On the 27th and 28th of October, just one year after Zumalacarregui had taken command of the Carlist army, occurred the two famous actions in the plains of Vittoria, when General O'Doyle and two thousand Christinos fell into the hands of the victors, and nearly as many more were left dead upon the field. O'Doyle and some of the officers taken were shot; but the lives of the men were spared, and soon afterwards, at their own request, their arms were restored to them, and they were incorporated in the Carlist battalions. This, and other disasters, which about this time befell Rodil's army, occasioned his recall by the Queen's government, and the celebrated Mina was appointed in his stead.

The increase of Zumalacarregui's forces, and the advantages he had gained, inspired him with the idea of capturing some of the Christino forts in Navarre and the Basque provinces; the said forts being exceedingly prejudicial to his operations. The great obstacle to his wishes was, the weakness of his artillery. This consisted only of three small field-pieces, such as are carried on the backs of mules, and could be of little service in attacking fortifications. Of shot and shell he had a large supply, which had been taken at the manufactory of Orbaiceta. For seven or eight months these stores had been lying there neglected, none of the Queen's generals having had the foresight to remove them to a place of safety. Zumalacarregui now caused them to be taken away, and concealed in the most intricate recesses of the mountains. But these projectiles were of little use without guns; and to procure the latter the ingenuity of the Carlists was taxed to the very utmost. Zumalacarregui remembered that, upon a sandy spot on the Biscayan coast, an old iron twelve-pounder was lying neglected and forgotten. This he ordered to be brought to Navarre. A rude carriage was constructed, on which it was mounted, and it was then dragged by six pair of oxen over mountains, and through ravines, to the Sierra of Urbasa, where it was buried. Soldiers are very ingenious in inventing appropriate names; and as soon as the Carlist volunteers saw this unwieldy old-fashioned piece of ordnance, full of moss and sand, and covered with rust, they christened it the Abuelo, or the Grandfather, by which appellation it was ever afterwards known. The only artillery officer at that time with Zumalacarregui was Don Tomas Reina, who now, in conjunction with one Balda, a professor of chemistry, began to devise means for founding some guns. In the villages and hamlets within a certain circumference, a requisition was made for all articles composed of copper and brass, such as brasiers, stew-pans, chocolate pots, warming-pans, &c.; but as it was found impossible to get sufficient of these, the three field-pieces were added, and the whole melted together. In the midst of a forest this strange foundery was established, and after numerous failures, occasioned by want of experience and of the proper tools, Reina succeeded in making a couple of howitzers, which, although of uncouth appearance, it was thought might answer the purpose for which they were intended.

Never were the Christinos more confident of a speedy termination to the war than when Mina took the command. The well-earned reputation of that chief, his peculiar aptitude for mountain warfare, and intimate acquaintance with the country of Navarre, which had been the scene of his triumphs during the war against Napoleon, certainly pointed him out as the most fitting man to oppose to Zumalacarregui. Forgetting that similar hopes had been founded on the skill of Quesada and Rodil, and on the imposing forces they commanded, hopes which had been so signally frustrated, the Queen's partizans now set up a premature song of triumph, soon to be turned into notes of lamentation. The Mina of 1834, old and bed-ridden, with his energies, mental perhaps as well as physical, impaired by long inaction, was a very different man from the Mina of 1810. When fighting against the French, the sympathies of the Navarrese were with him; now they were against him, and in a war of this description, that difference was of immense importance. In spite of the wintry season and of the badness of his health, one of the first things he did on assuming the command was to make an excursion to Puente la Reyna, Maneru, and other places, where, in days gone by, he had had his headquarters, and which he had then never entered without being greeted as a hero and patriot, and welcomed with enthusiastic vivas. He flattered himself that this enthusiasm would be again awakened by his appearance; and was so much the more shocked when he found himself received with the utmost coldness and indifference. His illness was aggravated by disappointment, and he returned angry and disgusted to Pampeluna. Thence, incapacitated by his infirmities from exerting himself in the field, he directed from his cabinet the operations of his lieutenants, and issued orders, the cruelty of some of which soon caused his name to be as much execrated in Navarre as it had there once been venerated. At no period of the war was less mercy shown to each other by the contending parties than during Mina's command. Besides shooting all prisoners taken with arms in their hands, he caused the wounded whom he found in the Carlist hospitals to be slain upon their beds, and garroted or strangled a gentleman of Pampeluna, for no reason that could be discovered except that he had two sons with the Carlists. Several forts having about this time being taken or battered by Zumalacarregui, Mina determined to get possession of the guns with which this had been done. He was aware of the difficulty the Carlists had in obtaining artillery; and knowing that it could not easily be transported from one place to another in that rugged and mountainous country, he conjectured that they were in the habit of burying it, which was actually the case. In order to obtain information as to the whereabout of the mortars with which the enemy had been shelling Elizondo, he decimated the male inhabitants of Lecaros, and then burnt the village itself to the ground. Such atrocities as these, far from advancing the cause of Queen Isabel, materially injured it, offering as they did a strong contrast with the conduct of Zumalacarregui, who, at the taking of Los Arcos, Echarri-Eranaz, and other places, had shown mercy, and even great kindness, to the wounded and prisoners he took. At last Mina having ventured out in person with a division of the troops, carried in a litter because he too ill to sit his horse, was signally beaten by Zumalacarregui at a place called Siete Fuentes, or the Seven Fountains, and himself narrowly escaped being taken prisoner. Soon after this disaster he was deprived of the command, having done nothing whilst he held it but lose men and forts, and exasperate the Navarrese peasantry to an unparalleled extent.

An attempt that was made about this time to assassinate Espartero, who then commanded a moveable column in Biscay, is thus narrated by General Zaratiegui:—

"The constant passage of Espartero between Bilboa and Orduna, inspired a peasant, who occupied a farmhouse near Luyando, with the idea of attempting that general's life. It was said that the man had been robbed or ill-treated by the soldiers of Espartero's division; but it is quite as probable that the peasant fancied in his simplicity, that if he could kill the Christino general, the war and the evils it inflicted on his country would be at an end. Taking a large tree trunk, he fashioned it into a sort of cannon, fixed it at a spot where it commanded the high-road, and loaded it to the very mouth. The next time Espartero passed that way, the peasant watched his moment, set fire to the fuse of this singular piece of artillery, and then ran away. The Christino soldiers hurried to the spot whence the explosion had proceeded, and found the wooden cannon burst into fifty pieces. It was evidently the act of an individual; but nevertheless the unlucky village of Luyando, being the nearest to the scene of the event, was immediately set on fire. Out of the sixty houses composing it, more than one half were consumed; and if the others escaped, it was merely because the Christinos happened to want them at the moment for their own occupation."

