And saving Ignorance enthrones by Laws. "Lo! Rome herself, proud mistress now no more Streets pav'd with Heroes, Tiber chok'd with Gods: See the Cirque falls, th' unpillar'd Temple nods, 'Till Peter's keys some christ'ned Jove adorn 4, And Pan to Moses lends his pagan horn; See, graceless Venus to a Virgin turn'd, "Behold yon' Isle, by Palmers, Pilgrims trod, 6 115 120 125 Now look thro' Fate! behold the scene she draws! What aids, what armies to assert her cause! See all her progeny, illustrious sight! Behold, and count them, as they rise to light. 130 [Pope has a long note attempting to bring home this charge against Pope Gregory I. (the Great). His hatred of classical learning is undoubted; his destruction of ancient buildings rests only on later evidence. See Gibbon, chap. XLV. Compare on this and the whole subject of the prejudices of the Church against profane learning the first chapter of Hallam's Lit. of Europe. The establishment of the Index Expurgatorius belongs to the century of the Reformation.] 2 [Roger Bacon lived in the 13th century; the earliest English cultivator of mathematical science. His 'brazen head' was a popular superstition connected with his experiments in magic; and is alluded to in Butler's Hudibras.] 3 [Livy is said to have been burnt among other authors by Gregory I.] 4'Till Peter's keys some christ'ned Jove adorn,] After the government of Rome devolved to the Popes, their zeal was for some time exerted in demolishing the Heathen Temples and Statues, so that the Goths scarce destroyed more monuments of Antiquity out of rage, than these out of devotion. At length they spared some of the temples, by converting them to Churches; and some of the Statues, by modifying them into images of Saints. In much later times, it was thought necessary to change the statues of Apollo and Pallas, on the tomb of Sannazarius, into David and Judith; the Lyre easily became a Harp, and the Gorgon's head turned to that of Holofernes. P. [Abundant instances of this will be found in any description of Rome.] 5 Happy!-had Easter never been.] Wars in England anciently, about the right time of celebrating Easter. P. [It was not till the visit of St Augustine in 596 that the British Church conformed to the decision of the Council of Nice as to the day on which Easter should be kept.] 6 Dove-like she gathers] This is fulfilled in the fourth book. P. "Mark first that youth who takes the foremost place, From the strong fate of drams if thou get free, 145 Thee shall each ale-house, thee each gill-house mourn, And answ'ring gin-shops sourer sights return. "Jacob, the scourge of Grammar, mark with awe3, 150 Nor less revere him, blunderbuss of Law. Each Cygnet sweet, of Bath and Tunbridge race, All crowd, who foremost shall be damn'd to Fame 7. [As to Cibber's father see Pope's note to Bk. 1. v. 30.] 2 [Durfey; v. Essay on Criticism, v. 618.] 3 Jacob, the scourge of Grammar, mark with awe,] "This Gentleman is son of a considerable Maltster of Romsey in Southamptonshire, and bred to the Law under a very eminent Attorney: Who, between his more laborious studies, has diverted himself with Poetry. He is a great admirer of poets and their works, which has occasioned him to try his genius that way.-He has written in prose the Lives of the Poets, Essays, and a great many Law-books, The Accomplished Conveyancer, Modern Justice, &c. GILES JACOB of himself, Lives of Poets, vol. I. He very grossly, and unprovok'd, abused, in that book the Author's Friend, Mr Gay. P. 4 Horneck and Roome] These two were virulent party-writers, worthily coupled together, and one would think prophetically, since, after the publishing of this piece, the former dying, the latter succeeded him in Honour and Employment. The first was Philip Horneck, author of a Billingsgate paper called The High German Doctor. Edward Roome was son of an Undertaker for Funerals in Fleet-street, and writ some of the papers called Pasquin, where by malicious innuendos he endeavoured to represent our Author guilty of malevolent practices with a great 155 Of man then under prosecution of Parliament. Yet if he writes, is dull as other folks? The jest is lost unless he prints his face." Popple was the author of some vile Plays and Pamphlets. He published abuses on our Author in a paper called the Prompter. P. 5 Goode,] An ill-natur'd Critic, who writ a satire on our Author, called The mock Esop, and many anonymous Libels