BOOK IV.1

YET, yet a moment one dim ray of light
Indulge, dread Chaos, and eternal Night!"
Of darkness visible so much be lent,
As half to show, half-veil, the deep intent,
Ye pow'rs! whose mysteries restored I sing,
To whom time bears me on his rapid wing,
Suspend a while your force inertly strong,
Then take at once the poet and the song.

Now flamed the dog-star's unpropitious ray,
Smote ev'ry brain, and withered ev'ry bay;
Sick was the sun, the owl forsook his bower,
The moon-struck prophet felt the madding hour:
Then rose the seed of Chaos, and of Night,
To blot out order, and extinguish light,
Of dull and venal a new world to mould,
And bring Saturnian days of lead and gold.*

She mounts the throne: her head a cloud concealed, In broad effulgence all below revealed;

('Tis thus aspiring Dulness ever shines) Soft on her lap her laureate son reclines.

Beneath her footstool, Science groans in chains, And Wit dreads exile, penalties, and pains,

There foamed rebellious Logic, gagged and bound, There, stripped, fair Rhet'ric languished on the ground;

His blunted arms by Sophistry are borne,
And shameless Billingsgate her robes adorn.
Morality, by her false guardians drawn,
(Chicane in furs, and Casuistry in lawn,)
Gasps, as they straighten at each end the cord,

1 This book may properly be distinguished from the former, by the name of the "Greater Dunciad," not so indeed in size, but in subject; and so far contrary to the distinction anciently made of the "Greater" and "Lesser Iliad." But much are they mistaken who imagine this work in any wise inferior to the former, or of any other hand than of our poet; of which I am much more certain than that the "Iliad" itself was the work of Solomon, or the Batrachom uomachia "of Homer, as Barnes hath affirmed.-Bentley. Pope.

2 Invoked as the restoration of their empire is the action of the poem.-Pope.

3 This is a great propriety, for a dull poet can never express himself otherwise than by halves or imperfectly.-Pope,

4 Dull and venal,-Pope,

And dies when Dulness gives her Page the word.'
Mad Mathesis' alone was unconfined,

Too mad for mere material chains to bind,
Now to pure space lifts her ecstatic stare,
Now running round the circle finds its square.3
But held in tenfold bonds the Muses lie,

Watched both by Envy's and by Flattery's eye:*
There to her heart sad Tragedy addrest

The dagger wont to pierce the tyrant's breast;
But sober History restrained her rage,
And promised vengeance on a barb'rous age.
There sunk Thalia, nerveless, cold, and dead,
Had not her sister Satire held her head:

Nor couldst thou, Chesterfield!" a tear refuse
Thou wep'st, and with thee wept each gentle muse.
When lo! a harlot form soft sliding by,

With mincing step, small voice, and languid eye:
Foreign her air, here robe's discordant pride
In patch-work flutt'ring, and her head aside:
By singing peers upheld on either hand,
She triped and laughed, too pretty much to stand;
Cast on the prostrate Nine a scronful look,
Then thus in quaint recitativo spoke.

"O Cara! Cara! silence all that train: Joy to great Chaos! let division reign:'

1 There was a judge of this name, always ready to hang any man that came in his way, of which he was suffered to give a hundred miserable examples during a long life, even to his dotage.-Pope.

2 Alluding to the strange conclusions some mathematicians have deduced from their principles, concerning the real quantity of matter, the reality of space, &c.-Pope.

3 Regards the wild and fruitless attempts of squaring the circle.Pope.

4 One of the misfortunes falling on authors from the act for subjecting plays to the power of a licenser, being the false representations to which they were exposed, from such as either gratified their envy to merit, or made their court to greatness, by perverting general reflections against vice into libels on particular persons.— Pope.

5 This noble person in the year 1737, when the Act was brought into the House of Lords, opposed it in an excellent speech.-Pope.

The attitude given to this phantom represents the nature and genius of Italian opera; its affected airs, its effeminate sounds, and the practice of patching up these operas with favorite songs, incoherently put together. These things were supported by the subscriptions of the nobility. This circumstance that opera should prepare for the opening of the grand sessions was prophesied of in book iii. ver. 304.-Pope.

7 Alluding to the false taste of playing tricks in music with numberless divisions, to the neglect of that harmony which conforms to the sense, and applies to the passions. Mr. Handel had introduced a great number of hands, and more variety of instruments into the

Chromatic tortures soon shall drive them hence,
Break all their nerves and fritter all their sense:
One trill shall harmonise joy, grief, and rage,
Wake the dull church, and lull the ranting stage;
To the same notes thy sons shall hum, or snore,
And all thy yawning daughters cry, Encore.
Another Phoebus, thy own Phoebus, reigns,
Joys in my jigs, and dances in my chains.
But soon, ah soon, rebellion will commence,
If music meanly borrows aid from sense.
Strong in new arms, lo! Giant Handel stands,
Like bold Briareus, with a hundred hands;
To stir, to rouse, to shake the soul he comes,
And Jove's own thunders follow Mars's Drums.
Arrest him, empress; or you sleep no more-
She heard, and drove him to the Hibernian shore.”
And now had Fame's posterior trumpet blown,
And all the nations summoned to the throne.
The young, the old, who feel her inward sway,
One instinct seizes, and transports away.
None need a guide, by sure attraction led,
And strong impulsive gravity of head;
None want a place for all their centre found,
Hung to the goddess and cohered around.
Not closer, orb in orb, conglobed are seen
The buzzing bees about their dusky queen.
The gath'ring number as it moves along,
Involves a vast involuntary throng,

""

Who gently drawn, and struggling less and less,
Roll in her vortex, and her power confess:
Not those alone who passive own her laws,
But who, weak rebels, more advance her cause.
Whate'er of dunce in college or in town
Sneers at another in toupee or gown;
Whate'er of mongrel no one class admits,
A wit with dunces, and a dunce with wits.

