ARGUMENT The proposition, the invocation, and the inscription. Then the original of the great empire of Dulness, and cause of the continuance thereof. The college of the goddess in the city, with her private academy for poets in particular; the governors of it, and the four cardinal virtues. Then the poem hastes into the midst of things, presenting her, on the evening of a Lord Mayor's day, revolving the long succession of her sons, and the glories past and to come. She fixes her eye on Bayes to be the instrument of that great event which is the subject of the poem. He is described pensive among his books, giving up the cause, and apprehending the period of her empire: after debating whether to betake himself to the Church, or to gaming, or to party-writing, he raises an altar of proper books, and (making first his solemn prayer and declaration) purposes thereon to sacrifice all his unsuccessful writings. As the pile is kindled, the goddess, beholding the flame from her seat, flies and puts it out by casting upon it the poem of Thulè. 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 mighty mother, and her son, who brings[235] The Smithfield Muses[236] to the ear of kings, I sing. Say you, her instruments, the great! Called to this work by Dulness, Jove, and Fate;[237] You by whose care, in vain decried and cursed, Still Dunce the second reigns like Dunce the first: Say, how the goddess[238] bade Britannia sleep, And pour'd her spirit o'er the land and deep. In eldest time, ere mortals writ or read, Ere Pallas issued from the Thunderer's head,             10 Dulness o'er all possess'd her ancient right, Daughter of Chaos[239] and Eternal Night: Fate in their dotage this fair idiot gave, Gross as her sire, and as her mother grave, Laborious, heavy, busy, bold, and blind,[240] She ruled, in native anarchy, the mind. Still her old empire[241] to restore she tries, For, born a goddess, Dulness never dies. O thou! whatever title please thine ear, Dean, Drapier, Bickerstaff, or Gulliver![242]            20 Whether thou choose Cervantes' serious air, Or laugh and shake in Rabelais' easy-chair, Or praise the court, or magnify mankind,[243] Or thy grieved country's copper chains unbind; From thy Boeotia though her power retires, Mourn not, my Swift, at ought our realm acquires. Here pleased behold her mighty wings outspread To hatch a new Saturnian age of lead. Close to those walls where Folly holds her throne, And laughs to think Monro would take her down,           30 Where o'er the gates, by his famed father's hand,[244] Great Cibber's brazen, brainless brothers stand, One cell there is, conceal'd from vulgar eye, The cave of Poverty and Poetry. Keen, hollow winds howl through the bleak recess, Emblem of music caused by emptiness. Hence bards, like Proteus long in vain tied down, Escape in monsters, and amaze the town. Hence Miscellanies spring, the weekly boast Of Curll's chaste press, and Lintot's rubric post:[247]  40 Hence hymning Tyburn's elegiac lines,[248] Hence Journals, Medleys, Merc'ries, Magazines: Sepulchral lies,[249] our holy walls to grace, And new-year odes,[250] and all the Grub Street race. In clouded majesty here Dulness shone; Four guardian Virtues, round, support her throne: Fierce champion Fortitude, that knows no fears Of hisses, blows, or want, or loss of ears: Calm Temperance, whose blessings those partake Who hunger and who thirst for scribbling sake:           50 Prudence, whose glass presents the approaching jail: Poetic Justice, with her lifted scale, Where, in nice balance, truth with gold she weighs, And solid pudding against empty praise. Here she beholds the chaos dark and deep, Where nameless somethings in their causes sleep, 'Till genial Jacob,[251] or a warm third day, Call forth each mass, a poem, or a play; How hints, like spawn, scarce quick in embryo lie, How new-born nonsense first is taught to cry,            60 Maggots half-form'd in rhyme exactly meet, And learn to crawl upon poetic feet. Here one poor word an hundred clenches makes, And ductile Dulness new meanders takes; There motley images her fancy strike, Figures ill pair'd, and similes unlike. She sees a mob of metaphors advance, Pleased with the madness of the mazy dance; How Tragedy and Comedy embrace; How Farce and Epic[252] get a jumbled race;              70 How Time himself stands still at her command, Realms shift their place, and ocean turns to land. Here gay Description Egypt glads with showers, Or gives to Zembla fruits, to Barca flowers; Glittering with ice here hoary hills are seen, There painted valleys of eternal green; In cold December fragrant chaplets blow, And heavy harvests nod beneath the snow. All these, and more, the cloud-compelling queen Beholds through fogs that magnify the scene.             80 She, tinsell'd o'er in robes of varying hues, With self-applause her wild creation views; Sees momentary monsters rise and fall, And with her own fools-colours gilds them all. 