"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 Psychè sprung.
 His temples, last, with poppies were o'erspread,
 That, nodding, seem'd to consecrate his head.
 Just at the point of time, if Fame not lie,
 On his left hand twelve rev'rend owls did fly.
 So Romulus, 'tis sung by Tiber's brook,
 Presage of sway from twice six vultures took.
 Th' admiring throng loud acclamations make,
 And omens of his future empire take.
 The sire then shook the honours of his head,
 And, from his brows, damps of oblivion shed,
 Full on the filial Dulness: long he stood,
 Repelling from his breast the raging god;
 At length burst out in the prophetic mood.
 'Heav'ns bless my son, from Ireland let him 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 Psychè's humble strain?
 Where sold he bargains, Whip-stich, Kiss me ——,
 Promis'd a play, and dwindled to a farce?
 When did his muse from Fletcher scenes purloin,
 As thou whole Eth'rege dost transfuse to thine?
 But so transfus'd as oil and waters flow;
 His always floats above, thine sinks below.
 This is thy province, this thy wondrous way.
 New humours to invent for each new play;
 This is that bloated bias of thy mind,
 By which, one way, to dulness 'tis inclin'd:
 Which makes thy writings lean, on one side, still;
 And in all changes, that way bends thy will.
 Not let thy mountain-belly make 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, Περι Βαθους or the Art of Sinking in Poetry. The exquisite wit and humour of this piece, which was almost wholly Pope's, enraged the Dunces to madness; and the mongrel pack opened in full cry, with barbarous dissonance, against their supposed whipper-in. Never was there such a senseless yell: for the philosophical treatise "On the Profund" overflows with amenity and good-nature. Pope is all the while at play—diverting himself in innocent recreation; and, of all the satires that ever were indited, it is in spirit the most inoffensive to man, woman, and child. The Dunces, however, swore that its wickedness went beyond the Devil's, and besought the world to pay particular attention to the sixth chapter as supra-Satanic. Therein Martinus ranges "the confined and less copious geniuses under proper classes, and, the better to give their pictures to the reader, under the name of animals." The animals are Flying Fishes, Swallows, Ostriches, Parrots, Didappers, Porpoises, Frogs, Eels, and Tortoises. Each animal is characterized in a few words, that prove Pope to have been a most observant zoologist; and some profundists, classified according to that arrangement, are indicated by the initial letters of their names. The chapter is short, and the style concise—consisting of but four pages. Some of the initial letters had been set down at random; but profundists rose up, with loud vociferation, to claim them for their own; and gli animali parlanti, on foot, wing, fin, "or belly prone," peopled the booksellers' shops. C. G., "perplexed in the extreme," was the cause of perplexity to others, figuring now as a flying-fish, and now as a porpoise. While J. W. was not less problematical—now an Eel, and now a Didapper.

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

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

"Solvuntur risu tabulæ, tu missus abibis."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here he comes.

"In each she marks her image full exprest,
 But chief in Bayes's monster-breeding breast;
 Bayes, form'd by Nature's Stage and Town to bless,
 And act, and be, a coxcomb with success.
 Dulness with transport eyes the lively Dunce,
 Remembering she herself was Pertness once.
 Now (Shame to Fortune!) an ill run at 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 Molière;
 There hapless Shakspeare, yet of Tibbald sore,
 Wish'd he had blotted for himself before.
 The rest on outside merit but presume,
 Or serve (like other fools) to fill a room;
 Such with their shelves as due proportion hold,
 Or their fond parents dress'd in red and gold;
 Or where the pictures for the page atone,
 And Quarles is saved by beauties not his own.
 Here swells the shelf with Ogilby the Great;
 There, stamp'd with arms, Newcastle shines complete;
 Here all his suff'ring brotherhood retire,
 And 'scape the martyrdom of jakes and fire:
 A Gothic library! of Greece and 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 dæmon stole my pen (forgive th' offence)
 And once betray'd me into common sense:
 Else all my prose and verse were much the same;
 This prose on stilts, that, poetry fall'n lame.
 Did on the stage my fops appear confin'd?
 My life gave ampler lessons to mankind.
 Did the dead letter unsuccessful prove?
 The brisk example never fail'd to move.
 Yet sure, had Heav'n decreed to save the state,
 Heav'n had decreed these works a longer date.
 Could Troy be sav'd by any single hand,
 This gray goose weapon must have made her stand.
 What can I now? my Fletcher cast aside,
 Take up the Bible, once my better guide?
 Or tread the path by vent'rous heroes trod,
 This box my thunder, this right hand my God?
 Or chair'd at White's amidst the doctors sit,
 Teach oaths to gamesters, and to nobles wit?
 Or bidst thou rather party to embrace?
 (A friend to Party thou, and all her race;
 'Tis the same rope at diff'rent ends they twist;
 To Dulness Ridpath is as dear as Mist.)
 Shall I, like Curtius, desperate in my zeal,
 O'er head and ears plunge for the commonweal?
 Or rob Rome's ancient geese of all their glories,
 And cackling save the monarchy of Tories?
 Hold—to the minister I more incline;
 To serve his cause, O Queen! is serving thine.
 And see! the very Gazetteers give o'er,
 Ev'n Ralph repents, and Henley writes no more.
 What then remains? Ourself. Still, still 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 Cæsar roars, and hisses in the fires;
 King John in silence modestly expires;
 No merit now the dear Nonjuror claims;
 Molière'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 Thulè 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. Æneas, 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 Phœbus, 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 Æneas. 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:—