Plate XXIII

Vol. VI. facing p.5.

Then blessing all, Go Children of my Care!
To Practice now from Theory Repair.
All my Commands are easy short and full.
My Sons be proud, be selfish and be dull.

Dunciad Book IV.

BOOK IV.

ET, yet a moment, one dim Ray of Light
Indulge, dread Chaos, and eternal Night!

Of darkness vifible fo much be lent,

As half to fhew, half veil the deep Intent.

REMARKS.

The DUNCIAD, Book IV.] This Book may properly be diftinguished from the former, by the Name of the GREATER DUNCIAD, not fo indeed in Size, but in fubject; and fo far contrary to the distinction anciently made of the Greater and Leffer Iliad. But much are they mistaken who imagine this Work in any wife inferior to the former, or of any other hand than of our Poet; of which I am much more certain than that the Iliad itfelf was the Work of Solomon, or the Batrachomaomachia of Homer, as Barnes hath affirmed. BENT. VER. I, &c.] This is an Invocation of much Piety. The Poet willing to approve himself a genuine Son, beginneth by fhewing (what is ever agreeable to Dulness) his high refpect for Antiquity and a Great Family, how dead or dark foever : Next declareth his paffion for explaining Mysteries; and laftly his Impatience to be re-united to her. SCRIBL.

VER. 2. dread Chaos, and eternal Night !] Invoked, as the Restoration of their Empire is the Action of the Poem.

VER. 4. half to fhew, half veil the deep Intent] This is a great propriety, for a dull Poet can never exprefs himself otherwife than by halves, or imperfectly. SCRIBL.

I understand it very differently; the Author in this work had indeed a deep Intent; there were in it Myfterics or améppla which he durft not fully reveal, and doubtless in divers verfes (according to Milton)

---- more is meant than meets the car.

BENT.

Ye Pow'rs! whose Mysteries restor❜d I fing,
To whom Time bears me on his rapid wing,
Sufpend a while your Force inertly strong,
Then take at once the Poet and the Song.

Now flam'd the Dog-ftar's unpropitious ray,
Smete ev'ry Brain, and wither'd ev'ry Bay;
Sick was the Sun, the Owl forfook his bow'r,
The moon-ftruck Prophet felt the madding hour:

REMARKS.

5

10

VER. 6. To whom Time bears me an bis rapid wing,] Fair and foftly, good Poet! (cries the gentle Scriblerus on this place.) For fure, in fpite of his unusual modesty, he shall not travel fo faft toward Oblivion, as divers others of more Confidence' have done : For when I revolve in my mind the Catalogue of those who have most boldly promised to themselves Immortality, viz. Pindar, Luis Gongora, Ronfard Oldham, Lyrics'; Lycophron, Statius, Chapman, Blackmore, Heroics; I find the one half to be already dead, and the other in utter darkness. But it becometh not us, who have taken up the office of his Commentator, to suffer our Poet thus prodigally to caft away his Life; contrariwife, the more hidden and abstruse is his work, and the more remote its beauties from common Understanding, the more is it our duty to draw forth and exalt the same, in the face of Men and Angels. Herein fhall we imitate the laudable Spirit of those, who have (for this very reason) delighted to comment on dark and uncouth Authors, and even on their darker Fragments; preferred Ennius to Virgil, and chofen to turn the dark Lanthorn of LYCOPHRON, rather than to trim the everlasting Lamp of Homer. SCRIBL.

VER, 7. Force inertly fireng,] Alluding to the Vis inertia of Matter, which, though it really be no Power, is yet the Foundation of all the Qualities and Attributes of that sluggish Subftance.

VER. 11, 12. Sick was the Sun,-The moon-ftruck Propbet] The Poet introduceth this (as all great events are fuppofed by

Then rofe the Seed of Chaos, and of Night,
To blot out Order, and extinguish Light,
Of dull and venal a new World to mold,
And bring Saturnian days of Lead and Gold.

15

She mounts the Throne: her head a Cloud con-

ceal'd,

In broad Effulgence all below reveal'd,

REMARKS.

fage Hiftorians to be preceded) by an Eclipfe of the Sun ; but with a peculiar propriety, as the Sun is the Emblem of that intellectual light which dies before the face of Dulness. Very apposite likewife is it to make this Eclipfe, which is occafioned by the Moon's predominancy, the very time when Duiness and Madness are in Conjunction; whofe relation and influence on each other the poet hath fhewn in many places, Book i. v. 29. Book iii. v. 5. & feq.

VER. 14. To blot out Order, and extinguish Light] The two great Ends of her Miffion; the one in quality of Daughter of Chaos, the other as Daughter of Night. Order here is to be un derstood extensively, both as Civil and Moral; the distinctions between high and low in Society, and true and false in Individuals: Light as Intellectual only, Wit, Science, Arts.

VER. 15. Of dull and venal] The Allegory continued; dull referring to the extinction of Light or Science; venal to the deftruction of Order, and the Truth of Things.

Ibid. a new World] In allufion to the Epicurean opinion, that from the Diffolution of the natural World into Night and Chaos a new one should arife; this the Poet alluding to, in the Production of a new moral World, makes it partake of its original Principles.

VER. 16. Lead and Gold,] i. e. dull and venal.

VER. 18. all below reveal'd, ] It was the opinion of the Antients, that the Divinities manifested themselves to Men by their Back-parts Virg. Æn. i, et avertens, rofea cervice refulfit. But this paffage may admit of another expofition.-Vet. Adag.

('Tis thus afpiring Dulness ever fhines)

Soft on her Lap her Laureate fon reclines.

REMARKS.

20

The higher you climb, the more you Hew pour A-.-. Verified in no inftance more than in Dulness aspiring. Emblematized alfo by an Ape climbing and expofing his posteriors, SCRIBL.

VER. 20. ber Laureate fon reclines] With great judgment it is imagined by the Poet, that fuch a Collegue as Dulness had elected, should fleep on the Thrope, and have very little share in the Action of the Poem. Accordingly he hath done little or nothing from the day of his Anointing; having past thro' the fecond book without taking part in any thing that was transacted about him; and through the third in profound Sleep, Nor ought this, well confidered, to feem ftrange in our days, when fo many King-conforts have done the like. SCRIBL.

This verse our excellent Laureate took fo to heart, that he appealed to all mankind," if he was not as feldom afleep as any

fool ?" But it is hoped the Poet hath not injured him, but rather verified his Prophecy (p. 243. of his own Life, 8vo. ch. ix.) where he fays "the reader will be as much pleased to "find me a Dunce in my Old Age, as he was to prove me a brisk "blockhead in my Youth." Wherever there was any room for Brifkness, or Alacrity of any sort, even in finking, he hath had it allowed; but here, where there is nothing for him to do but to take his natural reft, he must permit his Historian, to be filent. It is from their actions only that Princes have their character, and Poets from their works: And if in those he be as much asleep as any fool, the Poet must leave him and them to fleep to all eternity. BENT.

Ibid. ber Laureat] "When I find my Name in the fatirical "works of this Poet, I never look upon it as any malice meant to me, but PROFIT to himself. For he confiders that my Face is more known than most in the nation; and there"fore a Lick at the Laureat will be a fure bait ad captandum vulgus, to catch little readers." Life of Colley Cibber, ch. ii.