"Lo! Rome herself proud mistress now no more Of arts, but thundering against heathen lore: Her grey-haired synods damning books unread, And Bacon trembling for his brazen head.1 Padua, with sighs, beholds her Livy burn, And even the antipodes Virgilius mourn. See the cirque falls, the unpillared temple nods, Streets paved with heroes, Tiber choked with gods: Till Peter's keys some christened Jove adorn," And Pan to Moses lends his pagan horn; See, graceless Venus to a virgin turned, Or Phidias broken, and Apelles burned.

"Behold, yon isle, by palmers, pilgrims trod, Men bearded, bald, cowled, uncowled, shod, unshod, Peeled, patched, and piebald, linsey-wolsey brothers, Grave mummers! sleeveless some, and shirtless others.

That once was Britain-happy! had she seen
No fiercer sons, had Easter never been.3
In peace, great goddess, ever be adored;
How keen the war, if Dulness draw the sword!
Thus visit not thy own! on this blest age
Oh spread thy influence, but restrain thy rage!
"And see my son! the hour is on its way,
That lifts our goddess to imperial sway:
This fav'rite isle, long severed from her reign,
Dove-like, she gathers to her wings again.

Now look through fate! behold the scene she draws!
What aids, what armies to assert her cause!
See all her progeny, illustrious sight!
Behold, and count them, as they rise to light.

i Friar Bacon, who had a head made of brass, through which, by means of the now well-known acoustic pipes, he called his servant. The head was believed to be magical, and he was in some danger of being burned for a magician.

2 After the government of Rome devolved to the popes, their zeal was for some time exerted in demolishing the heathen temples and statues, so that the Goths scarce destroyed more monuments of antiquity out of rage, than these out of devotion. At length they spared some of the temples by converting them to churches; and some of the statues, by modifying them into images of saints. In much later times, it was thought necessary to change the statues of Apollo and Pallas, on the tomb of Sannazarius, into David and Judith; the lyre easily became a harp, and the Gorgon's head turned to that of Holofernes.- Warburton. The image of St. Peter in the great Church at Rome was said to be an ancient one of Jupiter.

3 Wars in England anciently, about the right time of celebrating Easter.

4 This is fulfilled in the fourth book,

P.

P.

As Berecynthia,' while her offspring vie
In homage to the mother of the sky,
Surveys around her, in the blest abode,
An hundred sons, and ev'ry son a god:
Not with less glory mighty Dulness crowned
Shall take through Grub Street her triumphant
round;

And her Parnassus glancing o'er at once,

Behold an hundred sons, and each a dunce. [place,
"Mark first that youth who takes the foremost
And thrusts his person full into your face.
With all thy father's virtues blest, be born!
And a new Cibber shall the stage adorn.'

"A second see, by meeker manners known,
And modest as the maid that sips alone;
From the strong fate of drams if thou get free,
Another Durfey, Ward3 shall sing in thee.

Thee shall each ale-house, thee each gill-house mourn,
And answering gin-shops sourer sighs return.

"Jacob, the scourge of grammar, mark with awe.* Nor less revere him, blunderbuss of law.

Lo, Popple's brow, tremendous to the town, Horneck's fierce eye, and Roome's funereal frown.

1 See Virgil, Eneid VI.-Pope.

2 Cibber's son Theophilus. He wrote a ballad opera called "Pattie and Peggy."

3 Ward has been spoken of before. He kept a public-house, and was the author of some pointed things against Pope, in prose and verse.-Bowles.

This gentleman is son of a considerable malster of Romsey, in Southamptonshire, and bred to the law under a very eminent attorney: who, between his more laborious studies, has diverted himself with poetry. He is a great admirer of poets and their works, which has occasioned him to try his genius that way.-He has writ in prose the "Lives of the Poets," "Essays," and a great many lawbooks, "The Accomplished Conveyancer,' "Modern Justice," &c. Giles Jacob of himself, "Lives of Poets," vol. i. He very grossly, and unprovoked, abused, in that book the author's friend, Mr. Gay. Warburton.