Valdes was the last Christino general opposed to Zumalacarregui. Being minister of war at the time of Mina's dismissal from the command, he ordered all the troops that could possibly be spared to march to Navarre, and himself followed to direct their operations. Upon his appearance the war assumed a more humane character; and soon afterwards the arrival of the British commissioner, and his successful intervention, put an end to the system of reprisals, although after Zumalacarregui's death it was again more than once resorted to by the most ferocious of the leaders on either side. In honour of Lord Eliot, Zumalacarregui set at liberty the prisoners he had made in the recent action of the Amezcoas, in which Valdes had been roughly handled. Lord Eliot having expressed a wish for an autograph of the Carlist leader, Zumalacarregui took a pen and wrote, in Spanish, as follows:—

"At Asarta, a village of the valley of Berrueza, celebrated for the various combats which have occurred there in the course of the present century, the honour of receiving his Excellency Lord Eliot was enjoyed, on the 25th April 1835, by Tomas Zumalacarregui."

Colonel Gurwood made the Carlist chief a present of an excellent field glass, which had been used by the Duke of Wellington on some occasion during the Peninsular war. "This telescope was so esteemed by Zumalacarregui," says his biographer, "that as long as he lived he always carried it with him; and at the present day, in spite of its trifling intrinsic value, it is treasured by his family as the most precious heir-loom they possess."

The non-success of Valdes's expedition to the valleys of the Amezcoas, and the fatigues and losses sustained there by his troops, had greatly discouraged the latter. On all sides the Carlists were obtaining advantages, and their adversaries began to entertain a panic terror of Zumalacarregui, who availed himself of this discouragement and temporary inaction of the foe to attack several fortified places. Amongst others, the town of Trevino, situated between Vittoria and the Ebro, and at only three or four hours' march from the cantonments of Valdes's army, fell into the hands of the Carlists. Assembling thirteen battalions at the Venta of Armentia, Zumalacarregui brought up his artillery, consisting of one cannon and one howitzer, with which in two days he forced the place to capitulate. Although Valdes, from where he was, could hear the sound of the guns, he did not venture to show himself till the Carlists had destroyed the fortifications, and effected their retreat with prisoners and artillery.

It was after this successful expedition, and at what may be considered the most fortunate period of Zumalacarregui's career, that Don Carlos conceived the idea of conferring a title on him. He caused this to be intimated to the general, and also that he was only waiting to know what title it would be the most agreeable to him to receive. "We will talk about it," replied Zumalacarregui, "after entering Cadiz. As yet we are not safe even in the Pyrenees, and a title of any kind would be but a step towards the ridiculous." It was not till eleven months after his death that Don Carlos issued a decree, making him grandee of Spain, by the titles of Duke of Victory and Count of Zumalacarregui.

The garrisons of Estella and of various other fortified towns in the interior of Navarre and the Basque provinces, were now withdrawn by order of Valdes; other strong places were taken or capitulated, the garrisons remaining for the most part prisoners of war. Within two months after the Eliot convention, the Carlists had got 300 Christino officers and 2000 rank and file, prisoners in their various depots, without reckoning those who, on being captured, took up arms for Don Carlos. To exchange against these, the Queen's generals had not a single prisoner. About this time Espartero was beaten at Descarga by Eraso; whilst Oraa met the same fate in the valley of the Baztan at the hands of Sagastibelza. Jauregui abandoned Tolosa, leaving behind him a quantity of ammunition and stores, and shut himself up in St Sebastian.

The intrigues and manoeuvres of certain individuals who surrounded Don Carlos, pandered to his weaknesses, and worked upon his superstitious bigotry, began to occasion Zumalacarregui serious annoyance, and to interfere in some instances with his plans. During a short visit to Segura, where the Carlist court then was, he experienced much disgust and vexation. His health, moreover, began to fail him; and a week later, from the town of Vergara, which he had just taken, with its garrison of 2000 men, he sent in his resignation. The following day Don Carlos himself came to Vergara, and had a short conference with Zumalacarregui, after which the latter marched upon Durango and Ochandiano, towns on the Bilboa road, and took the latter, whilst the former was abandoned by its garrison. It was now his wish to attack Vittoria, which was the nearest large town, and the easiest to take; but just at this time, Don Carlos, it appears, had been disappointed of a loan, and his flatterers and advisers had been consoling him for it, by holding out a prospect of taking Bilboa, which opulent commercial city contained, they said, enough riches to get him out of all his difficulties. Zumalacarregui opposed this plan, but his deference for Don Carlos finally caused him to yield; and with a heavy heart, and a train of artillery totally inadequate to the reduction of so strong a town, he sat down before Bilboa. Two twelve-pounders and one six-pounder, two brass fours, two howitzers and a mortar, were all that he had to oppose to the strong defences and forty or fifty guns with which the capital of Biscay was provided. There was also a great lack of certain descriptions of ammunition. For the mortar there were only six-and-thirty shells; and to add to the misfortunes of the attacking party, their two largest guns, the twelve-pounders, burst on the very first day of the siege. During the whole of that day and night, Zumalacarregui neither ate nor slept; and on the morrow, which was the 15th of June, he wrote a letter to the headquarters of Don Carlos, then at Durango, informing the ministers, that owing to the immense disproportion between his means of attack and the enemy's powers of defence, he expected it would be necessary to raise tire siege.

After sending off this despatch, a great weight seemed removed from the mind of Zumalacarregui, and he went down to the batteries. With the view of observing whether the Bilbainos had made any repairs or thrown up works in the course of the night, he ascended to the first floor of a house situated near the sanctuary of Our Lady of Begona, and from the balcony began to examine the enemy's line. Whilst standing there, a bullet struck him on the right leg, about two inches from the knee. Nine days afterwards he was dead—killed, there can be little doubt, less by the wound or its effects than by the gross ignorance of his medical attendants. Three Spanish doctors, a young English surgeon, and a curandero, or quack, named Petriquillo, whom Zumalacarregui had known from his youth, and in whose skill he had great confidence, were called in. The Englishman, however, returned after two days to the squadron to which he was attached, giving as his opinion, which agreed with that of Don Carlos's own surgeon, one Gelos, that in a fortnight Zumalacarregui would be on horseback again. Whilst Petriquillo was applying ointments and frictions, and a doctor of medicine cramming the patient with drugs, Gelos and another surgeon kept tormenting the wound with their probes. The wounded man's general health, already affected by the various annoyances he had recently experienced, began to give way; and at last, within three or four hours after the extraction of the ball, an operation that appears to have been performed in the most butcherlike manner, Zumalacarregui breathed his last. He was forty-six years of age, and left a wife and three daughters. All his worldly possessions consisted of three horses and a mule, some arms, the telescope given him by Colonel Gurwood, and fourteen ounces of gold.

If that weak and incapable prince, Don Carlos de Borbon, had allowed Zumalacarregui to follow up his own plans of campaign, instead of dictating to him unfeasible ones, there can be little doubt that in less than another year he would have entered Madrid. The immense importance of the prestige attached to a general is well known. That of Zumalacarregui was fully established, both with his own men and the Queen's troops. The latter trembled at his very name; the former, at his command, were ready to attack ten times their number.

