Prompt or to guard or stab, to saint or damn, Heaven'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 serrmons, 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.
Here stopt the goddess; and in pomp proclaims
A gentler exercise to close the games:

Ye critics! in whose heads, as equal scales,

361

I weigh what author's heaviness prevails:
Which most conduce to sooth the soul in slumbers,
My Henley's periods or my Blackmore's numbers,
Attend the trial we propose to make:

If there be man, who o'er such works ean 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.'

371

Three college sophs and three pert templars came,
The same their talents, and their tastes the same; 380
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;

REMARKS.

or in blackening the virtues of patriots; in corrupting religion by superstition, or betraying it by libertinism, as either was thought best to serve the ends of policy, or flatter the follies of the great.

Soft creeping, words on words, the sense compose,
At every line they stretch, they yawn, they doze.
As to soft gales top-heavy pines bow low
391
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.'

REMARKS.

Ver. 397. Thrice Budgel aim'd to speak,] Famous for his speeches on many occasions about the South Sea scheme, &c. He is a very ingenious gentleman, and hath written some excellent epilogues to plays, and one small piece on Love, which is very pretty.' Jacob, Lives of Poets, vol. ii. p. 289. But this gentleman since made himself much more eminent, and personally well known to be the greatest statesman of all parties, as well as to all the courts of law in this nation.

Ver. 399. Toland and Tindal,] Two persons not so happy as to be obscure, who writ against the religion of their country. Toland, the author of the atheist's liturgy, called Pantheisticon, was a spy, in pay to lord Oxford. Tindal was author of the Rights of the Christian Church, and Christianity as old as the Creation. He also wrote an abusive pamphlet againt earl S------, which was suppressed while yet in MS. by an eminent person, then out of the ministry, to whom he showed it, expecting his approbation. This doctor afterwards published the same piece, mutatis mutandis, against that very person.

Ver. 400. Christ's no kingdom,] This is said by Curll, Key to Dunc. to allude to a sermon of a reverend bishop.

401

[lies

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 them
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 Mandevil could prate no more;

REMARKS.

409

Ver. 411. Centlivre] Mrs. Susanna Centlivre, wife to M. Centlivre, yeoman of the mouth to his majes ty. She writ many plays, and a song (says Mr. Jacob, vol. i. p. 32.), before she was seven years old. She also writ a ballad against. Mr. Pope's Homer, before he began it.

Ver. 413. Boyer the state, and Law the stage gave o'er,] A. Boyer, a voluminous compiler of annals, political collections, &c.--William Law, A. M. wrote with great zeal against the stage; Mr. Dennis answered with as great: their books were printed in 1726. The same Mr. Law is author of a book entitled, An Appeal to all that doubt of or disbelieve the truth of the Gospel; in which he has detailed a system of the rankest Spinozism, for the most exalted theology; and amongst other things as rare, has informed us of this, that sir Isaac Newton stole the principles of his philosophy from one Jacob Behmen, a German cobbler.

Ver. 414. Morgan] A writer against religion distinguished no otherwise from the rabble of his tribe, than by the pompousness of his title; for having stolen his morality from Tindal, and his philosophy

420

Norton, from Daniel and Ostrœa 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.

REMARKS.

from Spinosa, he calls himself, by the courtesy of England, a moral philosopher.

Ver. 414. Mandevil] This writer, who prided him. self in the reputation of an immoral philosopher, was author of a famous book called the Fable of the Bees; written to prove, that moral virtue is the invention of knaves, and Christian virtue the imposition of fools; and that vice is necessary, and alone sufficient to render society flourishing and happy.

Ver. 415. Norton] Norton De Foe, offspring of the famous Daniel, fortes creantur fortibus. One of the authors of the Flying Post, in which wellbred work Mr. P. had some time the honour to be abused with his betters; and of many hired scurrili. ties and daily papers, to which he never set his

name.

Ver. 427. Fleet] A prison for insolvent debtors on the bank of the ditch.

BOOK THE THIRD.

ARGUMENT.

After the other persons are disposed in their proper places of rest, the goddess transports the king to her temple, and there lays him to slumber, with his head on her lap; a position of marvellous virtue, which causeth all the visions of wild enthu siasts, projectors, politicians, inamoratos, castlebuilders, chemists, and poets. He is immediately carried on the wings of fancy, and led by a mad poetical sibyl, to the Elysian shade; where, on the banks of Lethe, the souls of the dull are dip. ped by Bavius, before their entrance into this world. There he is met by the ghost of Settle, and by him made acquainted with the wonders of the place, and with those which he himself is destined to perform. He takes him to a mount of vision, from whence he shows him the past triumphs of the empire of Dulness, then the present, and lastly the future: how small a part of the world was ever conquered by science, how soon those conquests were stopped, and those very nations again reduced to her dominion. Then distinguishing the island of Great Britain, shows by what aids, by what persons, and by what degrees, it shall be brought to her empire. Some of the persons he causes to pass in review before his eyes, describing each by his proper figure,'