quent parodies introduced on Homer, Virgil, Milton, and other great poets, than which no thing has a stronger effect in heroi-comic poems, are made with singular pleasantry, happiness, and judgment. But just criticism calls on us also to point out some of those passages that appear exceptionable in the Dunciad. Such, in book i. v. 163, 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: * Many of the ancients were fond of parodies. It is well known how many Aristophanes has given us on Euripides, and other tragedians. Athenæus, in the 9th book of his Deipnos. p. 406, informs us, that Chamæleon of Pontus said, that Hegemon was the first author very famous for parodies. He was called, çaxn, (Lenticula.) He was also an excellent actor; and the Athenians were so fond of him, that one day, when news was brought of their defeat in Sicily, they would not quit the theatre, but insisted that Hegemon should finish the piece. He was a great favourite of Alcibiades; of whom, and Hegemon, Athenæus relates a story worth the reader's perusal, p. 407. edit. Casaubon. Lugduni, 1612. There are some excellent parodies in the Rehearsal, in Bramston's Art of Politics, in the Scribleriad, and the works of Fielding. Me emptiness and dulness could inspire, Did on the stage my fops appear confin'd? My life gave ampler lessons to mankind. What then remains? Ourself still, still remain ; For a person to be introduced, speaking thus of himself, is in truth outrageously unnatural, and out of character. At v. 300, in this book, also, is a stroke of profaneness that cannot pass unblamed : Lift up your gates, ye princes, see him come! So also, book iii. v. 126, (and book iv. v. 562,) Dove-like, she gathers to her wings again. And in the arguments he talks of giving a Pisgahsight of the future fulness of her glory, and of sending priests and comforters. In book ii. the filthiness of the images, v. 93, and v. 160, is extremely offensive and disgusting. In book iii. the ridicule on the useful and curious publica tions of Hearne, was very undeserved. In book iv. the Genius of the schools is made to declare, v. 148, that, Words are man's province; words we teach alone; Surely our author, when he passed this censure, was ill-informed of what was taught and expected in our great schools; namely, besides reading, interpreting, and translating the best poets, orators, and historians, of the best ages, to be able to compose essays, declamations, and verses, in Greek, in Latin, and in English; and in some of these schools, to write critical remarks on Homer; Sophocles, Demosthenes, Aristotle's Poetics, or Longinus; an exercise not of the memory, but judgment. And as to plying the memory, and loading the brain, (see verse 157,) it was the opinion of Milton, and is a practice in our great seminaries," that if passages from the heroic poems, Bb 4 * What is said on this subject by Quintilian, b. i. and ii. is as much superior to Locke's Treatise on Education, in strength of reasoning, as it is in elegance of style. poems, orations, and tragedies, of the ancients, were solemnly pronounced, with right accent and grace, as might be taught, (and is,) they would endue the scholars even with the spirit and vigour of Demosthenes or Cicero, Euripides or Sophocles." The illustrious names of Wyndham, Talbot, Murray, and Pulteney, which our author himself immediately adds, and which catalogue might be much enlarged, with the names of many great statesmen, lawyers, and divines, are a strong confutation of this opprobrious opinion. In book iv. v. 210, is just such another breach of truth and decorum as was remarked above, in making Aristarchus (Bentley) abuse himself, and laugh at his own labours: Thy mighty scholiast, whose unweary'd pains Lastly, Lastly, in this 4th book, the sudden appearance of Annius, v. 347, of Mummius, 371, and of a gloomy clerk, v. 459, make this part of the poem obscure, as we know not who these personages are, nor whence they came. After all, the chief fault of the Dunciad is the * violence and vehemence of its satire, and the excessive heighth to which it is carried; and which, therefore, I have heard compared to that marvellous column * Which sour the temper of the reader; insomuch that I know a person, whose name would be an ornament to these papers, if I was suffered to insert it, who, after reading a book of the Dunciad, always sooths himself, as he calls it, by turning to a canto in the Faery Queen. This is not the case in that very delightful and beautiful poem, Mac Flecnoe, from which POPE has borrowed so 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. It is natural and obvious to borrow a metaphor from music, when we are speaking of a poem whose versification is particularly and exquisitely sweet and harmonious. The numbers of the Dunciad, by being much laboured, and encumbered with epithets, have something in them of stiffness and harshness. Since the total decay of learning and genius. 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! |