Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845

Yet as long as men and women are weak and mortal, genius will possess a privilege of committing certain peccadilloes that will be winked at and hushed up. We proclaim poetry for an organ of the highest, profoundest truth. But every now and then, when we are in difficulties, we shroud the poet and ourselves under the undeniable fact, that poetry is fiction; and under that pretext, wildly and wickedly would throw off all responsibility from him, and from ourselves, his retainers and abettors; and yet something, after all, is to be conceded to the mask of the poet. All nations and times have agreed in not judging him by the prosaic laws to which we who write and speak prose are amenable. His is a playful part, and he has a knack of slipping from under the hand of serious judgment. He is a Proteus, and feels himself bound to speak the bare truth only when he is reduced to his proper person, not whilst he is exercising his preternatural powers of illusion. He holds in his grasp the rod of the Enchanter, Pleasure, and with a touch he unnerves the joints that would seize and drag him before the seat of an ordinary police. But we must remember that we are now scrawling unprivileged prose; and beware that we do not, like other officious and uncautious partizans, bring down upon our own defenceless heads the sword which the delinquency of them mightier far has roused from the scabbard.

Let us see, then, how stands the case of such satirists.

War enters into the kingdom of the Muses. Rival wits assail one another—Dryden and Shadwell. Nec dis nec viribus æquis. This is a duel—impar congressus Achillei. But when Pope undertakes to hunt down the vermin of literature, this is no distraction of the Parnassian realm by civil war. This is the lawful magistrate going forth, armed perhaps with extraordinary powers, to clear an infested district of vulgar malefactors and notorious bad characters.

Vile publishers, vile critics, vile scribblers of every denomination, in prose and verse—all those who turn the press, that organ of light for the world, into an engine of darkness—who may blame the poet for clothing them in such curses as shall make them for all time at once loathsome and laughable in Christian lands?

Letters! sent by heaven for accomplishing the gift of speech. The individual thinker, by turning his thoughts into words, advances himself in the art and power of thought—unravels, clears up, and establishes the movements of "the shadowy tribes of mind." And so the federal republic of nations, by turning the spoken word into the written, advance their faculty of thinking, and their acquisition of thought. The thought has gained perpetuity when it is worded—the word has gained perpetuity when it is written. Reason waits her completed triumph from the written work, which converts, and alone can convert, the thought of the individual mind into that of the universal mind; thus constituting the fine act of one aspiring intelligence the common possession of the species, and collecting the produce of all wits into the public treasury of knowledge.

The misusers of letters are therefore the foes of the race. The licentious thinker and writer prejudices the liberty of thinking and writing. Those who excel in letters, and in the right use of letters, are sensitive to their misapplication. Hence arises a species of satire, or, if you will, satirist—The Scriblero-Mastix. He must attack individuals. A heavily-resounding lash should scourge the immoral and the profane. Light stripes may suffice for quelling the less nocent dunces. In commonplace prose criticism, whatever form it may take, this can be done without supposed personal ill-will; for the Mastix is then only doing a duty plainly prescribed. The theologian must censure, and trample as mire, the railing assailant of the truths which in his eyes contain salvation. The reviewer must review. But what, it may be asked, moves any follower of the Muses to satirise a scribbler? He seems to go out of his way to do so; for verse has naturally better associations. But the personal aggression on the wit by the dunce, may fairly instigate the wit to flay the dunce. Now he finds the object of his satire in the way. The fact is, that Dryden's poem and Pope's were both moved in this way. The grew out of personal quarrels. Are they on that account to be blamed? Not if the dunces, by them "damned to everlasting fame," were the unhappy aggressors.

