudence, and debauchery, from
which happy assemblage resulteth heroic dulness, the never-dying subject
of this our poem.
This being confessed, come we now to particulars. It is the character of
true wisdom to seek its chief support and confidence within itself, and
to place that support in the resources which proceed from a conscious
rectitude of will. And are the advantages of vanity, when arising to the
heroic standard, at all short of this self-complacence? Nay, are they
not, in the opinion of the enamoured owner, far beyond it? 'Let the
world (will such an one say) impute to me what folly or weakness they
please; but till wisdom can give me something that will make me more
heartily happy, I am content to be gazed at.'[203] This, we see, is
vanity according to the heroic gauge or measure; not that low and
ignoble species which pretendeth to virtues we have not, but the
laudable ambition of being gazed at for glorying in those vices which
everybody knows we have. 'The world may ask (says he) why I make my
follies public? Why not? I have passed my time very pleasantly with
them.'[204] In short, there is no sort of vanity such a hero would
scruple, but that which might go near to degrade him from his high
station in this our Dunciad--namely, 'Whether it would not be vanity in
him to take shame to himself for not being a wise man?'[205]
Bravery, the second attribute of the true hero, is courage manifesting
itself in every limb; while its correspondent virtue in the mock hero is
that same courage all collected into the face. And as power when drawn
together must needs have more force and spirit than when dispersed, we
generally find this kind of courage in so high and heroic a degree, that
it insults not only men, but gods. Mezentius is, without doubt, the
bravest character in all the Æneis. But how? His bravery, we know, was a
high courage of blasphemy. And can we say less of this brave man's, who,
having told us that he placed 'his _summum bonum_ in those follies,
which he was not content barely to possess, but would likewise glory
in,' adds, 'If I am misguided, 'tis nature's fault, and I follow
her.'[206] Nor can we be mistaken in making this happy quality a species
of courage, when we consider those illustrious marks of it which made
his face 'more known (as he justly boasteth) than most in the kingdom,'
and his language to consist of what we must allow to be the most daring
figure of speech, that which is taken from the name of God.
Gentle love, the next ingredient in the true hero's composition, is a
mere bird of passage, or (as Shakspeare calls it) summer-teeming lust,
and evaporates in the heat of youth; doubtless, by that refinement, it
suffers in passing through those certain strainers which our poet
somewhere speaketh of. But when it is let alone to work upon the lees,
it acquireth strength by old age, and becometh a lasting ornament to the
little epic. It is true, indeed, there is one objection to its fitness
for such a use: for not only the ignorant may think it common, but it is
admitted to be so, even by him who best knoweth its value. 'Don't you
think,' argueth he, 'to say only a man has his whore,[207] ought to go
for little or nothing? Because _defendit numerus_; take the first ten
thousand men you meet, and I believe you would be no loser if you betted
ten to one that every single sinner of them, one with another, had been
guilty of the same frailty.'[208] But here he seemeth not to have done
justice to himself: the man is sure enough a hero who hath his lady at
fourscore. How doth his modesty herein lessen the merit of a whole
well-spent life: not taking to himself the commendation (which Horace
accounted the greatest in a theatrical character) of continuing to the
very dregs the same he was from the beginning,
... 'Servetur ad imum
Qualis ab incepto processerat' ...
But here, in justice both to the poet and the hero, let us further
remark, that the calling her his whore implieth she was his own, and not
his neighbour's. Truly a commendable continence! and such as Scipio
himself must have applauded. For how much self-denial was exerted not to
covet his neighbour's whore? and what disorders must the coveting her
have occasioned in that society where (according to this political
calculator) nine in ten of all ages have their concubines!
We have now, as briefly as we could devise, gone through the three
constituent qualities of either hero. But it is not in any, or in all of
these, that heroism properly or essentially resideth. It is a lucky
result rather from the collision of these lively qualities against one
another. Thus, as from wisdom, bravery, and love, ariseth magnanimity,
the object of admiration, which is the aim of the greater epic; so from
vanity, impudence, and debauchery, springeth buffoonery, the source of
ridicule, that 'laughing ornament,' as he well termeth it,[209] of the
little epic.
He is not ashamed (God forbid he ever should be ashamed!) of this
character, who deemeth that not reason, but risibility, distinguisheth
the human species from the brutal. 'As nature,' saith this profound
philosopher, 'distinguished our species from the mute creation by our
risibility, her design must have been by that faculty as evidently to
raise our happiness, as by our _os sublime_ (our erected faces) to lift
the dignity of our form above them.'[210] All this considered, how
complete a hero must he be, as well as how happy a man, whose risibility
lieth not barely in his muscles, as in the common sort, but (as himself
informeth us) in his very spirits! and whose _os sublime_ is not simply
an erect face, but a brazen head, as should seem by his preferring it to
one of iron, said to belong to the late king of Sweden![211]
But whatever personal qualities a hero may have, the examples of
Achilles and Aeneas show us, that all those are of small avail without
the constant assistance of the gods--for the subversion and erection of
empires have never been adjudged the work of man. How greatly soever,
then, we may esteem of his high talents, we can hardly conceive his
personal prowess alone sufficient to restore the decayed empire of
Dulness. So weighty an achievement must require the particular favour
and protection of the great--who, being the natural patrons and
supporters of letters, as the ancient gods were of Troy, must first be
drawn off and engaged in another interest, before the total subversion
of them can be accomplished. To surmount, therefore, this last and
greatest difficulty, we have, in this excellent man, a professed
favourite and intimado of the great. And look, of what force ancient
piety was to draw the gods into the party of Aeneas, that, and much
stronger, is modern incense, to engage the great in the party of
Dulness.