DESIGN OF THE DUNCIAD. 195 the removal of the empire of Troy to Latium." The Goddess of Dulness made choice of Theobald as her favourite son-a distinction which the plodding antiquary owed partly to his bad plays and poems, but principally to his having criticised and condemned Pope's Shakspeare. Theobald is installed as hero, and the epic action of the poem is thus correctly described by Warton:-"The design is carried on in the first book, by a description of the Goddess fixing her eye on Tibbald (or Theobald): who, on the evening of a Lord Mayor's day, is represented as sitting pensively in his study, and apprehending the period of her empire, from the old age of her present monarch, Settle; and also by an account of a sacrifice he makes of his unsuccessful works; of the Goddess's revealing herself to him, announcing the death of Settle that night, anointing and proclaiming him successor. It is carried on in the second book, by a description of the various games instituted in honour of the new king, in which booksellers, poets, and critics contend. This design is, lastly, completed in the third book, by the Goddess's transporting the new king to her temple, laying him in a deep slumber on her lap, and conveying him in a vision to the banks of Lethe, where he meets with the ghost of his predecessor, Settle; who in a speech shows him the past triumphs of the empire of Dulness, then the present, and lastly the future enumerating particularly by what aids, and by what persons, Great Britain shall be forthwith brought to her empire, and prophesying how first the nation shall be overrun with farces, operas, shows, and the throne of Dulness advanced over both the theatres; then how her sons shall preside in the seats of arts and sciences, till, in 6 See Introduction, Martinus Scriblerus, to the Dunciad. Harley, Lord Oxford, used playfully to call Swift Martin, and from this sprung Martinus Scriblerus. Swift, as is well known, is the name of one species of swallow (the largest and most powerful flier of the tribe) and Martin is the name of another species, the wall-swallow, that constructs its nest in buildings. conclusion, all shall return to their original chaos. On hearing which 66 Enough, enough! the raptured monarch cries, The design was thus complete. Pope afterwards substituted Cibber for Theobald as hero of the poem, and added a fourth book, neither of which alterations agrees well with the original design. The additional book is, indeed, a separate work, scarcely at all connected with the previous portion of the poem, but still forming a powerful and animated satire. The history of the composition and publication of the Dunciad is uncertain and obscure. The poet loved to mystify and perplex his readers, and his statements on this subject are irreconcilable. Pope, with manly wisdom, despised the pic fraudes of his church. He tolerated no juggling in concerns of eternal moment. But unfortunately he did not carry this spirit into literature. His poetica fraudes are numerous and undeniable. Some are serious, intended to avert the consequences of his satire; some are prompted by vanity; and some can be assigned to no other cause than a delight in stratagem. To equivocate genteelly as he termed it, or to deny firmly, as circumstances might require, were expedients he never hesitated to adopt. The ardour of composition, it is probable, at times carried him further than he intended, and led him to over-colour his LORD CHESTERFIELD. DATE OF ITS COMPOSITION. 197 pictures, so that he might safely deny part. "It must be owned," said Lord Chesterfield, "that Pope was the most irritable of all the genus irritabile vatum, offended with trifles, and never forgetting or forgiving them." Still he shrank from the responsibility of his attacks, and the contest between his irresistible proneness to satire and his want of moral courage or his reluctance to continue injustice, involved him in pitiable and humiliating situations, which, without the cant of sensibility, all must deplore, if not condemn. These results became more conspicuous when his epistles led him to deal with higher characters than most of those in the Dunciad. you This poem appears to have been written before the publication of the Miscellanies in 1727. In one of his letters to Swift the poet says-" As for those scribblers for whom apprehend I would suppress my Dulness (which by the way for the future you are to call by a more pompous name, the Dunciad), how much that nest of hornets are my regard will easily appear to you when you read my treatise of the Bathos.' The Dunciad, then, was written before the publication of the Bathos in 1727; and in one of the Notes to the poem it is said to have been composed in 1726. The poet, however, changed his ground, and was subsequently desirous of conveying the impression that the Dunciad was provoked by the personal attacks that followed the publication of the Miscellanies. He published in the name of Savage a detailed account of the circumstances attending the production of the poem, of which the following is the most material part : When Dr. Swift and Mr. Pope thought it proper, for reasons specified in the preface to their Miscellanies, to publish such little pieces of theirs as had casually got abroad, there was added to them the treatise of the Bathos, or the Art of Sinking in Poetry. It happened that in one chapter of this piece, the several species of bad poets were ranged in classes, to which were prefixed almost all the letters of the alphabet, the greater part of them at random; but such was the number of poets eminent in that art that some one or other took every letter to himself: all fell into so violent a fury, that for half a year or more the common newspapers (in most of which they had some property, as being hired writers) were filled with the most abusive falsehoods and scurrilities they could possibly devise; a liberty no way to be wondered at in those people, and in those papers, that for many years, during the uncontrolled license of the press, had aspersed almost all the great characters of the age, and this with impunity, their own persons and names being utterly secret and obscure. This gave Mr. Pope the thought, that he had now some opportunity of doing good, by detecting and dragging into light these common enemies of mankind; since to invalidate this universal slander, it sufficed to show what contemptible men were the authors of it. He was not without hopes that, by manifesting the dulness of those who had only malice to recommend them, either the booksellers would not find their account in employing them, or the men themselves, when discovered, want courage to proceed in so unlawful an occupation. This it was that gave birth to the Dunciad; and he thought it an happiness, that, by the late flood of slander on himself, he had acquired such a peculiar right over their names as was necessary to this design.7 This statement is at variance with the previous declaration, and with the date assigned to the composition of the poem. It is no less at variance with fact, for no one believed, as Johnson says, or could believe, that the letters in the Bathos were placed at random. Savage said he put his name to the statement without thinking. The first edition of the poem, as stated by Pope, was an imperfect one published at Dublin in 1727. No copy of this has been found, and it is doubtful whether such an edition 7 This account of the Dunciad was published by Savage in a collection of pieces relating to the poem, which Savage addressed to the Earl of Middlesex, in a dedication which Johnson says he was prevailed upon to sign, though he did not write it, and in which there are some positions, that the true author (Pope) would perhaps not have published under his own name, and on which Savage afterwards reflected with no great satisfaction. "The publication of this piece at this time raised Mr. Savage a great number of enemies among those that were attacked by Mr. Pope, with whom he was considered a kind of confederate, and whom he was suspected of supplying with private intelligence and secret incidents; so that the ignominy of an informer was added to the terror of a satirist." -Johnson's Life of Savage. |