in News-papers for hire. P. 6 [Borrowed from two lines of Young's Universal Passion, Sat. 6.] Warton. Whose tuneful whistling makes the waters pass:] There were several successions of these sort of minor poets, at Tunbridge, Bath, &c. singing the praise of the Annuals flourishing for that season; whose names indeed would be nameless, and therefore the Poet slurs them over with others in general. P. 7 After Ver. 158 in the former Editions followed: 'How proud, how pale, how earnest all appear! How rhymes eternal jingle in their ear!" L Warburton. Scream like the winding of ten thousand jacks; 160 "Silence, ye Wolves! while Ralph 2 to Cynthia howls 3, 165 And makes night hideous-Answer him, ye Owls! "Sense, speech, and measure, living tongues and dead, Let all give way, and Morris may be read. "Ah Dennis! Gildon ah! what ill-starr'd rage "Behold yon Pair, in strict embraces join'd; Shall this a Pasquin, that a Grumbler write; "But who is he, in closet close y-pent, [Priscian, the celebrated Roman grammarian, lived in the time of Justinian, who appointed him teacher of grammar at Constantinople.] 2 Ralph] James Ralph, a name inserted after the first editions, not known to our Author till he writ a swearing-piece called Sawney, very abusive of Dr Swift, Mr Gay, and himself. These lines allude to a thing of his, intitled, Night, a Poem: This low writer attended his own works with panegyrics in the Journals, and once in particular praised himself highly above Mr Addison. He was wholly illiterate, and knew no language, not even French. Being advised to read the rules of dramatic poetry before he began a play, he smiled and replied, "Shakespear writ without rules." He ended at last in the common sink of all such writers, a political News-paper, to which he was recommended by his friend Arnal, and received a small pittance for pay. P. 3 [Shaksp. Jul. Cæs. Act IV. Sc. 3: 'I'd rather be a dog and bay the moon, &c.' But Wakefield has pointed out two lines by Ambrose Philips parodied in the above.] Morris,] Besaleel, See Book II. [v. 126]. P. Ah Dennis! &c.] The reader, who has seen thro' the course of these notes, what a constant attendance Mr Dennis paid to our Author and all his works, may perhaps wonder he should be 170 175 Ιδο 185 mentioned but twice, and so slightly touched, in this poem. But in truth he looked upon him with some esteem, for having (more generously than all the rest) set his Name to such writings. He was also a very old man at this time. By his own account of himself in Mr Jacob's Lives, he must have been above threescore, and happily lived many years after. So that he was senior to Mr Durfey, who hitherto of all our poets enjoyed the longest bodily life. P. 6 Behold yon Pair, &c.] One of these was author of a weekly paper called the Grumbler, as the other was concerned in another called Pasquin, in which Mr Pope was abused with the duke of Buckingham, and Bishop of Rochester. They also joined in a piece against his first undertaking to translate the Iliad, intituled Homerides, by Sir Iliad Doggrel, printed 1715. P. [Part om.] 7 That shines a Consul, this Commissioner.] Such places were given at this time to such sort of writers. P. 8 arede] Read, or peruse; though sometimes used for counsel. P. [Myster, like arede_and besprent, is a word used by Spenser. But Pope explains it wrongly: it is equivalent to manner, craft or trade (French métier, probably from magister). The myster wight' is nonsense; On parchment scraps y-fed, and Wormius hight1. As thou preserv'st the dulness of the past! "There, dim in clouds, the poring Scholiasts mark, 190 Wits, who, like owls, see only in the dark, A Lumber-house of books in ev'ry head, For ever reading, never to be read! "But, where each Science lifts its modern type, 195 Hist'ry her Pot, Divinity her Pipe, While proud Philosophy repines to show, Embrown'd with native bronze, lo! Henley stands 3, A decent priest, where monkeys were the gods! 'such myster wight' would be sense.] Myster wight] Uncouth mortal. F. Wormius hight.] Let not this name, purely fictitious, be conceited to mean the learned Olaus Wormius; much less (as it was unwarrantably foisted into the surreptitious editions) our own Antiquary Mr Thomas Hearne, who had no way aggrieved our Poet, but on the contrary published many curious tracts which he hath to his great contentment perused. P. [Part om.] hight] "In Cumberland they say to hight, for to promise, or vow; but HIGHT, usually signifies was called; and so it does in the North even to this day, notwithstanding what is done in Cumberland." Hearne. P. [The old hâtan means to call and to promise (German heissen, verheissen.)] 