Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845

"A hundred head of Aristotle's friends"

pour in from the colleges—Aristarchus (Richard Bentley) at their head. He displays his own merits as a critic, and extols the system of teaching in the universities; but strides away disgusted on seeing approach a band of young gentlemen returned from their travels on the Continent, and accompanied by their travelling tutors and their mistresses. One of the tutors reports at large to the goddess on the style and advantages of their travels, and presents his own pupil. Where is such another passage to be found in English poetry? It surpasses Cowper's celebrated strain on the same subject.

"In flow'd at once a gay embroider'd race,And titt'ring push'd the pedants off the place:Some would have spoken, but the voice was drown'dBy the French horn, or by the op'ning hound.The first came forwards with as easy mien,As if he saw St James's and the Queen.When thus the attendant Orator begun;Receive, great Empress! thy accomplish'd son:Thine from the birth, and sacred from the rod,A dauntless infant! never scar'd with God.The sire saw, one by one, his virtues wake;The mother begg'd the blessing of a rake.Thou gav'st that ripeness which so soon began,And ceas'd so soon, he ne'er was boy nor man;Through school and college, thy kind cloud o'ercast,Safe and unseen the young Æneas past;Thence bursting glorious, all at once let down,Stunn'd with his giddy larum half the town.Intrepid then, o'er seas and lands he flew;Europe he saw, and Europe saw him too.There all thy gifts and graces we display,Thou, only thou, directing all our way!To where the Seine, obsequious as she runs,Pours at great Bourbon's feet her silken sons;Or Tiber, now no longer Roman, rolls,Vain of Italian arts, Italian souls:To happy convents, bosom'd deep in vines,Where slumber abbots, purple as their wines;To isles of fragrance, lily silver'd vales,Diffusing languor in the panting gales:To lands of singing, or of dancing slaves,Love-whisp'ring woods, and lute-resounding waves.But chief her shrine where naked Venus keeps,And Cupids ride the Lion of the deeps;Where, eas'd of fleets, the Adriatic mainWafts the smooth eunuch and enamour'd swain.Led by my hand, he saunter'd Europe round,And gather'd ev'ry vice on Christian ground;Saw ev'ry court, heard ev'ry king declareHis royal sense, of op'ras or the fair;The stews and palace equally explor'd,Intrigu'd with glory, and with spirit whor'd;Tried all hors d'œuvres, all liqueurs defin'd,Judicious drank, and greatly-daring din'd;Dropt the dull lumber of the Latin store,Spoil'd his own language, and acquir'd no more;All classic learning lost on classic ground;And last turn'd Air, the echo of a sound!See now, half-cur'd, and perfectly well-bred,With nothing but a solo in his head;As much estate, and principle, and wit,As Jansen, Fleetwood, Cibber shall think fit;Stol'n from a duel, follow'd by a nun,And, if a borough choose him, not undone;See, to my country happy I restoreThis glorious youth, and add one Venus more.Her too receive, (for her my soul adores,)So may the sons of sons of sons of whores,Prop thine, O Empress! like each neighbour throne,And make a long posterity thy own.Pleas'd she accepts the hero, and the dameWraps in her veil, and frees from sense of shame."

A set of pure idlers appear loitering about. Annius, an antiquary, begs to have them made over to him, to turn into virtuosos. Mummius, another antiquary, quarrels with him, and the goddess reconciles them. The minute naturalists follow "thick as locusts."

"Each with some wondrous gift approach'd the Power,A nest, a toad, a fungus, or a flower."

A florist lodges a heavy complaint against an entomologist. The singular beauty of the pleading on both sides has often been noticed, and by the best critics, from Thomas Gray to Thomas De Quincey.

