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 th' 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, on 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.
Maggots, half-form'd, in rhyme exactly meet,
And learn to crawl upon poetic feet.

Here one poor word a 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 get a jumbled race;
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.
She, tinsell'd o'er in robes of varying hues,
With self-applause her wild creation views;

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60

70

90

Book iv. ver. 17, 18. It is worth while to compare this description of the majesty of Dulness in a state of peace and tranquillity, with that more busy scene where she mounts the throne in triumph, and is not so much supported by her own virtues, as by the princely consciousness of having destroyed all other.

Ver. 57.-genial Jacob,] Tonson. The famous race of booksel

lers of that name.

90

Sees momentary monsters rise and fall,
And with her own fools'-colours gilds them all.
'Twas on the day, when rich and grave,
Like Cimon triumph'd both on land and wave;
(Pomps without guilt, of bloodless swords and maces,
Glad chains, 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..
Now mayors and shrieves all hush'd 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 recals
What city swans once sung within the walls;
Much she revolves their arts, their ancient praise,
And sure succession down from Heywood's days.
She saw, with joy, the line immortal run,
Each sire imprest and glaring in his son:
So watchful Bruin forms, with plastic care,
Each growing lump, and brings it to a bear.
She saw old Pryn in restless Daniel shine,
And Eusden eke out Blackmore's endless line:

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100

Ver. 85, 86. 'Twas on the day, when rich and graveLike 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.

Ver. 90. But lived, in Settle's numbers, one day more.] A beautiful manner of speaking, usual with poets, in praise of poetry. Ibid. But lived, in Settle's numbers, one day more.] 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.

Ver. 98. John Heywood, whose interludes were printed in the time of Henry VIII.

Ver. 103.-old Pryn in restless Daniel-] The first edition had it, "She saw in Norton all his father shine:"

a great mistake! for Daniel de Foe had parts, but Norton de Foe was a wretched writer, and never attempted poetry. Much more justly is Daniel himself made successor to W. Pryn, both of whom wrote verses as well as well as politics; as appears by the poem de Jure Divino, &c. of De Foe, and by some lines in Cowley's Miscellanies on the other. And both these authors had

She saw slow Philips creep like Tate's poor page,
And all the mighty mad in Dennis rage.

REMARKS.

a resemblance in their fates as well as their writings, having been alike sentenced to the pillory.

Ver. 104. And Eusden eke out, &c.] Laurence Eusden, poetlaureat. 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 rais'd,
By very few was read, by fewer praised.'

Mr. Oldmixon, in his Arts of Logic and Rhetoric, p. 413, 414, affirms, That of all the Galimatias he ever met with, none comes up to some verses of this poet, which have as much of the ridicu lum and the fustian in them as can well be jumbled together, and are of that sort of nonsense, which so perfectly confounds all ideas, that there is no distinct one left in the mind." Farther he says of him, That he hath prophesied his own poetry shall be sweeter than Catullus, Ovid, and Tibullus; but we have little hope of the accomplishment of it, from what he hath lately published. Upon which Mr. Oldmixon has not spared, a reflection, That the putting the laurel on the head of the one who writ such verses, will give futurity a very lively idea of the judgment and justice of those who bestowed it.' Ibid. p. 417. But the well-known learning of that noble person, who was then lord chamberlain, might have screened him from this unmannerly reflection. Nor ought Mr. Oldmixon to complain, so long after, that the laurel would have better become his own brows, or any other's: it were more decent to acquiesce in the opinion of the Duke of Buckingham upon this matter;

In rush'd Eusden, and cried, 'Who shall have it, But I, the true laureat, to whom the king gave it! Apollo begged pardon, and granted his claim, But vow'd that till then he ne'er heard of his name." Session of Poets. The same plea might also serve for his successor, Mr. Cibber; and is farther strengthened in the following epigram made on that occasion:

In merry Old England it once was a rule,

The king had his poet, and also his fool;

But now we're so frugal, I'd have you to know it,
That Cibber can serve both for fool and for poet."

Of Blackmore, see Book ii. Of Philips, Book i. ver. 262, and
Book iii. prope fin.

Nahum Tate was poet-laureat, a cold writer, of no invention; but sometimes translated tolerably when befriended by Mr. Dryden. In his second part of Absolom 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.

Ver. 106. And all the mighty mad in Dennis rage.] Mr. Theobald, in the Censor, vol. ii. No. 33, calls Mr. Dennis by the name of Furius. The modern Furius is to be looked upon more as an object of pity, than of that which he daily provokes, laughter and contempt. Did we really know how much this poor man' [I wish that reflection on poverty had been spared] suffers by being contradicted, or, which is the same thing in effect, by

In each she marks her image full exprest, But chief in Bays's monster-bleeding breast;

REMARKS.