'Twas on the day,[253] when Thorold rich and grave, Like Cimon, triumphed both on land and wave: (Pomps without guilt, of bloodless swords and maces, Glad chains,[254] warm furs, broad banners, and broad faces.) Now night descending, the proud scene was o'er, But lived, in Settle's numbers, one day more.[255]       90 Now mayors and shrieves all hushed and satiate lay, Yet eat, in dreams, the custard of the day; While pensive poets painful vigils keep, Sleepless themselves, to give their readers sleep. Much to the mindful queen the feast recalls What city swans once sung within the walls; Much she revolves their arts, their ancient praise, And sure succession down from Heywood's[256] days. She saw, with joy, the line immortal run, Each sire impress'd and glaring in his son:             100 So watchful Bruin forms, with plastic care, Each growing lump, and brings it to a bear. She saw old Pryn in restless Daniel[257] shine, And Eusden[258] eke out Blackmore's endless line; She saw slow Philips creep like Tate's[259] poor page, And all the mighty mad in Dennis rage.[260] In each she marks her image full express'd, But chief in Bayes's monster-breeding breast; Bayes formed by nature stage and town to bless, And act, and be, a coxcomb with success.                110 Dulness with transport eyes the lively dunce, Remembering she herself was pertness once. Now (shame to Fortune![261]) an ill run at play Blank'd his bold visage, and a thin third day; Swearing and supperless the hero sate, Blasphemed his gods, the dice, and damn'd his fate. Then gnaw'd his pen, then dash'd it on the ground, Sinking from thought to thought, a vast profound! Plunged for his sense, but found no bottom there, Yet wrote and floundered on, in mere despair.           120 Round him much embryo, much abortion lay, Much future ode, and abdicated play; Nonsense precipitate, like running lead, That slipp'd through cracks and zig-zags 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 sipp'd, how there he plunder'd snug, And suck'd all o'er, like an industrious bug.           130 Here lay poor Fletcher's half-eat scenes,[262] and here The frippery of crucified Moliẻre; There hapless Shakspeare, yet of Tibbald[263] sore, Wish'd he had blotted[264] 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.           140 Here swells the shelf with Ogilby the great;[265] There, stamp'd with arms, Newcastle shines complete:[266] Here all his suffering brotherhood retire, And 'scape the martyrdom of Jakes and fire: A Gothic library! of Greece and Rome Well purged, and worthy Settle, Banks, and Broome.[267] In vain, in vain,--the all-composing hour Resistless falls: the Muse obeys the power. She comes! she comes! the sable throne behold Of Night primeval, and of Chaos old!                    630 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' eyes, by Hermes' wand oppress'd, Closed one by one to everlasting rest; Thus at her felt approach, and secret might, Art after art goes out, and all is night.               640 See skulking Truth to her old cavern fled,[451] Mountains of casuistry heap'd o'er her head! Philosophy, that lean'd on heaven 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.                          650 Nor public flame, nor private, dares to shine; Nor human spark is left, nor glimpse divine! Lo! thy dread empire, Chaos! is restored; Light dies before thy uncreating word: Thy hand, great Anarch! lets the curtain fall; And universal darkness buries all. [235] 'Her son who brings,' &c. Wonderful is the stupidity of all the former critics and commentators on this work! It breaks forth at the very first line. The author of the critique prefixed to Sawney, a poem, p. 5, hath been so dull as to explain 'the man who brings,' &c., not of the hero of the piece, but of our poet himself, as if he vaunted that kings were to be his readers--an honour which though this poem hath had, yet knoweth he how to receive it with more modesty. We remit this ignorant to the first lines of the Aeneid, assuring him that Virgil there speaketh not of himself but of Aeneas: 'Arma virumque cano, Trojae qui primus ab oris Italiam, fato profugus, Lavinaque venit Littora: multum ille et terris jactatus et alto,' &c. I cite the whole three verses, that I may by the way offer a conjectural emendation, purely my own, upon each: First, _oris_ should be read _aris_, it being, as we see, Aen. ii. 513, from the altar of Jupiter Hercaeus that Aeneas fled as soon as he saw Priam slain. In the second line I would _flatu_ for _fato_, since it is most clear it was by winds that he arrived at the shore of Italy. _Jactatus_, in the third, is surely as improperly applied to _terris_, as proper to _alto_. To say a man is tossed on land, is much at one with saying, he walks at sea. _Risum teneatis, amici_? Correct it, as I doubt not it ought to be, _vexatus_.