"The first thus open'd: Hear thy suppliant's call,Great Queen, and common mother of us all!Fair from its humble bed I rear'd this flow'r,Suckl'd, and cheer'd with air, and sun, and show'r,Soft on the paper ruff its leaves I spread,Bright with the gilded button tipt its head.Then thron'd in glass, and nam'd it Caroline:Each maid cry'd, Charming; and each youth, Divine!Did Nature's pencil ever blend such rays,Such very'd light in one promiscuous blaze?Now prostrate! dead! behold that Caroline:No maid cries charming! and no youth divine!And lo the wretch! whose vile, whose insect lustLaid this gay daughter of the Spring in dust,Oh punish him, or to th' Elysian shadesDismiss my soul, where no carnation fades.He ceas'd, and wept. With innocence of mienThe accus'd stood forth, and thus address'd the Queen:"Of all th' enamel'd race, whose silv'ry wingWaves to the tepid zephyrs of the spring,Or swims along the fluid atmosphere,Once brightest shin'd this child of heat and air.I saw, and started from its vernal bow'rThe rising game, and chas'd from flow'r to flow'r.It fled, I follow'd, now in hope, now pain;It stopt, I stopt; it mov'd, I mov'd again.At last it fixed, 'twas on what plant it pleas'd,And where it fixed, the beauteous bird I seiz'd:Rose, or carnation, was below my care;I meddle, Goddess! only in my sphere.I tell the naked feet without disguise,And, to excuse it, need but show the prize;Whose spoils this paper offers to our eye,Fair ev'n death! this peerless butterfly."

The mighty mother cannot find it in her heart to pronounce a decision which must aggrieve one of such a devoted pair. She extols them both, and makes over to their joint care and tuition the fainéants aforesaid. The subject leads her into a more serious strain of thinking. There is an evident danger; for the studies which she recommends are studies of nature, and the study of nature tends to rise out of nature. The goddess, accordingly, is strenuous in cautioning her followers to keep within the pale of trifles, and of the sensible. The suggestion of the hazard fires a clerk, a metaphysician, who, on the behalf of the metaphysicians, undertakes for a theology that shall effectually shut out and keep down religion. Gordon, the translator of Tacitus, and publisher of the irreligious "Independent Whig," being mentioned by the orator of the metaphysicians with praise, under the name of Silenus, rises and advances, leading up, apparently, the Young England of the day. He presents them as liberated from priest-craft, and ready for drinking the cup of a "Wizard old," attached to the suite of the goddess. This "Magus" extends to them the cup of self-love.

"Which whoso tastes, forgets his former friends,Sire, ancestors, Himself."

There is philosophy enough in the last piece of oblivion.

Impudence, pure mild Stupidity, Self-conceit, Interest, the Accomplishment of Singing, under the auspicious smile of the goddess, take possession, sundrily, of her children; and the two great arts of Gastronomia, scientific Eating and Drinking.

The Queen confers her titles and degrees, assisted by the two universities. She then dismisses the assembly with a solemn charge:—

"Then, blessing all, Go, children of my care!To practice now from theory repair.All my commands are easy, short, and full;My sons! be proud, be selfish, and be dull.Guard my prerogative, assert my throne:This nod confirms each privilege your own.The cap and switch be sacred to his Grace;With staff and pumps the Marquis leads the race;From stage to stage the licens'd Earl may run,Pair'd with his fellow-charioteer, the Sun;The learned Baron butterflies design,Or draw to silk Arachne's subtle line;The Judge to dance his brother sergeant call!The Senator at cricket urge the ball;The Bishop stow (pontific luxury!)An hundred souls of turkeys in a pie;The sturdy Squire to Gallic masters stoop,And drown his lands and manors in a soup.Others import yet nobler arts from France,Teach kings to fiddle, and make senates dance.Perhaps more high some daring son may soar,Proud to my list to add one monarch more;And, nobly conscious, princes are but thingsBorn for first ministers, as slaves for kings,Tyrant supreme! shall three estates command,And make one mighty Dunciad of the land!"More she had spoke, but yawn'd—All Nature nods:What mortal can resist the yawn of gods?Churches and Chapels instantly it reach'd;(St James's first, for leaden G– preach'd;)Then catch'd the Schools; the Hall scarce kept awake;The Convocation gap'd, but could not speak:Lost was the Nation's sense, nor could be found,While the long solemn unison went round: Wide, andmore wide, it spread o'er all the realm;Ev'n Palinurus nodded at the helm;The vapour mild o'er each Committee crept;Unfinish'd treaties in each office slept;And chiefless Armies doz'd out the campaign;And Navies yawn'd for orders on the main."O Muse! relate, (for you can tell alone,Wits have short memories, and dunces none,)Relate who first, who last, resign'd to rest;Whose heads she partly, whose completely blest,What charms could faction, what ambition lull,The venal quiet, and intrance the dull;Till drown'd was Sense and Shame, and Right and Wrong—O sing, and hush the nations with thy song!""In vain, in vain—the all-composing hourResistless falls; the Muse obeys the pow'r.She comes! she comes! the sable throne beholdOf Night primeval, and of Chaos old!Before her fancy's gilded clouds decay,And all its varying rainbows die away.Wit shoots in vain its momentary fires,The meteor drops, and in a flash expires.As one by one, at dread Medea's strain,The sick'ning stars fade off the ethereal plain;As Argus's eyes, by Hermes' wand opprest,Clos'd one by one to everlasting rest,Thus at her felt approach, and secret might,Art after Art goes out, and all is night.See skulking Truth to her old cavern fled,Mountains of Casuistry heap'd o'er her head!Philosophy, that lean'd on Heav'n before,Shrinks to her second cause, and is no more.Physic of Metaphysic begs defence,And Metaphysic calls for aid on Sense!See Mystery to Mathematics fly!In vain! they gaze, turn giddy, rave, and die.Religion, blushing, veils her sacred fires,And unawares Morality expires.Nor public flame, nor private, dares to shine;Nor human spark is left, nor glimpse Divine;Lo! thy dread empire, Chaos! is restor'd;Light dies before thy uncreating word:Thy hand, great Anarch! lets the curtain fall;And universal Darkness buries All."

