the fins of the learned) paper alfo became fo cheap, and printers fo numerous, that a deluge of authors covered the land: whereby not only the peace of the honest unwriting fubject was daily molested, but unmerciful demands were made of his applaufe, yea of his money, by fuch as would neither earn the one, nor deserve the other. At the fame time, the licence of the prefs was fuch, that it grew dangerous to refuse them either: for they would forthwith publish flanders unpunished, the authors being anonymous, and skulking under the wings of publishers, a set of men who never fcrupled to vend either calumny or blafphemy, as long as the town would call for it.

Now our author, living in thofe times, did conceive it an endeavour well worthy an honest fatyrist, to diffuade the dull, and punish the wicked, the only way that was left. In that public-fpirited view he laid the plan of this poem, as the greatest service he was capable (without much hurt or being flain) to render his dear country. Firft taking things from their original, he confidereth the causes creative of fuch authors, namely Dulness and Poverty; the one born with them, the other contracted by neglect of their proper talents, through felf-conceit of greater abilities. This truth he wrappeth in an allegory (as the conftruction of epic poefy requireth), and feigns

b

that

a Vide Boffu, Du Poeme Epique, ch. viii.

Boffu, chap. vii.

that one of these Goddeffes had taken up her abode with the other, and that they jointly inspired all fuch writers and fuch works. He proceedeth to fhew the qualities they bestow on these authors, and the effects they produced; then the materials, or stock, with which they furnish them; and (above all) that felf-opinion, which caufeth it to seem to themfelves vaftly greater than it it, and is the prime motive of their setting up in this fad and forry merchandise. The great power of thefe Goddeffes acting in alliance (whereof as the one is the mother of Industry, fo is the other of Plodding) was to be exemplified in fome one, great and remarkable action : And none could be more so than that which our poet hath chofen, viz. the restoration of the reign of Chaos and Night, by the ministry of Dulness their daughter, in the removal of her imperial feat from the city to the polite world; as the action of the Aeneid is the restoration of the empire of Troy, by the removal of the race from thence to Latium. But as Homer finging only the wrath of Achilles, yet includes in his poem the whole history of the Trojan war; in like manner our author hath drawn into this fingle action the whole history of Dulness and her children.

*

A perfon must next be fixed upon to fupport this action. This phantom in the poet's mind must have

eBook I. ver. 32. &c.

e Boffu, B. I. ver. 57 to 77. Ibid. chap. vii, viii.

* Altered from the edition 1729. See the note at the beginning of B. IV. of the Dunciad.

a name : He finds it to be; and he becomes of course the Hero of the poem.

The fable being thus, according to the best example, one and entire, one and entire, as contained in the propofition; the machinery is a continued chain of allegories, fetting forth the whole power, ministry, and empire of Dulness, extended through her fubordinate instruments, in all her various operations.

This is branched into Epifodes, each of which hath its Moral apart, though all conducive to the main end. The crowd, affembled in the fecond book, demonstrates the defign to be more extenfive than to bad poets only, and that we may expect other episodes of the Patrons, Encouragers, or Paymasters of fuch authors, as occafion fhall bring them forth. And the third book, if well confidered, feemeth to embrace the whole world. Each of the games

relateth to fome or other vile clafs of writers: The first concerneth the plagiary, to whom he giveth the name of More; the fecond the libelous Novelist, whom he styleth Eliza; the third, the flattering Dedicator; the fourth, the bawling Critic, or noify Poet; the fifth, the dark and dirty Party-writer; and fo of the reft; affigning to each fome proper name or other, fuch as he could find.

As for the Characters, the public hath already acknowledged how juftly they are drawn: The

A Boffu, chap. viii. Vide Ariftot. Poetic. ix chap.

manners

manners are fo depicted, and the fentiments fo peculiar to those to whom applied, that furely to transfer them to any other or wifer perfonages, would be exceeding difficult: And certain it is, that every person concerned, being confulted apart, hath readily owned the refemblance of every portrait, his own excepted. So Mr. Cibber calls them, "a parcel of poor wretches, fo many filly flies: but adds, our Author's wit is remarkably more bare and barren, whenever it would fall foul on Cibber, than upon any other person whatever."

The defcriptions are fingular, the comparisons very quaint, the narration various, yet of one colour: The purity and chastity of diction is so preserved, that in the places most suspicious, not the words but only the images have been cenfured, and yet are those images no other than have been fanctified by ancient and claffical authority, (though, as was the manner of those good times, not fo curiously wrapped up), and commented upon by the moft grave Doctors, and approved Critics.

yea,

As it beareth the name of Epic, it is thereby fubjected to fuch fevere indifpenfible rules as are laid on all Neoterics, a strict imitation of the Ancients; infomuch that any deviation, accompanied with whatever poetic beauties, hath always been cenfured by the found Critic. How exact that imitation hath been in this piece, appeareth not only by its general ftructure,

i Cibber's Letter to Mr. P. p. 9, 12, 41.

ftructure, but by particular allufions infinite, many whereof have escaped both the commentator and poet himself, yea divers by his exceeding diligence are fo altered and interwoven with the reft, that several have already been, and more will be, by the ignorant abused, as altogether and originally his own.

In a word, the whole poem proveth itself to be the work of our Author, when his faculties were in full vigour and perfection; at that exact time when years have ripened the judgment, without diminishing the imagination: which, by good critics is held to be punctually at forty. For at that feafon it was that Virgil finished his Georgics; and Sir Richard Blackmore, at the like age compofing his Arthurs, declared the fame to be the very Acme and pitch of life for epic poefy: Though fince he hath altered it to fixty, the year in which he published his Alfred *. True it is, that the talents for criticism, namely fmartness, quick cenfure, vivacity of remark, certainty of affeveration, indeed all but acerbity, feem rather the gifts of youth than of riper age: But it is far otherwise in poetry; witness the works of Mr. Rymer and Mr. Dennis, who beginning with Criticism, became afterwards fuch poets as no age hath paralleled. With

* See his Effays.