2 Wits, who, like owls, &c.] These few lines exactly describe the right verbal critic: The darker his author is, the better he is pleased; like the famous Quack Doctor, who put up in his bills, he delighted in matters of difficulty. Some body said well of these men, that their heads were Libraries out of order. P. 3 lo! Henley stands, &c.] J. Henley the Orator; he preached on the Sundays upon Theological matters, and on the Wednesdays upon all other sciences. Each auditor paid one shilling. He declaimed some years against the greatest 200 205 210 215 persons, and occasionally did our Author that honour. After having stood some Prosecutions, he turned his rhetoric to buffoonery upon all publick and private occurrences. This man had an hundred pounds a year given him for the secret service of a weekly paper of unintelligible nonsense, called the Hyp-Doctor. P. [Part om.] [John Henley, a native of Leicestershire, had graduated at Cambridge; but set up a scheme of Universology on his own account, establishing his 'Oratory' in a wooden booth in Newport market in 1726. Three years later he removed his pulpit to the corner of Lincoln's Inn Fields, and though subjected to a prosecution for profaning the clerical character, continued his exhibitions till the middle of the century. See Wright's Caric. Hist. of the Georges, and Jesse, George Selwyn and his Contemporaries, Vol. I., where Henley is said to have been a man of real learning and of poetical talent. He died in 1756.] 4 Sherlock, Hare, Gibson,] Bishops of Salisbury, Chichester, and London; whose Sermons and Pastoral Letters did honour to their country as well as stations. P. 5 Of Toland and Tindal, see Book II. [v. 399]. Tho. Woolston was an impious madman, who wrote in a most insolent style against the Miracles of the Gospel, in the years 1726, &c. P. A Newton's genius, or a Milton's flame: The source of Newton's Light, of Bacon's Sense. That beams on earth, each Virtue he inspires, 220 But, Learn, ye DUNCES! not to scorn your God1."" 225 230 235 Hell rises, Heav'n descends, and dance on Earth 4: 240 'Till one wide conflagration swallows all. Thence a new world to Nature's laws unknown, And other planets circle other suns. The forests dance, the rivers upward rise, 245 Whales sport in woods, and dolphins in the skies; And last, to give the whole creation grace, Lo! one vast Egg produces human race. Joy fills his soul, joy innocent of thought; 'What pow'r,' he cries, what pow'r these wonders wrought?' 250 "Son, what thou seek'st is in thee! Look, and find But, Learn, ye Dunces! not to scorn your God.'] Virg. En. vi. [v. 619]. The hardest lesson a Dunce can learn. For being bred to scorn what he does not understand, that which he understands least he will be apt to scorn most. Of which, to the disgrace of all Government, and (in the Poet's opinion) even of that of DULNESS herself, we have had a late example in a book intitled, Philosophical Essays concerning human Understanding. P. 'not to scorn your God."] See this subject pursued in Book IV. P. 2 (Not half so pleas'd when Goodman prophesy'd] Mr Cibber tells us, in his Life, p. 149, that Goodman being at the rehearsal of a play, in which he had a part, clapped him on the shoulder and cried, "If he does not make a good actor, I'll be d-d."-And (says Mr Cibber) I make it a question, whether Alexander himself, or Charles the Twelfth of Sweden, when at the head of their first victorious armies, could feel a greater transport in their bosoms than I did in mine. P. 3'a sable Sorc'rer] Dr Faustus, the subject of a set of Farces, which lasted in vogue two or three seasons, in which both Play-houses strove to outdo each other for some years. All the extravagances in the sixteen lines following were introduced on the Stage, and frequented by persons of the first quality in England, to the twentieth and thirtieth time. P. [Probably revivals of Mountfort's harlequinade founded on Marlowe's tragedy.] Hell rises, Heav'n descends, and dance on Earth:] This monstrous absurdity was actually represented in Tibbald's Rape of Proserpine. P. 5 Lo! one vast Egg] In another of these Farces, Harlequin is hatched upon the stage out of a large Egg. P. |