"Are there only two battalions yonder?" enquired Captain Henningsen of a Carlist soldier, pointing to a position which was menaced by a large body of the enemy. "That is all, Senor," was the reply; "but the general is there." The man was as confident of the safety of the position as though there had been twenty battalions instead of two. And such was the feeling throughout the Carlist army.

The only one of the Carlist or Christino leaders who united all the qualities essential to success was Zumalacarregui. Some were honest, a few were perhaps good tacticians, others were not deficient in energy, but none were all three. The Christino generals were generally conspicuous for their indecision, and for their want of zeal for the cause they defended. Many of them would have been sorry to see an end put to a war which gave them occupation, rapid promotion, decorations, titles, and money. When Zumalacarregui began his campaign with a handful of men, no one could catch him; when he got stronger and showed fight, no one could stand against him. As soon as he died, his system of warfare was abandoned, and victory ceased to be faithful to the Carlist standard. The battle of Mendigorria, which occurred within a month after his death, and in which the Carlists were signally defeated by Cordova, taught the former that their previous successes had been owing at least as much to their general's skill as to their own invincibility.

The most salient points in Zumalacarregui's character were his generosity and energy. The former was carried almost to an excess. He could not see persons in want without relieving them; and as his sole income whilst commanding the Carlist army consisted of 2500 reals, or twenty-five pounds sterling, a-month, which he took for his pay, he frequently found himself without a maravedi in his pocket. It is related of him, amongst many other anecdotes of the same kind, that once in winter, the weather being very cold, he had ordered a coat, having only one, and that much worn. The tailor had just brought it home and been paid for it, when Zumalacarregui, happening to look out of the window, saw one of his officers passing in a very ragged condition. He called him up, made him try on his new coat, and finding that it fitted him, sent him away with it, himself remaining in the same state as before.

For the charges of cruelty of disposition which have been brought against Zumalacarregui, we are inclined to believe there was very insufficient ground. He was a severe disciplinarian, shot his own men when they deserved it, and his prisoners when the Christinos set him the example; but if he had not done so he had better have sheathed his sword at once, and left Don Carlos to fight his own battles, in which case they would very soon have been over. His present biographer, who writes coolly and dispassionately, and appears as sparing of indiscriminate praise of his friends as of exaggerated blame of his foes, gives numerous instances of Zumalacarregui's goodness of heart and humane feeling. Of a bilious habit and a hasty temper, he could ill bear contradiction, and at times would say or do things for which he was afterwards sorry. In such cases he was not ashamed to acknowledge, and if possible repair, his fault.

The death of Zumalacarregui was the subject of unbounded exultation to the Christinos; and for long afterwards there might be seen upon the walls of their towns and villages the remains of a proclamation announcing it, and predicting a speedy annihilation of the faction. Although this prophecy was not made good, and the war was protracted for upwards of four years longer, it soon became evident that the loss sustained was irreparable, and that the hopes of Carlism in the Peninsula lay buried in the grave of Tomas Zumalacarregui.

REFERENCE: Vida y Hechos de Don Tomas Zumalacarregui, Duque de la Victoria, Conde de Zumalacarregui, y Capitan-General del Ejercito de S.M. Don Carlos V., por el General del mismo Ejercito, DON J.A. ZARATIEGUI.



NORTH'S SPECIMENS OF THE BRITISH CRITICS.

No. VII.

MAC-FLECNOE AND THE DUNCIAD.

The field which we have invaded is one obviously of a vast comprehension. Taking it up, as we have rightly done, from Dryden, more than a century and a half of our literature lies immediately and necessarily within it. For the fountain of criticism once opened and flowing, the criticism of a country continually reflects its literature, as a river the banks which yield it a channel, and through which it winds.

But the image falls short of the thing signified; for criticism is retrospective without limit, as well as contemporaneous. Heaven only knows whether it may not be endowed with a gift of prophecy; and for its horizon—is this narrower than the world? We have undertaken a field which seems limited, only because it stretches beyond sight. Let us hope, however, that we shall find some art of striking our own road through it, without being obliged to study, both in the reflection and in the original, all the books of all nations and ages, criticising, as we go along, both originals and criticisms. Every subject, said Burke—we remember his remark, though not the very words—branches out into infinitude. The point of view draws a horizon—the goal determines a track. "The British Critics" themselves are a host,

"Innumerable as the stars of night, Or stars of morning; dewdrops which the sun Impearls on every leaf and every flower."

But discreet conscientious Oblivion has infolded under his loving pinions nine hundred and ninety-nine in every thousand; while we think of concerning ourselves with those only whose names occupy some notable niche, pedestal, or other position, in the august house of the great goddess, Fame. We desire to show the spirit and power of British criticism, to display the characteristic working of the British intellect in this department of intellectual activity. Therefore, among known names, we shall dwell the most upon those writers whose works the mind of the nation has the most frankly, cordially, and unreservedly taken to itself, recognising them, as it were, for its own productions—those writers whose reputation the country has the most distinctly identified with her own renown.

We have taken hold upon two such names, Dryden and Pope. And tens of thousands have experienced with us the pleasures that arise from a renewed or new intimacy with powerful spirits. The acquaintance is not speedily exhausted. It grows and unfolds itself. When you think to have done with them, and lift up your bonnet with a courteous gesture of leave-taking, your host draws your arm within his, and leads you out into his garden, and threading some labyrinthine involution of paths, conducts you to some hidden parterre of his choicest flowers, or to the aerial watch-tower of his most magnificent prospect.

The omnipotent setter of limits, Death, freezes the tuneful tongue, unnerves the critical hand, from which the terrible pen drops into dust. Shakspeare has written his last play—Dryden his last tale. You may dream—if you like—of what projected and unwritten—what unprojected but possible comedies, histories, tragedies, went into the tomb in the church of Stratford upon Avon! In the meanwhile, you will find that what is written is not so soon read. Read for the first time it soon is—not for the last. For what is "to read?" "Legere" is "to gather." Shakspeare is not soon gathered—nor is Dryden.

Walk through a splendid region. Do you think that you have seen it? You have begun seeing it. Live in it fifty years, and by degrees you may have come to know something worth telling of Windermere! Our vocation now, gentles all, is not simply the knowing—it is the showing too; and here, too, the same remark holds good. For we think ten times and more, that now surely we have shown poet or critic. But not so. Some other attitude, some other phasis presents itself; and all at once you feel that, without it, your exposition of the power, or your picture of the man, is incomplete.

