But POPE has plainly the superiority, by the artful and ironical compliments to his friends.

The beastly simile, at line 171, may safely be pronounced, however difficult it may be in many cases to trace resemblances, to be taken from a passage in the Remains of Butler, the incomparable author of Hudibras:

Let courtly wits to wits afford supply,
As hog to hog in huts of Westphaly;

If one, through nation's bounty, or his lord's,
Has what the frugal dirty soil affords,
From him the next receives it, thick or thin,

As pure a mess almost as it came in:
The blessed benefit, not there confin'd,

Drops to the third, who nuzzles close behind:
From tail to mouth they feed, and they carouse;
The last full fairly gives it to the House.

The passage in Butler runs thus:-" Our modern authors write plays, as they feed hogs in Westphalia; where but one eats pease or acorns, and all the rest feed upon his and one another's excrements." Thoughts on Various Subjects, p. 497, v. 2. Though those remains were not published in the life-time of POPE, yet Mr. Thyer informs us, that Mr. Longueville, in whose cus

1

tody

tody they were, communicated them to Atterbury, from whom POPE might hear of them. 'Tis impossible any two writers could casually hit upon an image so very peculiar and uncommon.

I conclude this Section by observing, that these Dialogues exhibit many marks of our author's petulance, party-spirit, and self-importance, and of assuming to himself the character of a general censor; who, alas! if he had possessed a thousand times more genius and ability than he actually enjoyed, could not alter or amend the manners of a rich and commercial, and, consequently, of a luxurious and dissipated nation. We make ourselves unhappy, by hoping to possess incompatible things: we want to have wealth without corruption, and liberty without virtue.

SECTION

SECTION XIII.

OF THE DUNCIAD.

WHEN the first complete and correct edition of the Dunciad was published in quarto, 1729, it consisted of three books; and had for its hero Tibbald, a cold, plodding, and tasteless writer and critic, who, with great propriety, was chosen, on the death of Settle, by the Goddess of Dulness, to be the chief instrument of that great work which was the subject of the poem; namely, "the introduction (as our author expresses it) of the lowest diversions of the rabble of Smithfield, to be the entertainment of the court and town; the action of the Dunciad being, the removal of the imperial seat of Dulness from the City to the polite world; as that of the Æneid is the removal of the empire of Troy to Latium." This was the primary subject of the piece. Our author adds, "as Homer, singing only the wrath

of

of Achilles, yet includes in his poem, the whole history of the Trojan war; in like manner our poet hath drawn into this single action, the whole history of Dulness and her children. To this end, she is represented, at the very opening of the poem, taking a view of her forces, which are distinguished into these three kinds, partywriters, dull poets, and wild critics. A person must be fixed upon to support this action, who (to agree with the design) must be such an one as is capable of being all three. This phantom in the poet's mind, must have a name. He seeks for one who hath been concerned in the journals, written bad plays or poems, and published low criticisms. He finds his name to be Tibbald,*

and

* Who was a kind of Margites. It is a singular fact in the history of literature, that the same mighty genius, who, by his Iliad and Odyssey, became the founder of Tragedy, should also, by his Margites, as Aristotle observes in the second chapter of his Poetics, become the father of Comedy. This piece was written in various sorts of metre, and particularly hexameter and iambic. Only three verses remain of this piece, which was much celebrated by the ancients; one in the second Alcibiades of Plato:

• Ως αρα πολλα μεν έργα, κακως δ' ηπιςατο πανία.

Another

and he becomes of course the hero of the poem."

This design is carried on, in the first book, by a description of the Goddess fixing her eye on Tibbald; who, on the evening of a lord-mayor's day, is represented as sitting pensively in his study, and apprehending the period of her empire, from the old age of the present monarch Settle; and also by an account of a sacrifice he makes of his unsuccessful works; of the Goddess's revealing herself to him, announcing the death of Settle that night, anointing and proclaiming him successor. It is carried on in the second book, by a description of the various games instituted in honour of the new king, in which booksellers, poets, and critics contend. This design is, lastly, completed in the third book,

by

Another in the sixth book of Aristotle's Ethics:

Τον δ' εδ' αρ' σκαπτηρα θεοι θεσαν, ατ' αροτηςα.

A third is cited by the scholiast of Aristophanes, in the Birds:

Μεσάων θεράπων, καὶ εκηβόλο Απολλωνος.

The poem is mentioned by Polybius, Dion Chrysostom, Plutarch, Lucian, Stobaus, and others.