English Satires Part 18

There's Meroweis--mark! strange work!

And there's the Czar, and there's the Turk-- The Pope--An India-merchant by Cut short the speech with this reply: All at a stand? you see great changes?

Ah, sir! you never saw the Ganges: There dwells the nation of Quidnunckis (So Monomotapa calls monkeys:) On either bank from bough to bough, They meet and chat (as we may now): Whispers go round, they grin, they shrug, They bow, they snarl, they scratch, they hug; And, just as chance or whim provoke them, They either bite their friends, or stroke them.

There have I seen some active prig, To show his parts, bestride a twig: Lord! how the chatt'ring tribe admire!

Not that he's wiser, but he's higher: All long to try the vent'rous thing, (For power is but to have one's swing).

From side to side he springs, he spurns, And bangs his foes and friends by turns.

Thus as in giddy freaks he bounces, Crack goes the twig, and in he flounces!

Down the swift stream the wretch is borne; Never, ah never, to return!

Zounds! what a fall had our dear brother!

Morbleu! cries one; and damme, t'other.

The nation gives a general screech; None c.o.c.ks his tail, none claws his breech; Each trembles for the public weal, And for a while forgets to steal.

Awhile all eyes intent and steady Pursue him whirling down the eddy: But, out of mind when out of view, Some other mounts the twig anew; And business on each monkey sh.o.r.e Runs the same track it ran before.

[Footnote 182: Coffee-house near St. James's.]

ALEXANDER POPE.

(1688-1744.)

x.x.xV. THE DUNCIAD--THE DESCRIPTION OF DULNESS.

One of the most scathing satires in the history of literature. Pope in the latest editions of it rather spoilt its point by subst.i.tuting Colley Gibber for Theobald as the "hero" of it. Our text is from the edition of 1743. The satire first appeared in 1728, and other editions, greatly altered, were issued in 1729, 1742, 1743.

The mighty mother, and her son, who brings The Smithfield muses[183] to the ear of kings, I sing. Say you, her instruments the great!

Called to this work by Dulness, Jove, and fate: You by whose care, in vain decried and curst, Still Dunce the second reigns like Dunce the first; Say, how the G.o.ddess bade Britannia sleep, And poured her spirit o'er the land and deep.

In eldest time, ere mortals writ or read, Ere Pallas issued from the Thunderer's head, Dulness o'er all possessed her ancient right, Daughter of chaos and eternal night: Fate in their dotage this fair idiot gave, Gross as her sire, and as her mother grave Laborious, heavy, busy, bold, and blind, She ruled, in native anarchy, the mind.

Still her old empire to restore she tries, For, born a G.o.ddess, Dulness never dies.

O thou! whatever t.i.tle please thine ear, Dean, Drapier, Bickerstaff, or Gulliver!

Whether thou choose Cervantes' serious air, Or laugh and shake in Rabelais' easy chair, Or praise the court, or magnify mankind,[184]

Or thy grieved country's copper chains unbind; From thy Boeotia though her power retires, Mourn not, my Swift, at aught our realm acquires, Here pleased behold her mighty wings outspread To hatch a new Saturnian age of lead.

Close to those walls where folly holds her throne, And laughs to think Monroe would take her down, Where o'er the gates, by his famed father's hand,[185]

Great Cibber's brazen, brainless brothers stand; One cell there is, concealed from vulgar eye, The cave of poverty and poetry, Keen, hollow winds howl through the bleak recess, Emblem of music caused by emptiness.

Hence bards, like Proteus long in vain tied down, Escape in monsters, and amaze the town.

Hence miscellanies spring, the weekly boast Of Curll's chaste press, and Lintot's rubric post:[186]

Hence hymning Tyburn's elegiac lines,[187]

Hence journals, medleys, mercuries, magazines; Sepulchral lies, our holy walls to grace, And new-year odes,[188] and all the Grub Street race.

In clouded majesty here Dulness shone; Four guardian virtues, round, support her throne: Fierce champion fort.i.tude, that knows no fears Of hisses, blows, or want, or loss of ears: Calm temperance, whose blessings those partake Who hunger, and who thirst for scribbling sake: Prudence, whose gla.s.s presents the approaching jail: Poetic justice, with her lifted scale, Where, in nice balance, truth with gold she weighs, And solid pudding against empty praise.

Here she beholds the chaos dark and deep, Where nameless somethings in their causes sleep, Till genial Jacob,[189] or a warm third day, Call forth each ma.s.s, a poem, or a play: How hints, like sp.a.w.n, scarce quick in embryo lie, How new-born nonsense first is taught to cry, Maggots half-formed in rhyme exactly meet, And learn to crawl upon poetic feet.

Here one poor word an hundred clenches makes, And ductile dulness new meanders takes There motley images her fancy strike, Figures ill paired, and similes unlike.

She sees a mob of metaphors advance, Pleased with the madness of the mazy dance; How tragedy and comedy embrace; How farce and epic get a jumbled race; How Time himself[190] stands still at her command, Realms shift their place, and ocean turns to land.

Here gay description Egypt glads with showers, Or gives to Zembla fruits, to Barca flowers; Glittering with ice here h.o.a.ry hills are seen, There painted valleys of eternal green; In cold December fragrant chaplets blow, And heavy harvests nod beneath the snow.

All these and more the cloud-compelling queen Beholds through fogs, that magnify the scene.