Dryden's times, and possibly something in his own character, trained his muse to polemics. His pen was active in literary controversies, which were never without a full infusion of personalities. More thoroughly moved at one time against one offender—though the history of the feud is in some parts imperfectly traceable—he compelled the clouds and hurled the lightning, in verse, on the doomed head of Thomas Shadwell. The invention of the poem entitled Mac-Flecnoe is very simple. Richard Flecnoe was a voluminous writer, and exceedingly bad poet—a name of scorn already in the kingdom of letters. Dryden supposes him to be the King of Dulness, who, advanced in years, will abdicate his well-possessed throne. He selects Shadwell from amongst his numerous offspring, all the Dunces, as the son or Dunce the most nearly resembling himself—hence the name of the poem—and appoints him his successor. That is the whole plan. The verse flows unstinted from the full urn of Dryden. The perfect ease, and the tone of mastery characteristic of him, are felt throughout. He amuses himself with laughing at his rival, and the amusement remains to all time; for all who, having felt the pleasure of wit, are the foes of the Dunces. It is not a laboured poem—it is a freak of wit. You cannot imagine him attaching much importance to the scarcely two hundred lines, thrown off in a few gleeful outpourings. To us, Shadwell is nothing. He is a phantom, an impersonation. His Duncehood is exaggerated, for he was a writer of some talent in one walk; but being selected for the throne, it was imperative to make him Dunce all through. To us, there, he is merely a Type; and we judge the strokes of Dryden in their universality, not asking if they were truly applicable to his victim, but whether they express pointedly and poignantly the repulsion entertained by Wit for Dulness. In this enlarged sense and power we feel it as poetry. When the father, encouraging his heir, says—

"And when false flowers of ret'ric thou wouldst cull, Trust Nature; do not labour to be dull; But, write they best, and top"–

Nothing can be happier. The quiet assumption of Dulness for the highest point of desirable human attainment—the good-nature and indulgent parental concern of the wish to save the younger emulator of his own glory from spending superfluous pains on a consummation sure to come of itself—the confidence of the veteran Dullard in the blood of the race, and in the tried and undegenerate worth of his successor—the sufficient direction of a life and reign comprehended, summed up, concentrated in the one master-precept—"do not labour to be dull"—are inimitable. You feel the high artist, whom experience has made bold; and you feel your own imagination roused to conceive the universe of Dunces, each yielding to the attraction of his genius, fluttering his pinions with an exquisite grace, and all, without labour or purpose, arriving at the goal predestined by nature and fate.

We know of no good reason why, for the delectation of myriads in their minority, Maga should not give Mac-Flecnoe entire; but lest old and elderly gentlemen should think it too much extract, she gives all she can, and lets you dream the rest.