Nor absent they, no members of her state,
Who pay her homage in her sons, the great;
Who, false to Phoebus, bow the knee to Baal;
Or, impious, preach his word without a call.

orchestra, and employed even drums and cannon to make a fuller chorus; which proved so much too manly for the fine gentlemen of his age, that he was obliged to remove his music into Ireland. After which they were reduced, for want of composers, to practise the patch-work above mentioned.-Pope,

Patrons, who sneak from living worth to dead,
Withhold the pension, and set up the head;
Or vest dull flatt'ry in the sacred gown;
Or give from fool to fool the laurel crown.
And (last and worst) with all the cant of wit,
Without the soul, the muse's hypocrite.

Then marched the bard and blockhead, side by side.
Who rhymed for hire, and patronised for pride.
Narcissus, praised with all a parson's power,
Looked a white lily sunk beneath a shower.'
There moved Montalto2 with superior air;
His stretched-out arm displayed a volume fair;
Courtiers and patriots in two ranks divide,
Through both he passed, and bowed from side to side;
But as in graceful act, with awful eye

Composed he stood, bold Benson' thrust him by:
On two unequal crutches propped he came,
Milton's on this, on that one Johnston's name.
The decent knight retired with sober rage,
Withdrew his hand, and closed the pompous page.
But (happy for him as the times went then)
Appeared Apollo's mayor and aldermen,

On whom three hundred gold-capped youths await,
To lug the pond'rous volume off in state.

When Dulness, smiling-"Thus revive the wits! But murder first, and mince them all to bits; As erst Medea (cruel, so to save!)

A new edition of old son gave;5

Let standard authors, thus, like trophies borne,
Appear more glorious as more hacked and torn.

1 Means Dr. Middleton's laboured encomium on Lord Hervey, in his dedication of the "Life of Cicero."- Warton.

2 Sir Thomas Hanmer, an editor of Shakespeare.-Wakefield.

3 This man endeavoured to raise himself to fame by erecting monuments, striking coins, setting up heads, and procuring translations of Milton; and afterwards by as great passion for Arthur Johnston, a Scotch physician's version of the psalms, of which he printed many fine editions. See more of him, book iii. ver. 325.-Pope.

4 The goddess applauds the practice of tacking the obscure names of persons not eminent in any branch of learning, to those of the most distinguished writers; either by printing editious of their works with impertinent alterations of their text, as in the former instances; or by setting up monuments disgraced with their own vile names and inscriptions, as in the latter.-Pope.

1 Mede, at Jason's request, restored his father son to youth by substituting a magical liquor for his blood, after that had been drained from his throat.

And you, my critics! in the chequered shade,
Admire new light through holes yourself have made.
Leave not a foot of verse, a foot of stone,
A page,' a grave, that they can call their own;
But spread, my sons, your glory thin or thick,
On passive paper, or on solid brick.

So by each bard an alderman shall sit,'
A heavy lord shall hang at ev'ry wit,

And while on fame's triumphal car they ride,
Some slave of mine be pinioned to their side."

Now crowds on crowds around the goddess press,
Each eager to present their first address.
Dunce scorning dunce beholds the next advance,
But fop shows fop superior complaisance.
When lo! a spectre rose, whose index-hand
Held forth the virtue of the dreadful wand;
His beavered brow a birchen garland wears,
Dropping with infant's blood, and mother's tears.
O'er every vein a shuddering horror runs;
Eton and Winton shake through all their sons.
All flesh is humbled, Westminster's bold race
Shrink, and confess the genius of the place:
The pale boy-senator yet tingling stands,

And holds his breeches close with both his hands. Then thus. "Since man from beast by words is known,

Words are man's province, words we teach alone.
When reason doubtful, like the Samian letter,3
Points him two ways; the narrower is the better;
Placed at the door of learning, youth to guide,
We never suffer it to stand too wide.*

To ask, to guess, to know, as they commence,
As fancy opens the quick springs of sense,
We ply the memory, we load the brain,
Bind rebel wit, and double chain on chain;

1 Pagina, not pedissequus. A page of a book; not a servant, follower, or attendant; no poet having had a page since the death of Mr. Thomas Durfey.-Scriblerus. Pope.

2 Alluding to the monument erected for Butler by Alderman Barber. -Warburton.

8 The letter Y, used by Pythagoras as an emblem of the different roads of virtue and vice.

'Et tibi quæ Samios diduxit litera ramos."-Pers. Pope.

4 This circumstance of the genius loci (with that of the index-hand before) seems to be an allusion to the "Table of Cebes," where the genius of human nature points out the road to be pursued by those entering into life.-Pope,