She, tinselled o'er in robes of varying hues, With self-applause her wild creation views; Sees momentary monsters rise and fall, And with her own fools-colours gilds them all.

'Twas on the day when Thorold rich and grave,[191]

Like Cimon, triumphed both on land and wave: (Pomps without guilt, of bloodless swords and maces, Glad chains, warm furs, broad banners, and broad faces) Now night descending, the proud scene was o'er, But lived in Settle's numbers one day more.[192]

Now mayors and shrieves all hushed and satiate lay, Yet ate, in dreams, the custard of the day; While pensive poets painful vigils keep, Sleepless themselves, to give their readers sleep.

Much to the mindful queen the feast recalls What city swans once sung within the walls; Much she revolves their arts, their ancient praise, And sure succession down from Heywood's[193] days.

She saw, with joy, the line immortal run, Each sire impressed, and glaring in his son: So watchful Bruin forms, with plastic care, Each growing lump, and brings it to a bear.

She saw old Prynne in restless Daniel[194] shine, And Eusden eke out[195] Blackmore's endless line; She saw slow Philips creep like Tate's poor page, And all the mighty mad[196] in Dennis rage.

In each she marks her image full exprest, But chief in Bays's monster-breeding breast, Bays, formed by nature stage and town to bless, And act, and be, a c.o.xcomb with success.

Dulness, with transport eyes the lively dunce, Remembering she herself was pertness once.

Now (shame to fortune!) an ill run at play Blanked his bold visage, and a thin third day: Swearing and supperless the hero sate, Blasphemed his G.o.ds, the dice, and d.a.m.ned his fate; Then gnawed his pen, then dashed it on the ground, Sinking from thought to thought, a vast profound!

Plunged for his sense, but found no bottom there; Yet wrote and floundered on in mere despair.

Round him much embryo, much abortion lay, Much future ode, and abdicated play; Nonsense precipitate, like running lead, That slipped 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 sipped, how there he plundered snug, And sucked all o'er, like an industrious bug.

Here lay poor Fletcher's half-eat scenes, and here The frippery of crucified Moliere; There hapless Shakespeare, yet of Tibbald sore, Wished 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 dressed 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, stamped with arms, Newcastle shines complete: Here all his suffering brotherhood retire, And 'scape the martyrdom of jakes and fire: A Gothic library! of Greece and Rome Well purged, and worthy Settle, Banks, and Broome.

[Footnote 183: Smithfield is the place where Bartholomew Fair was kept, whose shows and dramatical entertainments were, by the hero of this poem and others of equal genius, brought to the theatres of Covent Garden, Lincolns-Inn-Fields, and the Haymarket, to be the reigning pleasures of the court and town. This happened in the reigns of King George I. and II.]

[Footnote 184: _Ironice_, alluding to Gulliver's representations of both.--The next line relates to the papers of the Drapier against the currency of Wood's copper coin in Ireland, which, upon the great discontent of the people, his majesty was graciously pleased to recall.]

[Footnote 185: Mr. Caius Gabriel Cibber, father of the poet laureate.

The two statues of the lunatics over the gates of Bedlam Hospital were done by him, and (as the son justly says of them) are no ill monuments of his fame as an artist.]

[Footnote 186: Two booksellers. The former was fined by the Court of King's Bench for publishing obscene books; the latter usually adorned his shop with t.i.tles in red letters.]

[Footnote 187: It was an ancient English custom for the malefactors to sing a psalm at their execution at Tyburn; and no less customary to print elegies on their deaths, at the same time or before.]

[Footnote 188: Made by the poet laureate for the time being, to be sung at court on every New Year's Day.]

[Footnote 189: Jacob Tonson the bookseller.]

[Footnote 190: Alluding to the transgressions of the unities in the plays of such poets.]

[Footnote 191: Sir George Thorold, Lord Mayor of London in the year 1720. The procession of a Lord Mayor was made partly by land, and partly by water.--Cimon, the famous Athenian general, obtained a victory by sea, and another by land, on the same day, over the Persians and barbarians.]

[Footnote 192: Settle was poet to the city of London. His office was to compose yearly panegyrics upon the Lord Mayors, and verses to be spoken in the pageants: but that part of the shows being at length abolished, the employment of the city poet ceased; so that upon Settle's death there was no successor appointed to that place.]

[Footnote 193: John Heywood, whose "Interludes" were printed in the time of Henry VIII.]

[Footnote 194: The first edition had it,--

"She saw in Norton all his father shine":

Daniel Defoe was a genius, but Norton Defoe was a wretched writer, and never attempted poetry. Much more justly is Daniel himself made successor to W. Pryn, both of whom wrote verses as well as politics.

And both these authors had a semblance in their fates as well as writings, having been alike sentenced to the pillory.]

[Footnote 195: Laurence Eusden, poet laureate before Gibber. We have the names of only a few of his works, which were very numerous.

Nahum Tate was poet laureate, a poor writer, of no invention; but who sometimes translated tolerably when a.s.sisted by Dryden. In the second part of Absalom and Achitophel there are about two hundred lines in all by Dryden which contrast strongly with the insipidity of the rest.]

[Footnote 196: John Dennis was the son of a saddler in London, born in 1657. He paid court to Dryden; and having obtained some correspondence with Wycherley and Congreve he immediately made public their letters.]