"Now Empress Fame had publish'd the renownOf Shadwell's coronation though the Town.Rouz'd by report of fame, the nations meet,From near Bunhill, and distant Watling-street.No Persian carpets spread th' imperial way,But scatter'd limbs of mangled poets lay;From dusty shops neglected authors come,Martyrs of pies, and reliques of the bum.Much Heywood, Shirley, Ogleby, there lay,But loads of Shadwell almost chok'd the way.Bilk'd stationers, for yeomen, stood prepar'd,And Herringman was captain of the guard.The hoary prince in majesty appear'd,High on a throne of his own labours rear'd;At his right hand our young Ascanius sate,Rome's other hope, and pillar of the state:His brows thick fogs, instead of glories, grace,And lambent Dulness play'd around his face.As Hannibal did to the altars come,Sworn by his sire a mortal foe to Rome;So Shadwell swore, nor should his vow be vain,That he till death true Dulness would maintain;And, in his father's right, and realm's defence,Ne'er to have peace with wit, nor truce with sense.The king himself the sacred unction made,As king by office, and as priest by trade.In his sinister hand, instead of ball,He plac'd a mighty mug of potent ale;Love's kingdom to his right he did convey,At once his sceptre, and his rule of sway;Whose righteous lore the Prince had practis'd young,And from whose loins recorded Psychè sprung.His temples, last, with poppies were o'erspread,That, nodding, seem'd to consecrate his head.Just at the point of time, if Fame not lie,On his left hand twelve rev'rend owls did fly.So Romulus, 'tis sung by Tiber's brook,Presage of sway from twice six vultures took.Th' admiring throng loud acclamations make,And omens of his future empire take.The sire then shook the honours of his head,And, from his brows, damps of oblivion shed,Full on the filial Dulness: long he stood,Repelling from his breast the raging god;At length burst out in the prophetic mood.'Heav'ns bless my son, from Ireland let him reignTo fair Barbadoes on the western main;Of his dominion may no end be known,And greater than his father's be his throne;Beyond Love's kingdom let him stretch his pen!'He paus'd, and all the people cry'd, 'Amen.'Then thus continu'd he: 'My son, advanceStill in new impudence, new ignorance.Success let others teach; learn thou from mePangs without birth, and fruitless industry.Let virtuosos in five years be writ;—Yet not one thought accuse thy toil—of wit.Let gentle George in triumph tread the stage,Make Dorimant betray, and Loveit rage;Let Cully, Cockwood, Fopling, charm the pit,And, in their folly, show the writer's wit:Yet still thy fools shall stand in thy defence,And justify their author's want of sense.Let them be all by thy own model madeOf dulness, and desire no foreign aid;That they to future ages may be known,Not copies drawn, but issue of thy own.Nay, let thy men of wit, too, be the same,All full of thee, and diff'ring but in name.But let no alien Sedley interpose,To lard with wit thy hungry Epsom prose.And when false flowers of rhet'ric thou wouldst cull,Trust Nature; do not labour to be dull;But, write thy best, and top; and, in each line,Sir Formal's oratory will be thine:Sir Formal, though unsought, attends thy quill,And does thy northern dedications fill.Nor let false friends seduce thy mind to fame,By arrogating Johnson's hostile name.Let father Flecnoe fire thy mind with praise,And uncle Ogleby thy envy raise.Thou art my blood, where Johnson has no part:What share have we—in nature or in art?Where did his wit on learning fix a brand,And rail at arts he did not understand?Where made he love in Prince Nicander's vein,Or swept the dust in Psychè's humble strain?Where sold he bargains, Whip-stich, Kiss me –,Promis'd a play, and dwindled to a farce?When did his muse from Fletcher scenes purloin,As thou whole Eth'rege dost transfuse to thine?But so transfus'd as oil and waters flow;His always floats above, thine sinks below.This is thy province, this thy wondrous way.New humours to invent for each new play;This is that bloated bias of thy mind,By which, one way, to dulness 'tis inclin'd:Which makes thy writings lean, on one side, still;And in all changes, that way bends thy will.Not let thy mountain-belly make pretenceOf likeness; thine's a tympany of sense.A tun of man in thy large bulk is writ,But sure thou art but a kilderkin of wit.Like mine, thy gentle numbers feebly creep;Thy Tragic Muse gives smiles, thy Comic sleep.With whate'er gall thou sett'st thyself to write,Thy inoffensive satires never bite.In thy felonious heart though venom lies,It does but touch thy Irish pen, and dies.Thy genius calls thee not to purchase fameIn keen Iambics, but mild Anagram.Leave writing Plays, and chuse for thy commandSome peaceful province in Acrostic land:There thou may'st wings display, and altars raise,And torture one poor word ten thousand ways:Or if thou would'st thy diff'rent talents suit,Set thy own songs, and sing them to thy lute.'He said; but his last words were scarcely heard;For Bruce and Longvil has a trap prepar'd}And down they sent the yet-declaiming bard.Sinking, he left his drugget robe behind,Borne upwards by a subterranean wing:The mantle fell to the young prophet's part,With double portion of his father's art."