--_Scriblerus_. [236] 'The Smithfield Muses.' Smithfield was the place where Bartholomew Fair was kept, whose shows, machines, and dramatical entertainments, formerly agreeable only to the taste of the rabble, were, by the hero of this poem and others of equal genius, brought to the theatres of Covent Garden, Lincolns-Inn-Fields, and the Haymarket, to be the reigning pleasures of the court and town. This happened in the reigns of King George I. and II. See Book iii. [237] 'By Dulness, Jove, and Fate:' _i.e._, by their judgments, their interests, and their inclinations.--W. [238] 'Say how the goddess,' &c. The poet ventureth to sing the action of the goddess; but the passion she impresseth on her illustrious votaries, he thinketh can be only told by themselves.--_Scribl. W_. [239] 'Daughter of Chaos,' &c. The beauty of this whole allegory being purely of the poetical kind, we think it not our proper business, as a scholiast, to meddle with it, but leave it (as we shall in general all such) to the reader, remarking only that Chaos (according to Hesiod's [Greek: Theogonia]), was the progenitor of all the gods.--_Scriblerus_. [240] 'Laborious, heavy, busy, bold,' &c. I wonder the learned Scriblerus has omitted to advertise the reader, at the opening of this poem, that Dulness here is not to be taken contractedly for mere stupidity, but in the enlarged sense of the word, for all slowness of apprehension, shortness of sight, or imperfect sense of things. It includes (as we see by the poet's own words) labour, industry, and some degree of activity and boldness--a ruling principle not inert, but turning topsy-turvy the understanding, and inducing an anarchy or confused state of mind. This remark ought to be carried along with the reader throughout the work; and without this caution he will be apt to mistake the importance of many of the characters, as well as of the design of the poet. Hence it is, that some have complained he chooses too mean a subject, and imagined he employs himself like Domitian, in killing flies; whereas those who have the true key will find he sports with nobler quarry, and embraces a larger compass; or (as one saith, on a like occasion)-- 'Will see his work, like Jacob's ladder, rise, Its foot in dirt, its head amid the skies.'--_Bentl_. [241] 'Still her old empire to restore.' This restoration makes the completion of the poem. _Vide_ Book iv.--P. [242] 'Drapier, Bickerstaff, or Gulliver!' the several names and characters he assumed in his ludicrous, his splenetic, or his party-writings; which take in all his works.--P. [243] 'Or praise the court, or magnify mankind:' _ironicè_, alluding to Gulliver's representations of both. The next line relates to the papers of the Drapier against the currency of Wood's copper coin in Ireland, which, upon the great discontent of the people, his Majesty was graciously pleased to recall. [244] 'By his famed father's hand:' Mr Caius-Gabriel Cibber, father of the poet laureate. The two statues of the lunatics over the gates of Bedlam Hospital were done by him, and (as the son justly says of them) are no ill monuments of his fame as an artist. [245] 'Bag-fair' is a place near the Tower of London, where old clothes and frippery are sold--P. [246] 'A yawning ruin hangs and nods in air:'--Here in one bed two shivering sisters lie, The cave of Poverty and Poetry. [247] 'Curll's chaste press, and Lintot's rubric post:' two booksellers, of whom, see Book ii. The former was fined by the Court of King's Bench for publishing obscene books; the latter usually adorned his shop with titles in red letters.--P. [248] 'Hence hymning Tyburn's elegiac lines:' it is an ancient English custom for the malefactors to sing a psalm at their execution at Tyburn, and no less customary to print elegies on their deaths, at the same time, or before.--P. [249] 'Sepulchral lies:' is a just satire on the flatteries and falsehoods admitted to be inscribed on the walls of churches, in epitaphs, which occasioned the following epigram:-- 'Friend! in your epitaphs, I'm grieved, So very much is said: One-half will never be believed, The other never read.'--W. [250] 'New-year odes:' made by the poet laureate for the time being, to be sung at Court on every New-Year's Day, the words of which are happily drowned in the voices and instruments.--P. [251] 'Jacob:' Tonson, the well-known bookseller. [252] 'How farce and epic--how Time himself,' allude to the transgressions of the unities in the plays of such poets. For the miracles wrought upon time and place, and the mixture of tragedy and comedy, farce and epic, see Pluto and Proserpine, Penelope, &c., if yet extant.--P. [253] ''Twas on the day, when Thorold rich and grave, like Cimon, triumph'd:' viz., a Lord Mayor's day; his name the author had left in blanks, but most certainly could never be that which the editor foisted in formerly, and which no way agrees with the chronology of the poem.--_Bentl_. The procession of a lord mayor is made partly by land, and partly by water. Cimon, the famous Athenian general, obtained a victory by sea, and another by land, on the same day, over the Persians and Barbarians.