hearing another praised; we should, in compassion, sometimes attend to him with a silent nod, and let him go away with the triumphs of his ill-nature.-Poor Furius, (again) when any of his contemporaries are spoken well of, quitting the ground of the present dispute, steps back a thousand years to call in the succour of the ancients. His very panegyric is spiteful, and he uses it for the same reason as some ladies do their commendation of a dead beauty, who would never have had their good word, but that a living one happened to be mentioned in their company. His applause is not the tribute of his heart, but the sacrifice of his revenge,' &c. Indeed, his pieces against our poet are somewhat of an angry character, and as they are now scarce extant, a taste of his style may be satisfactory to the curious. A young, squab, short gentleman, whose outward form, though it should be that of downright monkey, would not differ so much from human shape as his unthinking immaterial part does from human understanding. He is as stupid and as venomous as a hunchback'd toad. A book through which folly and ignorance, those brethren so lame and impotent, do ridiculously look big and very dull, and strut and hobble, cheek by jowl, with their arms on kimbo, being led and supported, and bully-back'd by that blind Hector, Impudence.' Reflect. on the Essay on Criticism, p. 26. 29, 30.

It would be unjust not to add his reasons for this fury, they are so strong and so coercive. I regard him,' saith he, as an enemy, not so much to me, as to my king, to my country, to my religion, and to that liberty which has been the sole felicity of my life. A vagary of fortune, who is sometimes pleased to be frolicsome, and the epidemic madness of the times, have given him reputation, and reputation,' as Hobbes says, 'is power, and that has made him dangerous. Therefore I look on it as my duty to King George, whose faithful subject I am; to my country, of which I have appeared a constant lover; to the laws, under whose protection I have so long lived; and to the liberty of my country, more dear to me than life, of which I have now for forty years been a constant assertor, &c. I look upon it as my duty, I say, to do-you shall see what to pull the lion's skin from this little ass, which popular error has thrown round him; and to shew that this author, who has been lately so much in vogue, has neither sense in his thoughts, nor English in his expressions.' Dennis, Rem. on Hom. Pref. p. 2. 91, &c.

Besides these public-spirited reasons, Mr. D. had a private one; which by his manner of expressing it in p. 92, appears to have been equally strong. He was even in bodily fear of his life, from the machinations of the said Mr. P. The story,' says he, "is too long to be told, but who would be acquainted with it, may. bear it from Mr. Curll, my bookseller. However, what my reason has suggested to me, that I have with a just confidence said, in defiance of his two clandestine weapons, his slander and his poison.' Which last words of his book plainly discover Mr. D.'s suspicion was that of being poisoned, in like manner as Mr. Curil had been before him: of which fact, see a full and true account of the horrid and barbarous revenge, by poison, on the body of Edmund Curll, printed in 1716, the year antecedent to that wherein these remarks of Mr. Dennis were published. But what puts

Bays, form'd by nature stage and town to bless,
And act, and be, a coxcomb with success.
Dulness with transport eyes the lively dunce,
Remembering she herself wss pertness once.
Now (shame to fortune!) an ill run at play
Blank'd his bold visage, and a thin third day:

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110

it beyond all question, is a passage in a very warm treatise, in which Mr. D. was also concerned, price two-pence, called, A true Character of Mr. Pope and his Writings, printed for S. Popping, 1716; in the tenth page whereof he is said to have insulted people on those calamities and diseases which he himself gave them, by administering poison to them; and is called (p. 4.) a lurking way-laying coward, and a stabber in the dark. Which (with many other things most lively set forth in that piece) must have rendered him a terror, not to Mr. Dennis only, but to all Christian people. This charitable warning only provoked our incorrigible poet to write the following epigram:

Should Dennis publish you had stabb'd your brother,
Lampoon'd your monarch, or debauch'd your mother;
Say, what revenge on Dennis can be had!
Too dull for laughter, for reply too mad:
On one so poor you cannot take the law;
On one so old your sword you scorn to draw;
Uncaged then let the harmless monster rage,
Secure in dulness, madness, want, and age."

For the rest; Mr. John Dennis was the son of a saddler, in London, born in 1657. He paid court to Mr. Dryden; and hav ing obtained some correspondence with Mr. Wycherley 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. For his character as a writer, it is given us as follows: Mr. Dennis is excellent at Pindaric writings, perfectly regular in all his performances, and a person of sound learning. That he is master of a great deal of penetration and judgment, his criticisms (particularly on Prince Arthur) do sufficiently demonstrate.' From the same ac count it also appears that he writ plays more to get reputation than money.' Denuis of himself. See Giles Jacob's Lives of Dram, Poets, p. 68, 69, compared with p. 286.

Ver. 109. Bays, formed by nature, &c.] It is hoped the poet here hath done full justice to his hero's character, which it were a great mistake to imagine was wholly sunk in stupidity: he is allowed to have supported it with a wonderful mixture of vivacity. This character is heightened, according to his own desire, in a letter he wrote to our author: Pert and dull at least you might have allowed me. What! am I only to be dull, and dull still, and again, and for ever?" He then solemnly appealed to his own conscience, that he could not think himself so, nor believe that our poet did: but that he spake worse of him than he could possibly think; and concluded it must be merely to shew his wit, or for some profit or lucre to himself." Life of C. C. chap. vii. and Letter to Mr. P. page 15. 40. 53. And to shew his claim to what the poet was so unwilling to allow him, of being