The Mac-Flecnoe of Dryden suggested—no more—the Dunciad of Pope. There is nothing of transcript. Flecnoe, who,

"In prose and verse, was own'd without dispute,Through all the realms of nonsense, absolute,"

settles the succession of the state on Shadwell. That idea Pope adopts; but the Kingdom of Dulness is re-modelled. It is no longer an aged monarch, who, tired out with years and the toils of empire, gladly transfers the sceptre to younger and more efficient hands, but the Goddess of Dulness who is concerned for her dominion, and elects her new vice-regent on the demise of the Crown. The scale is immeasurably aggrandized—multitudes of dunces are comprehended—the composition is elaborate—the mock-heroic, admirable in Dryden, is carried to perfection, and we have, sui generis, a regular epic poem.

In the year 1727, amongst the works first given to the public in the Miscellancies of Pope and Swift, was the treatise of Martinus Scriblerus, Περι Βαθους or the Art of Sinking in Poetry. The exquisite wit and humour of this piece, which was almost wholly Pope's, enraged the Dunces to madness; and the mongrel pack opened in full cry, with barbarous dissonance, against their supposed whipper-in. Never was there such a senseless yell: for the philosophical treatise "On the Profund" overflows with amenity and good-nature. Pope is all the while at play—diverting himself in innocent recreation; and, of all the satires that ever were indited, it is in spirit the most inoffensive to man, woman, and child. The Dunces, however, swore that its wickedness went beyond the Devil's, and besought the world to pay particular attention to the sixth chapter as supra-Satanic. Therein Martinus ranges "the confined and less copious geniuses under proper classes, and, the better to give their pictures to the reader, under the name of animals." The animals are Flying Fishes, Swallows, Ostriches, Parrots, Didappers, Porpoises, Frogs, Eels, and Tortoises. Each animal is characterized in a few words, that prove Pope to have been a most observant zoologist; and some profundists, classified according to that arrangement, are indicated by the initial letters of their names. The chapter is short, and the style concise—consisting of but four pages. Some of the initial letters had been set down at random; but profundists rose up, with loud vociferation, to claim them for their own; and gli animali parlanti, on foot, wing, fin, "or belly prone," peopled the booksellers' shops. C. G., "perplexed in the extreme," was the cause of perplexity to others, figuring now as a flying-fish, and now as a porpoise. While J. W. was not less problematical—now an Eel, and now a Didapper.

"Threats of vengeance," says Roscoe, "resounded from all quarters, and the press groaned under the various attempts at retaliation to which this production gave rise. Before the publication of the Dunciad, upwards of sixty different libels, books, papers, and copies of verses, had been published against Pope." The allied forces—væ victis!—published a Popiad. Threats of personal violence were frequently held out—a story was circulated of his having been whipped naked with rods; and, to extent the ridicule, an advertisement, with his initials, was inserted in the Daily Post, giving the lie to the scandal. Were such brutalities to be let pass unpunished? Dr Johnson says that "Pope was by his own confession the aggressor"—and so say Dr Warton and Mr Bowles. The aggressor! Why, the Dunces had been maligning him all their days, long before the treatise on the Profund. And that is bad law, indeed, that recognises a natural right in blockheads to be blackguards, and gives unlimited license of brutality towards any man of genius who may have been ironical on the tribe. But then, quoth some hypocritical wiseacre, is not satire wicked? Pope was a Christian; and should have learned to forgive. Stop a bit.

We talk of poets and books, as if we who occupy the tribunal were, during that moment at least, miracles of clear-sighted incorruptible justice, and of all the virtues generally. Conscience reasserts her whole sway in our minds as soon as we sit on other men's merits and demerits; almost the innocence of Eden re-establishes itself in our breasts. Self-delusion! Men we are at the guilty bar—Men on the blameless bench. There is a disorderly spirit in every one of us—a spice of iniquity. Human nature forgives a crime for a jest. Not that crimes and jests are commensurable or approximable; but they are before the same judge. He dislikes, or professes to dislike, the crime. Indubitably, and without a pretence, he likes the jest. Here, then, is an opportunity given of balancing the liking against the disliking; and, under that form, the jest against the crime. If he likes the jest more than he dislikes the crime, the old saw holds good—

"Solvuntur risu tabulæ, tu missus abibis."