These two were virulent party-writers, worthily coupled together, and one would think prophetically, since, after the publishing of this piece, the former dying, the latter succeeded him in honour and employment. The first was Philip Horneck, author of a Billingsgate paper called "The High German Doctor.' Edward Roome was son of an undertaker for funerals in Fleet Street, and writ some of the papers called " Pasquin," where by malicious innuendoes he endeavoured to represent our author guilty of malevolent practices with a great man then under prosecution of parliament. Of this man was made the following epigram :—

"You ask why Roome diverts you with his jokes,
Yet if he writes, is dull as other folks?

You wonder at it-This, sir, is the case.

The jest is lost unless he prints his face."

Popple was the author of some vile plays and pamphlets. He pub

Lo, sneering Goode,' half malice and half whim,
A fiend in glee, ridiculously grim.

Each cygnet sweet, of Bath and Tunbridge race,
Whose tuneful whistling makes the waters pass;
Each songster, riddler, every nameless name,
All crowd, who foremost shall be damned to fame.
Some strain in rhyme; the Muses, on their racks,
Scream like the winding of ten thousand jacks:
Some free from rhyme or reason, rule or check,
Break Priscian's head, and Pegasus's neck;
Down, down they larum, with impetuous whirl,
The Pindar's, and the Milton's of a Curl.

"Silence ye wolves! while Ralph' to Cynthia howls, And makes night hideous-Answer him, ye owls! "Sense, speech, and measure, living tongues and dead,

Let all give way, and Morris3 may be read.
Flow, Welsted, flow!' like thine inspirer, beer,
Though stale, not ripe; though thin, yet never clear;
So sweetly mawkish, and so smoothly dull;
Heady, not strong; o'erflowing, though not full.

"Ah, Dennis! Gildon, ah! what ill-starred rage

lished abuses on our author in a paper called the "Prompter."Warburton.

1 An ill-natured critic, who writ a satire on our author, called "The Mock Æsop," and many anonymous libels in newspapers for hire.— Warburton.

2 James Ralph, a name inserted after the first editions, not known to our author till he writ a swearing-piece called Sawney, very abusive to Dr. Swift, Mr. Gay, and himself. These lines allude to a thing of his entitled " Night," a poem. This low writer attended his own works with panegyrics in the journals, and once in particular praised himself highly above Mr. Addison. He was wholly illiterate, and knew no language, not even French. Being advised to read the rules of dramatic poetry before he began a play, he smiled and replied, "Shakespeare writ without rules." He ended at last in the common sink of all such writers, a political newspaper, to which he was reccommended by his friend Arnal, and received a small pittance for pay, and being detected in writing on both sides in one and the same day, he publicly justified the morality of his conduct.

Warburton.

3 Morris Besaleel, see previous note 1, Book II.

4 See Book II., v. 209.

5 The reader, who has seen, through the course of these notes. what a constant attendance Mr. Dennis paid to our author and all his works, may perhaps wonder he should be mentioned but twice, and so slightly touched in this poem. But in truth he looked upon him with some esteem, for having (more generously than all the rest) set his name to such writings. He was also a very old man at this time. By his own account of himself in Mr. Jacob's Lives, he must have been above threescore, and happily lived many years after. So that he was senior to Mr. Durfey, who hitherto of all our poets enjoyed the longest bodily life.- Warburton,

Divides a friendship long confirmed by age?
Blockheads with reason wicked wits abhor;
But fool with fool is barb'rous civil war.
Embrace, embrace, my sons! be foes no more!
Nor glad vile poets with true critics' gore.
"Behold yon pair,' in strict embraces joined;
How like in manners, and how like in mind!
Equal in wit, and equally polite,

Shall this a Pasquin, that a Grumbler write;
Like are their merits, like rewards they share,
That shines a consul, this commissioner.2
"But who is he, in closet close y-pent,
Of sober face, with learned dust besprent?
Right well mine eyes arede3 the myster wight,
On parchment scraps y-fed and Wormius hight
To future ages may thy dulness last,

As thou preservest the dulness of the past!