--P. [254] 'Glad chains:' The ignorance of these moderns! This was altered in one edition to gold chains, showing more regard to the metal of which the chains of aldermen are made than to the beauty of the Latinism and Graecism--nay, of figurative speech itself: _Loetas segetes_, glad, for making glad, &c.--P. [255] 'But lived, in Settle's numbers, one day more:' a beautiful manner of speaking, usual with poets in praise of poetry, in which kind nothing is finer than those lines of Mr Addison:-- 'Sometimes, misguided by the tuneful throng, I look for streams immortalised in song, That lost in silence and oblivion lie, Dumb are their fountains, and their channels dry; Yet run for over by the Muses' skill, And in the smooth description murmur still.--P. Settle was poet to the city of London. His office was to compose yearly panegyrics upon the lord mayors, and verses to be spoken in the pageants. But that part of the shows being at length frugally abolished, the employment of city-poet ceased, so that upon Settle's demise there was no successor to that place.--P. [256] John Heywood, whose interludes were printed in the time of Henry VIII.--P. [257] 'Daniel Defoe,' a man in worth and original genius incomparably superior to his defamer. [258] 'And Eusden eke out,' &c.: Laurence Eusden, poet laureate. Mr Jacob gives a catalogue of some few only of his works, which were very numerous. Mr Cook, in his Battle of Poets, saith of him-- 'Eusden, a laurell'd bard, by fortune raised, By very few was read, by fewer praised.'--P. [259] Nahum Tate was poet laureate, a cold writer, of no invention; but sometimes translated tolerably when befriended by Mr Dryden. In his second part of Absalom and Achitophel are above two hundred admirable lines together of that great hand, which strongly shine through the insipidity of the rest. Something parallel may be observed of another author here mentioned.--P. [260] 'Dennis rage:' Mr John Dennis was the son of a sadler in London, born in 1657. He paid court to Mr Dryden; and having obtained some correspondence with Mr Wycherly and Mr Congreve, he immediately obliged the public with their letters. He made himself known to the Government by many admirable schemes and projects, which the ministry, for reasons best known to themselves, constantly kept private.--P. [261] 'Shame to Fortune:' because she usually shows favour to persons of this character, who have a threefold pretence to it. [262] 'Poor Fletcher's half-eat scenes:' a great number of them taken out to patch up his plays.--P. [263] 'Tibbald:' this Tibbald, or Theobald, published an edition of Shakspeare, of which he was so proud himself as to say, in one of Mist's journals, June 8, 'That to expose any errors in it was impracticable.' And in another, April 27, 'That whatever care might for the future be taken by any other editor, he would still give above five hundred emendations, that shall escape them all.'--P. [264] 'Wish'd he had blotted:' it was a ridiculous praise which the players gave to Shakspeare, 'that he never blotted a line.' Ben Jonson honestly wished he had blotted a thousand; and Shakspeare would certainly have wished the same, if he had lived to see those alterations in his works, which, not the actors only (and especially the daring hero of this poem) have made on the stage, but the presumptuous critics of our days in their editions--P. [265] 'Ogilby the great:' 'John Ogilby was one who, from a late initiation into literature, made such a progress as might well style him the prodigy of his time! sending into the world so many large volumes. His translations of Homer and Virgil done to the life, and with such excellent sculptures. And (what added great grace to his works) he printed them all on special good paper, and in a very good letter.'--Winstanly, Lives of Poets.--P. [266] 'There, stamp'd with arms, Newcastle shines complete:' Langbaine reckons up eight folios of the Duchess of Newcastle's works, which were usually adorned with gilded covers, and had her coat of arms upon them. [267] 'Worthy Settle, Banks, and Broome:' the poet has mentioned these three authors in particular, as they are parallel to our hero in his three capacities--1. Settle was his brother laureate--only, indeed, upon half-pay, for the city instead of the court; but equally famous for unintelligible flights in his poems on public occasions, such as shows, birth-days, &c.; 2. Banks was his rival in tragedy (though more successful) in one of his tragedies, the Earl of Essex, which is yet alive: Anna Boleyn, the Queen of Scots, and Cyrus the Great, are dead and gone. These he dressed in a sort of beggar's velvet, or a happy mixture of the thick fustian and thin prosaic; exactly imitated in Perolla and Isidora, Caesar in Egypt, and the Heroic Daughter; 3. Broome was a serving-man of Ben Jonson, who once picked up a comedy from his betters, or from some cast scenes of his master, not entirely contemptible.--P. [451] 'Truth to her old cavern fled:' alluding to the saying of Democritus, that Truth lay at the bottom of a deep well, from whence he had drawn her; though Butler says, he first put her in, before he drew her out.--W.