Well, then, the wit of Dryden and Pope is irresistible. What follows? For having contented our liking, we let them do any thing that they like. Poor Og! poor Shadwell! poor Bayes, poor Cibber! He sprawls and kicks in the gripe of the giant, and we—as if we had sat at bull-fights and the shows of gladiators—when the blood trickles we are tickled, and—oh, shame!—we laugh.

The Dunciad suffers under the law of compensations. As the renown of the actor is intense whilst he lives, and languishes with the following generations, so is it with poems that embrace with ardour the Present. When the Present has become the Past, they are, or at least their liveliest edge is, past too. No commentary can restore the fiery hates of Dante—nor the repellent scorn of Hudibras—nor the glow of laughter to Mac-Flecnoe and the Dunciad. Eternal things are eternal—transitory things are transitory. The transitory have lost their zest—the eternal have their revenge.

Yet, a hundred years and more after the Dunciad, a critic may wish that the matter had been a little more diligently moulded, with more consideration of readers to come—that there had been less of mere names—that every Gyas and Cloanthus had somewhat unfolded his own individuality upon the stage—had been his own commentary—had, by a word or two, painted himself to everlasting posterity, in hue, shape, and gesture, as he stood before the contemporary eye. 'Tis an idle speculation! The thing, by its inspiring passion, personal anger and offence, belonged to the day. The poet gives it up to the day. He uses his poetical machinery to grace and point a ridicule that is to tell home to the breasts of living men—that is to be felt tingling by living flesh—that is to tinge living cheeks, if they can still redden, with blushes.

Yet, for all that, the Dunciad still lives; ay, in spite of seeming inconsistency, we declare it to be immortal. For, build with what materials she may, the works of genius that stand in the world of thought survive all time's mutations, cemented by a spirit she alone can interfuse. It must not be said that a poem shelved is dead and buried. Open it at midnight, and the morning is in your chamber.

We love to commune with the rising and new-risen generations; elderly people we do not much affect; and, for that we are old ourselves, we are averse from the old. Now, of our well-beloved rising and new-risen generations, how many thousands may there be in these islands who have read the Dunciad? Not so many as to make needless in our pages a few explanatory sentences respecting its first appearance, and the not inconsiderable changes of form it was afterwards made to assume. At the head of the Dunces at first stood one Theobald, who, with some of the requisite knowledge and aptitude for a reviser of the text of Shakspeare, was a poor creature, and a dishonest one, but too feeble and too obscure for the place. Fifteen years afterwards, (1742,) at the instigation of Warburton, Pope added to the Dunciad a Fourth Book. In it there was one line, and one line only, about Colley Cibber.

"She mounts the throne: her head a cloud conceal'd,In broad effulgence all below reveal'd,('Tis thus aspiring Dulness ever shines,)Soft on her lap her Laureate Son reclines."

Dr Johnson calls that an acrimonious attack! "to which the provocation is not easily discoverable;" and says, "that the severity of this satire left Cibber no longer any patience." The Doctor speaks, too, of the "incessant and unappeasable malignity" of Pope towards Cibber, and takes the part of that worthy in the quarrel. Colley was absolutely poet-laureate of England; and having no longer any patience in his pride, "gave the town" an abusive pamphlet, in which he swore that he would no longer tamely submit to such insults, but fight Pope with his own weapons. Dr Johnson says—"Pope had now been enough acquainted with human life to know, if his passion had not been too powerful for his understanding, that from a contention like his with Cibber, the world seeks nothing but diversion, which is given at the expense of the higher character." Pope had no contention with Cibber. Two or three times he had dropped him a blistering word of contempt—once a word of praise to the Careless Husband. But now Pope eyed the brazen bully, and saw in him the proper hero of the Dunciad. Theobald vacated the throne, and retired into private life. Cibber was made to reign in his stead—and in the lines written by Pope on the coronation, the monarch's character is drawn, if we mistake not, in a style that sufficiently vindicates the Poet from the Doctor's charge, "that his passion had been too powerful for his understanding." True, "the world seeks diversion," and she had it here to her heart's content; but not from any undignified "contention" with Cibber, which Pope disdained, but from matchless poetry that "damned to everlasting fame." "Cibber," says Johnson, "had nothing to lose. When Pope had exhausted all his malignity upon him, he would rise in the esteem both of his friends and his enemies." Cibber, then, in the Dunciad, had a triumph over Pope!! Good.