You have seen how the critics lead us a dance. Dryden and Pope criticise Shakspeare. We have been obliged to criticise Shakspeare, and this criticism of him. Dryden measures himself with Juvenal, Lucretius, and Virgil. We, somewhat violently perhaps—with a gentle violence—construe a translation into a criticism, and prate too of those immortals. Glorious John modernizes Father Geoffrey; and to try what capacity of palate you have for the enjoyment of English poetry some four or five centuries old, we spread our board with a feast of veritable Chaucer. Yet not a word, all the while, of the Wife of Bath's Tale of Chivalry and Faery, which is given with fine spirit by Dryden—nor of the Cock and the Fox, told by the Nun's priest, which is renewed with infinite life and gaiety, and sometimes we are half-inclined to say, with fidelity in the departure, by the same matchless pen. Good old father Chaucer! Can it be true that century rolling after century thickens the dust upon Adam Scrivener's vellum! Can it be true that proceeding time widens the gulf yawning betwixt thee and ourselves, thy compatriots of another day, thy poetical posterity! The supposition is unnatural—un-English—un-Scottish. Thou hast been the one popular poet of England. Shakspeare alone has unseated thee. Thou hast been taken to the heart of Scottish poets, as though there were not even a dialectical shadow of difference distinguishing thine and their languages. A dim time, an eclipsing of light and warmth fell upon the island, and to read thee was a feat of strange scholarship, a study of the more learned. But happier years shall succeed. As Antaeus the giant acquired life and strength by dropping back upon the bosom of his mother earth—she, the universal parent, was, you know, in a more private and domestic meaning his mother—so, giants of our brood, dropping back upon they bosom, O Father Chaucer! shall from that infusive touch renew vitality and vigour, and go forth exultingly to scale, not Olympus, but Parnassus. And now, in illustration of the ruling spirit—known and felt in its full power only by ourselves—of this series—NORTH'S SPECIMENS OF THE BRITISH CRITICS—we invite unexpectedly—(for who can foresee the ensuing segment of our orbit?)—the people of these realms to admire with us the critical genius of Dryden and of Pope, displayed in their matchless satires—MAC-FLECNOE and the DUNCIAD.

In regard to these poems, shall we seek to conciliate our countrymen by admitting, at the outset, that there is something in both to be confessed and forgiven? That there is something about them that places them upon a peculiar footing—that is not quite right? They must be distinguished from the legitimate poems, in which the poet and the servant of the Muses merely exercises his ministry. He then furnishes to the needs of humanity, and is the acknowledged benefactor of his kind. But these are wilful productions. They are from the personal self of the poet. They are arbitrary acts of mighty despots. They kill, because they choose and can. And we, alas!—we are bribed by the idolatry of power to justify the excesses of power. Let not our maligners—our foes—hear of it, for it is one of our vulnerable points.

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 aequis. 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 renown Of 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 Psyche 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 reign To 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, advance Still in new impudence, new ignorance. Success let others teach; learn thou from me Pangs 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 made Of 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 Psyche's humble strain? Where sold he bargains, Whip-stitch, 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 pretence Of 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 fame In keen Iambics, but mild Anagram. Leave writing Plays, and chuse for thy command Some 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, Peri Bathous, 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—vae 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 tabulae, 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 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 play Blank'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 here The frippery of crucify'd Moliere; 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 Rome Well 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 lays That altar crowns; a folio common-place Founds 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 daemon 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 remain Cibberian 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 blest In 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:—

"With that a tear (portentous sign of grace!) Stole from the master of the seven-fold face, And thrice he lifted high the Birth-day brand, And thrice he dropt it from his quivering hand; Then lights the structure, with averted eyes; The rolling smoke involves the sacrifice. The opening clouds disclose each work by turns; Now flames the Cid, and now Perolla burns; Great Caesar roars, and hisses in the fires; King John in silence modestly expires; No merit now the dear Nonjuror claims; Moliere's old stubble in a moment flames. Tears gush'd again, as from pale Priam's eyes, When the last blaze sent Ilion to the skies. Roused by the light, old Dulness heav'd the head Then snatch'd a sheet of Thule from her bed; Sudden she flies, and whelms it o'er the pyre, Down sink the flames, and with a hiss expire."

What next? The compact Argument informs us she forthwith reveals herself to him, transports him to her Temple, unfolds her arts, and initiates him into her mysteries; then announcing the death of Eusden the poet-laureate, anoints him, carries him to court, and proclaims him successor. The close of the Book was as much improved as the opening by the changes consequent on the substitution of Cibber for Theobald. In 1727, when the poem was composed, Eusden, "a drunken parson," wore the laurel; but now Cibber had been for years one of the successors of Spenser, and of the predecessors of Wordsworth—though indeed that last fact could not be known to Pope—and well he deserved this still higher elevation. And here again we must dissent from Dr Johnson's judgment, "that by transferring the same ridicule (not the same) from one to another, he destroyed its efficacy; for, by showing that what he said of one he was ready to say of another, he reduced himself to the insignificance of his own magpye, who from his cage calls cuckold at a venture." We love and honour the sage, but here he is a Sumph.

Oh! do read the Second Book, for we can afford but a few extracts; and, to whet you up, shall prate to you a few minutes about it.

The two ancient kings of heroic song have left us exemplars of Games. The occasions are similar and mournful, although the contests are inspired by, and inspire a jocund mood. At the funeral of Patroclus, Achilles appoints eight games. He gives prizes for a chariot-race, a cestus-fight, a wrestling-match, a foot-race, a lance-fight, a disk-hurling, a strife of archery and of darters. AEneas, on the first anniversary of his father's funeral, proposes five trials of skill—for the chariot-race of Homer, suitably to the posture of the Trojan affairs, a sailing-match; then, the foot-race, the terrible cestus, archery, and lastly, the beautiful equestrian tournament of Young Troy. The English Homer of the Dunces treads in the footsteps of his august predecessors, and celebrates, with imitated solemnities, a joyous day—that which elevates the arch-Dunce to the throne. Here too we have games, but with a dissimilitude in similitude. He adopts an intermediate number, six. The first is exceedingly fanciful and whimsical. The goddess creates the phantom of a poet. It has the shape of a contemptible swindler in literature, a plagiarist without bounds, named More. He is pursued by two booksellers, and vanishes from the grasp of him who has first clutched the fluttering shade. "Gentle Dulness ever loves a joke;" and the aforesaid admirable jest having kindled inextinguishable laughter in heaven, Gentle Dulness repeats it (she loves to repeat herself,) and starts three phantoms in the likenesses respectively of Congreve, Addison, Prior. Three booksellers give chase, and catch Heaven knows what, three foolish forgotten names. For the second exertion of talent, confined to the booksellers Osborne and Curl, the prize is the fair Eliza, and Curl is Victor. Osborne, too, is suitably rewarded; but as this game borders on the indelicate, it shall be nameless. Hitherto, after the simplicity of ancient manners, there have been contentions of bodily powers. But the games of the Dunces belong to an advanced age of the world, and a part of them are accordingly spiritual. The third falls under this category. A patron is proposed as the prize. He who can best tickle shall carry him off. The dedicators fall to their task with great zeal and adroitness. Alas! there steps in a young thief of a competitor unknown to Phoebus, but deep in the counsels of Venus! He, aided by the goddess, and a votaress of her order whom the goddess deputes, avails himself of the noble prize's most susceptible side,

"And marches off, his Grace's secretary."

