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 rest, 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 season 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, seem rather the gifts of youth than of riper age: But it is far otherwife 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.

With good reason therefore did our author chuse to write his Effay on that fubject at twenty, and reserve for his maturer years this great and wonderful work of the Dunciad.

P.

RICHARDUS ARISTARCHUS

OF THE

HERO OF THE POEM *.

OF

F the nature of DUNCIAD in general, whence derived, and on what authority founded, as well as of the art and conduct of this our poem in particular, the learned and laborious Scriblerus hath, according to his manner, and with tolerable fhare of judgment, differtated. But when he cometh to fpeak of the PERSON of the Hero fitted for fuch poem, in truth he miferably halts and hallucinates. For, mifled by one Monfieur Boffu, a Gallic critic, he prateth of I cannot tell what phantom of a Hero, only raised up to support the fable. A putid conceit! As if Homer and Virgil, like modern Undertakers, who first build their house, and then feek out for a tenant, had contrived the ftory of a war and a wandring, before they once thought either of Achilles or Aeneas. We fhall therefore fet our good brother and the world also right in this particular, by affuring them,

* It is a fingular circumstance, that the hero of the Rehearsal, as well as of the Dunciad, fhould have been changed. Howard, not Dryden, was the original hero of the former. And perhaps these changes, in both pieces, were for the worse.

them, that, in the greater epic, the prime intention of the mufe is to exalt heroic virtue, in order to propagate the love of it among the children of men; and consequently that the poet's first thought must needs be turned upon a real fubject meet for laud and celebration; not one whom he is to make, but one whom he may find, truly illustrious. This is the primum mobile of his poetic world, whence every thing is to receive life and motion. For, this fubject being found, he is immediately ordained, or rather acknowledged, an Hero, and put upon fuch action as befitteth the dignity of his character.

But the Mufe ceafeth not here her eagle-flight. For fometimes, fatiated with the contemplation of these funs of glory, fhe turneth downward on her wing, and darts, with Jove's lightning, on the goofe and ferpent kind.

For we apply to the Muse in her various moods, what an ancient master of wisdom affirmeth of the Gods in general: "Si Dii non irafcuntur impiis et injuftis, nec pios utique juftofque diligunt. In rebus enim diverfis, ut in utramque partem moveri neceffe eft, aut in neutram. Itaque qui bonos diligit, et malos odit ; et qui malos non odit, nec bonos diligit. Quia et diligere bonos ex odio malorum venit; et malos odiffe ex bonorum caritate defcendit." Which in our vernacular idiom may be thus interpreted: "If the gods be not provoked at evil men, neither are they delighted with the good and juft. For contrary objects must

either

either excite contrary affections, or no affections at all. So that he who loveth good men, muft at the fame time hate the bad; and he who hateth not bad men, cannot love the good; because to love good men proceedeth from an averfion to evil; and to hate evil men, from a tenderness to the good.” From this delicacy of the Mufe arose the little Epic, more lively and choleric than her elder fifter, (whose bulk and complexion incline her to the flegmatic). And for this, fome notorious vehicle of vice and folly was fought out, to make thereof an EXAMPLE. An early instance of which (nor could it escape the accurate Scriblerus) the Father himself of Epic-poem, affordeth us. From him the practice defcended to the Greek dramatic Poets, his Offspring; who in the compofition of their Tetralogy*, or fet of four pieces, were wont to make the last a Satiric Tragedy. Happily one of these ancient Dunciads (as we may well term it) is come down unto us, amongst the Tragedies of the poet Euripides. And what doth the reader suppose may be the fubject thereof? Why in truth, and it is worthy obfervation, the unequal contest of an old, dull, debauched buffoon Cyclops, with the heaven-directed Favourite of Minerva: who,

after

* Richardus Ariftarchus is fond of bringing things, however improper and incongruous, into a fyftem. Our Dunciad is to be added to the epics of Homer, Virgil, and Milton, as a fatiric piece, to make, as it were, a complete Tetralogy, as the Cyclops of Euripides was added to ferious tragedies. This conceit is extremely Atrained and tortured.