There, dim in clouds, the poring scholiasts mark, Wits, who, like owls, see only in the dark.

5

A lumber-house of books in ev'ry head,

For ever reading, never to be read!

"But, where each science lifts its modern type, Hist'ry her pot, divinity her pipe,

While proud philosophy repines to show,
Dishonest sight! his breeches rent below;
Embrowned with native bronze, lo! Henley stands,

1 One of these was author of a weekly paper called the Grumbler, as the other was concerned in another called Pasquin, in which Mr. Pope was abused with the Duke of Buckingham, and Bishop of Rochester. They also joined in a piece against his first undertaking to translate the Iliad, intituled Homerides, by Sir Iliad Doggrel, printed in 1715.- Warburton. They were Thomas Burnet, youngest son of the famous Bishop Burnet, and Colonel Ducket.-Wakefield.

2 Such places were given at this time to such sort of writers.—Pope. 3 Read, or peruse; though sometimes used for counsel.-Pope. 4 Let not this name, purely fictitious, be conceited to mean Olaus Wormius; much less (as it was unwarrantably foisted into the surreptitious editions) our own antiquary, Mr. Thomas Hearne, who had no way aggrieved our poet, but on the contrary published many curious tracts which he hath to his great contentment perused.Pope.

"In Cumberland they say to hight, for to promise, or vow; but hight usually signifies was called; and so it does in the north even to this day, notwithstanding what is done in Cumberland."-Hearns.

5 These few lines exactly describe the right verbal critic: the darker his author the better he is pleased; like the famous quack doctor, who put up in his bills, he delighted in matters of difficulty. Somebody said well of these men, that their heads were libraries out of order.

6 J. Henley the orator; he preached on the Sundays upon theological matters, and on the Wednesdays upon all other sciences. Each

Tuning his voice, and balancing his hands.
How fluent nonsense trickles from his tongue!
How sweet the periods, neither said, nor sung!
Still break the benches, Henley! with thy strain,
While Sherlock, Hare, and Gibson' preach in vain.
Oh, great restorer of the good old stage,
Preacher at once, and zany of thy age!
Oh, worthy thou of Egypt's wise abodes,
A decent priest, where monkeys were the gods!
But fate with butchers placed thy priestly stall,
Meek modern faith to murder, hack and maul;
And bade thee live, to crown Britannia's praise,
In Toland's, Tindal's, and Woolston's days.2

"Yet oh, my sons, a father's words attend:
(So may the fates preserve the ears you lend)
'Tis yours a Bacon or a Locke to blame,
A Newton's genius, or a Milton's flame:
But oh! with One, immortal One dispense;
The source of Newton's light, of Bacon's sense.
Content, each emanation of his fires

That beams on earth, each virtue he inspires,
Each art he prompts, each charm he can create
Whate'er he gives, are giv'n for you to hate.
Persist, by all divine in man unawed,

But, learn, ye dunces! not to scorn your God."
Thus he, for then a ray of reason stole
Half through the solid darkness of his soul;
But soon the cloud returned-and thus the sire:
"See now, what Dulness and her sons admire!
See what the charms that smite the simple heart
Not touched by nature, and not reached by art."
His never-blushing head he turned aside,
(Not half so pleased when Goodman prophesied3)

auditor paid one shilling. He declaimed some years against the greatest persons, and occasionally did our author that honor. (See former note, p. 152.)

1 Bishops of Salisbury, Chichester, and London: whose sermons and pastoral letters did honour to their country as well as stations. -Pope.

2 Tho. Woolston was an impious madman, who wrote in a most insolent style against the miracles of the Gospel, in the years 1726, &c. -Warburton.

3 Mr. Cibber tells us, in his "Life," p. 149, that Goodman being at the rehearsal of a play, in which he had a part, clapped him on the shoul der and cried, "If he does not make a good actor, I'll be d-d.”— And (says Mr. Cibber) I make it a question, whether Alexander him. self, or Charles the Twelfth of Sweden, when at the head of their first victorious armies, could feel a greater transport in their bosoms than I did in mine.- Warburton.