The fourth game sets up a desirable rivalry with monkeys and asses. Who shall chatter the fastest? Who the loudest shall bray?

——"Three cat-calls be the bribe Of him whose chatt'ring shames the monkey tribe: And his this drum, whose hoarse heroic base Drowns the loud clarion of the braying ass."

So numerous are the monkey-mimics that the claims of the chatterers cannot be adjusted—

"Hold (cried the Queen) a cat-call each shall win; Equal your merits! equal is your din! But that this well-disputed game may end, Sound forth, my Brayers, and the welkin rend."

Sir Richard Blackmore, with his six epics and sundry other poems, brays louder and longer than the most leathern or brazen of the other throats; Chancery Lane and Westminster Hall taking prominent part in the reverberating orchestra. The place is to be ranked amongst the famous echo-descriptions, and beats Drayton's and Wordsworth's hollow.

The fifth game is DIVING.

"This labor past, by Bridewell all descend, (As morning pray'r and flagellation end) To where Fleet-ditch, with disemboguing streams Rolls the large tribute of dead dogs to Thames, The king of dykes! than whom, no sluice of mud With deeper sable blots the silver flood. 'Here strip, my children! here at once leap in, Here prove who best can dash through thick and thin, And who the most in love of dirt excel, Or dark dexterity of groping well: Who flings most filth, and wide pollutes around The stream, be his the Weekly Journals bound; A pig of lead to him who dives the best; A peck of coals a-piece shall glad the rest.' "In naked majesty Oldmixon stands, And, Milo-like, surveys his arms and hands; Then sighing thus, 'And am I now threescore? Ah, why, ye Gods! should two and two make four?' He said, and climb'd a stranded lighter's height, Shot to the black abyss, and plung'd downright: The senior's judgment all the crowd admire, Who but to sink the deeper rose the higher. "Next Smedley div'd; slow circles dimpled o'er The quaking mud, that clos'd and op'd no more. All look, all sigh, and call on Smedley lost; Smedley in vain resounds through all the coast. "Then ** essay'd; scarce vanish'd out of sight, He buoys up instant, and returns to light; He bears no tokens of the sabler streams, And mounts far off among the swans of Thames. "True to the bottom, see Concanen creep, A cold, long-winded, native of the deep; If perseverance gain the diver's prize, Not everlasting Blackmore this denies: No noise, no stir, no motion canst thou make, Th' unconscious stream sleeps o'er thee like a lake. "Next plung'd a feeble, but a desperate pack, With each a sickly brother at his back: Sons of a day! just buoyant on the flood, Then number'd with the puppies in the mud. Ask ye their names? I could as soon disclose The names of these blind puppies as of those. Fast by, like Niobe, (her children gone,) Sits Mother Osborne, stupify'd to stone! And monumental brass this record bears, 'These are, ah no! these were the Gazetteers!' "Not so bold Arnall; with a weight of scull Furious he drives, precipitately dull. Whirlpools and storms in circling arm invest, With all the might of gravitation blest. No crab more active in the dirty dance, Downward to climb, and backward to advance, He brings up half the bottom on his head, And loudly claims the Journal and the Lead. "The plunging Prelate, and his pond'rous Grace, With holy envy gave one layman place. When lo! a burst of thunder shook the flood, Slow rose a form in majesty of Mud; Shaking the horrors of his sable brows, And each ferocious feature grim with ooze. Greater he looks, and more than mortal stares; Then thus the wonders of the deep declares. "First he relates how, sinking to the chin, Smit with his mien, the mud-nymphs suck'd him in; How young Lutetia, softer than the down, Nigrina black, and Merdamente brown, Vy'd for his love in jetty bow'rs below, As Hylas fair was ravish'd long ago. Then sung, how shown him by the Nut-brown maids A branch of Styx here rises from the shades, That tinctured as it runs with Lethe's streams, And wafting vapors from the land of dreams, (As under seas Alpheus' secret sluice Bears Pisa's offering to his Arethuse) Pours into Thames; and hence the mingled wave Intoxicates the pert, and lulls the grave: Here brisker vapours o'er the Temple creep; There, all from Paul's to Aldgate drink and sleep. "Thence to the banks where rev'rend bards repose, They led him soft; each rev'rend bard arose; And Milbourn chief, deputed by the rest, Gave him the cassock, surcingle, and vest. 'Receive (he said) these robes, which once were mine, Dulness is sacred in a sound divine.' He ceas'd, and spread the robe; the crowd confess The rev'rend flamen in his lengthen'd dress. Around him wide a sable army stand, A low-born, cell-bred, selfish, servile band, Prompt or to guard or stab, to saint or damn, Heav'n's Swiss, who fight for any god, or man. "Through Lud's fam'd gates, along the well-known Fleet, Rolls the black troop, and overshades the street, Till show'rs of sermons, characters, essays, In circling fleeces whiten all the ways: So clouds replenish'd from some bog below, Mount in dark volumes, and descend in snow."

The last of the contests offers one or two difficulties. The goddess will appoint her Supreme Judge in the Court of Criticism, and she ordains a trial of qualifications. This is the manner of ordeal. A dull piece in prose, and a dull piece in verse, is to be read aloud. The auditor who remains the longest awake carries the election. The two preparations of Morphine exhibited, are a sermon of H—ley's (Henley or Hoadley?) and Blackmore's Prince Arthur. Six candidate heroes present themselves, three from the University, and three from the Inns of Court. Some explanation seems to be required of an arrangement which allots extraordinarily high promotion in the State of Dulness to a real and prodigious effort of mental energy. What explanation can be given? Are the affairs of Dulness conducted, in some respects, by the same rules which obtain in the Commonwealth of Wit? Is it held there, as here, that the first step to be taken, in order to forming a judgment of any book, is to read it? Was it prudently considered that the dullest of critics can read only as long as his eyes are open? and that the function of judge must incessantly bring under his cognisance papaverous volumes, with which only a super-human endowment of vigilance could hope successfully to contend? so that the goddess is driven, by the necessity of the game, to admit within the circuit of her somnolent sway, a virtue to which she is naturally and peculiarly hostile? Or are we mistaken in supposing that vigour of mind really qualifies for hearing a dull book through? Is it dulness itself that the most ably listens to dulness? We are out of our element, we presume, for we arrive at no satisfactory solution.

Be all this as it may, the method of competition fails of accomplishing its end; and the chair, after all, is left vacant. Not that the divinity has in the least misjudged the way of operation proper to her beloved tomes; but she has miscalculated the strength of her sons. Every dull head of the congregated multitude—of the illustrious competitors—and of the two officiating readers, bows overcome. There is, perforce, an end; and the chair is yet open to the whole kingdom.