But how, you ask, did Pope contrive to place Cibber in Theobald's shoes, without injury to the rest of the poem? Why, he did not place Cibber in Theobald's shoes. Theobald walked off in his shoes into the shades. Samuel says, that by the substitution, Pope has "depraved his poem"—inasmuch as he has given to Cibber the "old books, the cold pedantry and sluggish pertinacity of Theobald." That is not true. Compare the places in the original Dunciad, in which Theobald figures at large, with that now filled by Cibber, and you will admire by what wizard power the transformation is effected. Many lines, far too good to be lost, are retained—and among them there may be a few more characteristic of the old Dunce than the new. But Cibber is Cibber all over—notwithstanding; nor needed Joseph Warton, who was as ready to indulge in a nap as any one we have known, to object that "to slumber in the goddess's lap was adapted to Theobald's stupidity, not to the vivacity of his successor." Pope knew better—

"Dulness with transport eyes the lively Dunce,Remember she herself was Pertness once."

Here he comes.

"In each she marks her image full exprest,But chief in Bayes's monster-breeding breast;Bayes, form'd by Nature's Stage and Town to bless,And act, and be, a coxcomb with success.Dulness with transport eyes the lively Dunce,Remembering she herself was Pertness once.Now (Shame to Fortune!) an ill run at playBlank'd his bold visage, and a thin third day;Swearing and supperless the hero sate,Blasphem'd his gods, the dice, and damn'd his fate;Then gnaw'd his pen, then dasht it on the ground,Sinking from thought to thought, a vast profound!Plung'd for his sense, but found no bottom there,Yet wrote and flounder'd on in mere despair.Round him much embryo, much abortion lay,Much future ode, and abdicated play;Nonsense precipitate, like running lead,That slipt through cracks and zigzags of the head;All that on Folly Frenzy could beget,Fruits of dull heat, and sooterkins of wit.Next, o'er his books his eyes began to roll,In pleasing memory of all he stole;How here he sip'd, how there he plunder'd snug,And suck'd all o'er like an industrious bug.Here lay poor Fletcher's half-eat scenes, and hereThe frippery of crucify'd Molière;There hapless Shakspeare, yet of Tibbald sore,Wish'd he had blotted for himself before.The rest on outside merit but presume,Or serve (like other fools) to fill a room;Such with their shelves as due proportion hold,Or their fond parents dress'd in red and gold;Or where the pictures for the page atone,And Quarles is saved by beauties not his own.Here swells the shelf with Ogilby the Great;There, stamp'd with arms, Newcastle shines complete;Here all his suff'ring brotherhood retire,And 'scape the martyrdom of jakes and fire:A Gothic library! of Greece and RomeWell purg'd, and worthy Settle, Banks, and Broome."But, high above, more solid learning shone,The Classics of an age that heard of none;There Caxton slept, with Wynkyn at his side,One clasp'd in wood, and one in strong cow-hide;There, sav'd by spice, like mummies, many a year,Dry bodies of divinity appear;De Lyra there a dreadful front extends,And here the groaning shelves Philemon bends."Of these twelve volumes, twelve of amplest size,Redeem'd from tapers and defrauded pies,Inspir'd he seizes: these an altar raise;An hecatomb of pure, unsully'd laysThat altar crowns; a folio common-placeFounds the whole pile, of all his works the base:Quartos, Octavos, shape the less'ning pyre,A twisted birth-day ode completes the spire."Then he, great tamer of all human art!First in my care, and ever at my heart;Dulness! whose good old cause I yet defend,With whom