The trial involves another matter of some doubt. Do the two clerks read aloud at one and the same time? and to the same audience? The description conveys the impression that they do. If so, one might have been tempted to fear that the sermon and the poem might have neutralized each other; but, on the contrary, the mixture worked like a patent.

Where has Cibber been all the while, and what has he been doing? "What su'd he hae been doin'? Sittin' on his nain lowpin'-on-stane—lukin' frae him." Joe Warton complains that he is too much of a passive hero. Why, he is not so active as Achilles, or even Diomed; yet in Book Second he is equal to AEneas. He is almost as long-winded, and excels the Pious in this, that he braves a fire of his own raising, whereas the other flies from one kindled much against his will—

"High on a gorgeous seat, that far outshone Henley's gilt tub, or Flecknoe's Irish throne, Or that where on her Curls the public pours All-bounteous, fragrant grains and golden showers, GREAT CIBBER SATE! ——All eyes direct their rays On him, and crowds turn coxcombs as they gaze!"

Is that being passive? The crowds are passive—not he surely, who, in the potent prime of coxcombhood, without shifting his seat of honour, breathes over all his subjects such family resemblance that they seem one brotherhood, sprung from his own royal loins. Besides, who ever heard, in an Epic poem, of a hero contending in games instituted in his own honour? Yet we do not fear to say, that had he, inspired by the spectacle of Curl and Osborne displaying their prowess for the fair Eliza, leapt from his gorgeous "seat," and amid the shouts of the lieges, in rainbow glory jointed the contest, that infallibly he had won the day. We have the authority of Aristotle on our side.

You cry aloud for an extract. Here is a superb one:—

"'Ye Critics! in whose heads, as equal scales, I weigh what author's heaviness prevails; Which most conduce to sooth the soul in slumbers, My H—ley's periods, or my Blackmore's numbers; Attend the trial we propose to make: If there be man who o'er such works can wake, Sleep's all-subduing charms who dares defy, And boasts Ulysses' ear with Argus' eye; To him we grant our amplest pow'rs to sit Judge of all present, past, and future wit; To cavil, censure, dictate, right or wrong, Full and eternal privilege of tongue.' "Three college sophs, and three pert Templars came, The same their talents, and their tastes the same; Each prompt to query, answer, and debate, And smit with love of poesy and prate. The pond'rous books two gentle readers bring; The heroes sit, the vulgar form a ring. The clam'rous crowd is hush'd with mugs of mum, Till all, tun'd equal, send a gen'ral hum. Then mount the clerks, and in one lazy tone Through the long, heavy, painful page drawl on; Soft creeping, words on words, the sense compose, At ev'ry line they stretch, they yawn, they doze. As to soft gales top-heavy pines bow low Their heads, and lift them as they cease to blow; Thus oft they rear, and oft the head decline, As breathe, or pause, by fits, the airs divine. And now to this side, now to that they nod, As verse, or prose, infuse the drowsy god. Thrice Budgel aim'd to speak, but thrice supprest By potent Arthur, knock'd his chin and breast. Toland and Tindal, prompt at priests to jeer, Yet silent bow'd to Christ's no kingdom here. Who sat the nearest, by the words o'ercome, Slept first; the distant nodded to the hum; Then down are roll'd the books, stretch'd o'er 'em lies Each gentle clerk, and mutt'ring seals his eyes. As what a Dutchman plumps into the lakes, One circle first, and then a second makes; What dulness dropt among her sons imprest, Like motion from one circle to the rest: So from the midmost the nutation spreads, Round and more round, o'er all the sea of heads. At last Centlivre felt her voice to fail, Motteux himself unfinish'd left his tale. Boyer the state, and Law the stage gave o'er, Morgan and Mandeville could prate no more; Norton from Daniel and Ostroea sprung, Bless'd with his father's front and mother's tongue, Hung silent down his never-blushing head, And all was hush'd, as Folly's self lay dead. "Thus the soft gifts of Sleep conclude the day, And stretch'd on bulks, as usual, poets lay. Why should I sing what bards the nightly Muse Did slumb'ring visit, and convey to stews; Who prouder march'd, with magistrates in state, To some fam'd round-house, ever-open gate! How Henley lay inspir'd beside a sink, And to mere mortals seem'd a priest in drink: While others, timely, to the neighb'ring Fleet (Haunt of the Muses) made their safe retreat."

Ulysses and AEneas presented themselves alive and in the body, as visitors in the land of departed souls. A descent to the shades is not wanting in our Epos. It fills the whole Third Book. But our poet again manages a discreet difference in his imitation. Our Dunce hero visits Elysium in a dream; whilst he sleeps, his head recumbent on the lap of the goddess, in the innermost recess of her sanctuary. His vision resembles the Trojan's rather than the Greek's adventure. "A slipshod sibyl,"

"In lofty madness meditating song,

leads him. She seems to be typical of the half-crazed human poetess, in usual sublime dishabille. Venerable shades of the Dull greet him. As in Virgil's Elysian fields a glimpse is afforded into the dark philosophy of human existence, and we see the Lethean bank crowded with spirits, who taste and become prepared to live again—so here. And as AEneas finds Anchises engaged in taking cognizance of the ghosts that are to animate Roman bodies, so here Cibber sees a great Patriarch of Dulness, Bavius, (him of old classical renown,) dipping in Lethe the souls that are to be born dull upon the earth. The poet cannot resist a slight deviation from the doctrine of his original. By the ancient theory the Lethean dip extinguishes the memory of a past life, of its faults, and of their punishment; and thence the willingness to inhabit the gross, earthy frame, as generated anew. But the dip of Bavius is more powerful; it quenches the faculties that are innate in a spirit, fitting it

"for a skull Of solid proof, impenetrably dull."

The subterranean traveller then falls in with the ghost of Elkanah Settle, who properly represents Anchises, and expounds the glories of the Kingdom of Dulness. Something is borrowed also from the vision of Adam, in the Eleventh Book of Paradise Lost. And something is original; for that which has been is declared as well as that which shall be; and the kingdom of intellectual darkness to the earth's verge displayed in visible presentment, which the speaker interprets. The Emperor Chi Ho-am-ti, who ordered a universal conflagration of books throughout his celestial dominions—the multitude of barbarous sons which the populous North poured from her frozen loins to sweep in deluge away the civilization of the South—figure here. Here is Attila with his Huns. Here is the Mussulman. Here is Rome of the dark ages. Great Britain appears last—the dulness which has blessed, which blesses, and which shall bless her. We extract the prophetical part. The visioned progress of Dulness has reached the theatres; and some sixteen verses which contain—says Warton, well and truly—"some of the most lively and forcible descriptions any where to be found, and are perfect pattern of a clear picturesque style," call up into brilliant and startling apparition the ineffable monstrosities and impossibilities which constituted the theatrical spectacles of the day. The sight extorts the opening exclamation—

"What pow'r, he cries, what pow'r these wonders wrought? Son, what thou seek'st is in thee! look and find Each monster meets his likeness in thy mind. Yet would'st thou more? in yonder cloud behold, Whose sarsenet skirts are edg'd with flamy gold, A matchless youth! his nod these worlds controls, Wings the red lightning, and the thunder rolls. Angel of Dulness, sent to scatter round Her magic harms o'er all unclassic ground: Yon' stars, yon' suns, he rears at pleasure higher, Illumes their light, and sets their flames on fire. Immortal Rich! how calm he sits at ease, Midst snows of paper, and fierce hail of pease! And proud his mistress' orders to perform, Rides in the whirlwind, and directs the storm. "But lo! to dark encounter in mid air New wizards rise; I see my Cibber there! Booth in his cloudy tabernacle shrin'd, On grinning dragons thou shalt mount the wind. Dire is the conflict, dismal is the din, Here shouts all Drury, there all Lincoln's Inn; Contending theatres our empire raise, Alike their labours, and alike their praise. "And are these wonders, Son, to thee unknown? Unknown to thee! these wonders are thy own. These Fate reserv'd to grace thy reign divine, Foreseen by me, but, ah! withheld from mine. In Lud's old walls, though long I rul'd, renown'd Far as loud Bow's stupendous bells resound; Though my own aldermen conferr'd the bays, To me committing their eternal praise, Their full-fed heroes, their pacific may'rs, Their annual trophies, and their monthly wars: Though long my party built on me their hopes, For writing pamphlets, and for roasting Popes; Yet lo! in me what authors have to brag on! Reduc'd at last to hiss in my own dragon. Avert in Heav'n! that thou, my Cibber, e'er Shouldst wag a serpent-tail in Smithfield fair! Like the vile straw that's blown about the streets, The needy poet sticks to all he meets; Coach'd, carted, trod upon, now loose, now fast, And carry'd off in some dog's tail at last. Happier thy fortunes! like a rolling stone, Thy giddy dulness still shall lumber on, Safe in its heaviness, shall never stray, But lick up ev'ry blockhead in the way. Thee shall the Patriot, thee the Courtier taste, And ev'ry year be duller than the last; Till rais'd from booths, to theatre, to court, Her seat imperial Dulness shall transport. Already Opera prepares the way, The sure forerunner of her gentle sway: Let her thy heart, next drabs and dice, engage, The third mad passion of thy doting age. Teach thou the warring Polypheme to roar, And scream thyself as none e'er scream'd before! To aid our cause, if Heav'n thou canst not bend, Hell thou shalt move; for Faustus is our friend; Pluto with Cato, thou for this shalt join, And link the Mourning Bride to Proserpine. Grub Street! thy fall should men and gods conspire, Thy stage shall stand, insure it but from fire. Another AEschylus appears! prepare For new abortions, all ye pregnant fair! In flames like Semele's, be brought to bed, While op'ning hell spouts wildfire at your head. "Now, Bavius, take the poppy from thy brow, And place it here! here, all ye heroes, bow! "This, this is he, foretold by ancient rhymes: Th' Augustus born to bring Saturnian times. Signs following signs lead on the mighty year! See! the dull stars roll round, and reappear. See, see, our own true Phoebus wears the bays! Our Midas sit Lord Chancellor of plays! On poets' tombs see Benson's titles writ! Lo! Ambrose Philips is preferr'd for wit! See under Ripley rise a new Whitehall, While Jones' and Boyle's united labours fall: While Wren with sorrow to the grave descends, Gay dies unpension'd, with a hundred friends; Hibernian politics, O Swift! thy fate; And Pope's, ten years to comment and translate. "Proceed, great days! 'till Learning fly the shore, Till Birch shall blush with noble blood no more; Till Thames see Eton's sons for ever play, Till Westminster's whole year be holiday; Till Isis' elders reel, their pupils' sport, And Alma Mater lie dissolv'd in Port! "Enough! enough! the raptur'd Monarch cries! And through the iv'ry gate the vision flies."

In Book Fourth the goddess occupies her throne. All the rebellious and hostile powers—wit, logic, rhetoric, morality, the muses—lie bound; and diverse votaries of Dulness successively move into presence. The first is OPERA, who puts Handel to flight. Then flow in a crowd of all sorts. A part have been described:—

"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. Patrons, who sneak from living worth to dead, Withhold the pension, and set up the head; Or vest dull Flattery 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. "There march'd the bard and blockhead side by side, Who rhym'd for hire, and patroniz'd for pride. Narcissus, prais'd with all a parson's power, Look'd a white lily sunk beneath a shower. There mov'd Montalto with superior air: His stretch'd out arm displayed a volume fair; Courtiers and patriots in two ranks divide, Through both he pass'd, and bow'd from side to side; But as in graceful act, with awful eye, Conpos'd he stood, bold Benson thrust him by: On two unequal crutches props he came, Milton's on this, on that one Jonson's name. The decent Knight retir'd with sober rage, Withdrew his hand, and clos'd the pompous page: But (happy for him as the times went then) Appear'd Apollo's may'r and aldermen, On whom three hundred gold-capt 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 AEson gave; Let standard authors thus, like trophies borne, Appear more glorious as more hack'd and torn. And you my Critics! in the chequer'd shade, Admire new light through holes yourselves 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 pinion'd to their side.'"

A dreadful figure appears—THE SCHOOLMASTER. He eulogizes the system of education, which teaches nothing but words and verse-making.

"A hundred head of Aristotle's friends"

pour in from the colleges—Aristarchus (Richard Bentley) at their head. He displays his own merits as a critic, and extols the system of teaching in the universities; but strides away disgusted on seeing approach a band of young gentlemen returned from their travels on the Continent, and accompanied by their travelling tutors and their mistresses. One of the tutors reports at large to the goddess on the style and advantages of their travels, and presents his own pupil. Where is such another passage to be found in English poetry? It surpasses Cowper's celebrated strain on the same subject.