my Muse began, with whom shall end,Ere since Sir Fopling's periwig was praise,To the last honours of the Butt and Bays:O thou! of bus'ness the directing soul!To this our head like bias to the bowl,Which, as more pond'rous, made its aim more true,Obliquely waddling to the mark in view:O! ever gracious to perplex'd mankind,Still spread a healing mist before the mind;And, lest we err by Wit's wild dancing light,Secure us kindly in our native night.Or, if to wit a coxcomb make pretence,Guard the sure barrier between that and sense;Or quite unravel all the reas'ning thread,And hang some curious cobweb in its stead!As, forc'd from wind-guns, lead itself can fly,And pond'rous slugs cut swiftly through the sky;As clocks to weight their nimble motion owe,The wheels above urg'd by the load below;Me Emptiness and Dulness could inspire,And were my elasticity and fire.Some dæmon stole my pen (forgive th' offence)And once betray'd me into common sense:Else all my prose and verse were much the same;This prose on stilts, that, poetry fall'n lame.Did on the stage my fops appear confin'd?My life gave ampler lessons to mankind.Did the dead letter unsuccessful prove?The brisk example never fail'd to move.Yet sure, had Heav'n decreed to save the state,Heav'n had decreed these works a longer date.Could Troy be sav'd by any single hand,This gray goose weapon must have made her stand.What can I now? my Fletcher cast aside,Take up the Bible, once my better guide?Or tread the path by vent'rous heroes trod,This box my thunder, this right hand my God?Or chair'd at White's amidst the doctors sit,Teach oaths to gamesters, and to nobles wit?Or bidst thou rather party to embrace?(A friend to Party thou, and all her race;'Tis the same rope at diff'rent ends they twist;To Dulness Ridpath is as dear as Mist.)Shall I, like Curtius, desperate in my zeal,O'er head and ears plunge for the commonweal?Or rob Rome's ancient geese of all their glories,And cackling save the monarchy of Tories?Hold—to the minister I more incline;To serve his cause, O Queen! is serving thine.And see! the very Gazetteers give o'er,Ev'n Ralph repents, and Henley writes no more.What then remains? Ourself. Still, still remainCibberian forehead, and Cibberian brain.This brazen brightness, to the 'squire so dear;This polish'd hardness, that reflects the peer:This arch absurd, that wit and fool delights,This mess, toss'd up of Hockley-hole and White's;Where dukes and butchers join to wreathe my crown,At once the Bear and Fiddle of the Town."O born in sin, and forth in folly brought!Works damn'd, or to be damn'd; (your father's fault.)Go, purify'd by flames, ascend the sky,My better and more Christian progeny!Unstain'd, untouch'd, and yet in maiden sheets,While all your smutty sisters walk the streets.Ye shall not beg, like gratis-given Bland,Sent with a pass and vagrant through the land;Nor sail with Ward, to Ape-and-monkey climes,Where vile Mundungus trucks for viler rhymes.Not sulphur-tipt, emblaze an ale-house fire!Not wrap up oranges, to pelt your sire!O! pass more innocent, in infant state,To the mild limbo of our father Tate:Or peaceably forgot, at once be blestIn Shadwell's bosom with eternal rest!Soon to that mass of nonsense to return,Where things destroy'd are swept to things unborn."

The eyes of the goddess have been fixed, with sleepy fondness more than maternal, upon him, her chosen instrument, during all his address; and we can imagine the frowsy Frow weeping big fat tears with him as he weeps. Pope's "passion had not been too powerful for his understanding," nor for his imagination neither, when he was inditing the following pathetic and picturesque lines:—