"In flow'd at once a gay embroider'd race, And titt'ring push'd the pedants off the place: Some would have spoken, but the voice was drown'd By the French horn, or by the op'ning hound. The first came forwards with as easy mien, As if he saw St James's and the Queen. When thus the attendant Orator begun; Receive, great Empress! thy accomplish'd son: Thine from the birth, and sacred from the rod, A dauntless infant! never scar'd with God. The sire saw, one by one, his virtues wake; The mother begg'd the blessing of a rake. Thou gav'st that ripeness which so soon began, And ceas'd so soon, he ne'er was boy nor man; Through school and college, thy kind cloud o'ercast, Safe and unseen the young AEneas past; Thence bursting glorious, all at once let down, Stunn'd with his giddy larum half the town. Intrepid then, o'er seas and lands he flew; Europe he saw, and Europe saw him too. There all thy gifts and graces we display, Thou, only thou, directing all our way! To where the Seine, obsequious as she runs, Pours at great Bourbon's feet her silken sons; Or Tiber, now no longer Roman, rolls, Vain of Italian arts, Italian souls: To happy convents, bosom'd deep in vines, Where slumber abbots, purple as their wines; To isles of fragrance, lily silver'd vales, Diffusing languor in the panting gales: To lands of singing, or of dancing slaves, Love-whisp'ring woods, and lute-resounding waves. But chief her shrine where naked Venus keeps, And Cupids ride the Lion of the deeps; Where, eas'd of fleets, the Adriatic main Wafts the smooth eunuch and enamour'd swain. Led by my hand, he saunter'd Europe round, And gather'd ev'ry vice on Christian ground; Saw ev'ry court, heard ev'ry king declare His royal sense, of op'ras or the fair; The stews and palace equally explor'd, Intrigu'd with glory, and with spirit whor'd; Tried all hors d'oeuvres, all liqueurs defin'd, Judicious drank, and greatly-daring din'd; Dropt the dull lumber of the Latin store, Spoil'd his own language, and acquir'd no more; All classic learning lost on classic ground; And last turn'd Air, the echo of a sound! See now, half-cur'd, and perfectly well-bred, With nothing but a solo in his head; As much estate, and principle, and wit, As Jansen, Fleetwood, Cibber shall think fit; Stol'n from a duel, follow'd by a nun, And, if a borough choose him, not undone; See, to my country happy I restore This glorious youth, and add one Venus more. Her too receive, (for her my soul adores,) So may the sons of sons of sons of whores, Prop thine, O Empress! like each neighbour throne, And make a long posterity thy own. Pleas'd she accepts the hero, and the dame Wraps in her veil, and frees from sense of shame."

A set of pure idlers appear loitering about. Annius, an antiquary, begs to have them made over to him, to turn into virtuosos. Mummius, another antiquary, quarrels with him, and the goddess reconciles them. The minute naturalists follow "thick as locusts."

"Each with some wondrous gift approach'd the Power, A nest, a toad, a fungus, or a flower."

A florist lodges a heavy complaint against an entomologist. The singular beauty of the pleading on both sides has often been noticed, and by the best critics, from Thomas Gray to Thomas De Quincey.

"The first thus open'd: Hear thy suppliant's call, Great Queen, and common mother of us all! Fair from its humble bed I rear'd this flow'r, Suckl'd, and cheer'd with air, and sun, and show'r, Soft on the paper ruff its leaves I spread, Bright with the gilded button tipt its head. Then thron'd in glass, and nam'd it Caroline: Each maid cry'd, Charming; and each youth, Divine! Did Nature's pencil ever blend such rays, Such vary'd light in one promiscuous blaze? Now prostrate! dead! behold that Caroline: No maid cries charming! and no youth divine! And lo the wretch! whose vile, whose insect lust Laid this gay daughter of the Spring in dust, Oh punish him, or to th' Elysian shades Dismiss my soul, where no carnation fades. He ceas'd, and wept. With innocence of mien The accus'd stood forth, and thus address'd the Queen: "Of all th' enamel'd race, whose silv'ry wing Waves to the tepid zephyrs of the spring, Or swims along the fluid atmosphere, Once brightest shin'd this child of heat and air. I saw, and started from its vernal bow'r The rising game, and chas'd from flow'r to flow'r. It fled, I follow'd, now in hope, now pain; It stopt, I stopt; it mov'd, I mov'd again. At last it fixed, 'twas on what plant it pleas'd, And where it fixed, the beauteous bird I seiz'd: Rose, or carnation, was below my care; I meddle, Goddess! only in my sphere. I tell the naked feet without disguise, And, to excuse it, need but show the prize; Whose spoils this paper offers to our eye, Fair ev'n death! this peerless butterfly."

The mighty mother cannot find it in her heart to pronounce a decision which must aggrieve one of such a devoted pair. She extols them both, and makes over to their joint care and tuition the faineants aforesaid. The subject leads her into a more serious strain of thinking. There is an evident danger; for the studies which she recommends are studies of nature, and the study of nature tends to rise out of nature. The goddess, accordingly, is strenuous in cautioning her followers to keep within the pale of trifles, and of the sensible. The suggestion of the hazard fires a clerk, a metaphysician, who, on the behalf of the metaphysicians, undertakes for a theology that shall effectually shut out and keep down religion. Gordon, the translator of Tacitus, and publisher of the irreligious "Independent Whig," being mentioned by the orator of the metaphysicians with praise, under the name of Silenus, rises and advances, leading up, apparently, the Young England of the day. He presents them as liberated from priest-craft, and ready for drinking the cup of a "Wizard old," attached to the suite of the goddess. This "Magus" extends to them the cup of self-love.

"Which whoso tastes, forgets his former friends, Sire, ancestors, HIMSELF."

There is philosophy enough in the last piece of oblivion.

Impudence, pure mild Stupidity, Self-conceit, Interest, the Accomplishment of Singing, under the auspicious smile of the goddess, take possession, sundrily, of her children; and the two great arts of Gastronomia, scientific Eating and Drinking.

The Queen confers her titles and degrees, assisted by the two universities. She then dismisses the assembly with a solemn charge:—

"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. Guard my prerogative, assert my throne: This nod confirms each privilege your own. The cap and switch be sacred to his Grace; With staff and pumps the Marquis leads the race; From stage to stage the licens'd Earl may run, Pair'd with his fellow-charioteer, the Sun; The learned Baron butterflies design, Or draw to silk Arachne's subtle line; The Judge to dance his brother sergeant call! The Senator at cricket urge the ball; The Bishop stow (pontific luxury!) An hundred souls of turkeys in a pie; The sturdy Squire to Gallic masters stoop, And drown his lands and manors in a soup. Others import yet nobler arts from France, Teach kings to fiddle, and make senates dance. Perhaps more high some daring son may soar, Proud to my list to add one monarch more; And, nobly conscious, princes are but things Born for first ministers, as slaves for kings, Tyrant supreme! shall three estates command, And make one mighty Dunciad of the land! "More she had spoke, but yawn'd—All Nature nods: What mortal can resist the yawn of gods? Churches and Chapels instantly it reach'd; (St James's first, for leaden G—— preach'd;) Then catch'd the Schools; the Hall scarce kept awake; The Convocation gap'd, but could not speak: Lost was the Nation's sense, nor could be found, While the long solemn unison went round: Wide, and more wide, it spread o'er all the realm; Ev'n Palinurus nodded at the helm; The vapour mild o'er each Committee crept; Unfinish'd treaties in each office slept; And chiefless Armies doz'd out the campaign; And Navies yawn'd for orders on the main. "O Muse! relate, (for you can tell alone, Wits have short memories, and dunces none,) Relate who first, who last, resign'd to rest; Whose heads she partly, whose completely blest, What charms could faction, what ambition lull, The venal quiet, and intrance the dull; Till drown'd was Sense and Shame, and Right and Wrong— O sing, and hush the nations with thy song!