Mr Bowles, himself a true poet, thinks the Fourth Book the best. "The objects of satire," he says, "are more general and just: the one is confined to persons, and those of the most insignificant sort; the other is directed chiefly to things, such as faults of education, false habits, and false taste. In polished and pointed satire, in richness of versification and imagery, and in the happy introduction of characters, speeches, figures, and every sort of poetical ornament adapted to the subject, this Book yields, in my opinion, to none of Pope's writings of the same kind." Excellently well said. But what inconsistency in saying, at the same time, "These observations of Dr Warton are, in general, very just and sensible." And again, "I by no means think so meanly of it as Dr Warton." Meanly, indeed! Why, he has just told us he thinks it equal to any thing of the same kind Pope ever wrote. But the distinguished Wintonian chose to speak nonsense, rather than speak harshly of old Joe. What are Dr Warton's "in general very just and sensible observations?" "Our poet was persuaded by Dr Warburton, unhappily enough, to add a Fourth Book to his finished piece, of such a very different cast and colour, as to render it at last one of the most motley compositions there is, perhaps, any where to be found in the works of so exact a writer as Pope. For one great purpose of this Fourth Book (where, by the way, the hero does nothing at all) was to satirize and proscribe infidels and freethinkers, to leave the ludicrous for the serious, Grub Street for theology, the mock-heroic for metaphysics—which occasion a marvellous mixture and jumble of images and sentiments, pantomime and philosophy, journals and moral evidence, Fleet Ditch and the High Priori road, Curl and Clarke." That reads like a bit of a prize-essay by a bachelor of arts in the "College of the Goddess in the City." The Dunciad is rendered not only a motley, but, perhaps, the most motley composition of an exact writer, by a Book added to it when it was in a state of perfection—for as a Poem in Three Books, "it was clear, consistent, and of a piece." This is not the way to make a poem motley, nor a man. "Motley's the suit I wear," might have taught the Doctor better. They who don't like the Fourth Book can stop at the end of the Third, and then the Poem is motley no more. It is in a higher strain than the Three, and why not? The goddess had a greater empire than Warton, who was a provincial, had ever dreamt of in his philosophy; but, in Pope's wide imagination, it stood with all its realms. The hero had no more to say or to do—Cibber was banished to Cimmeria for life, to work in the mines—and Dulness had forgotten she ever saw his face.

"Then rose the seed of Chaos, and of Night,To blot out order, and extinguish light,Of dull and venal a new world to mould,And bring Saturnian days of lead and gold."

That long clumsy sentence about "a marvellous mixture and jumble of images and sentiments," &c. &c. &c., is pure nonsense. In itself, the Fourth Book is most harmoniously constructed as a work of art, and it rises out of, and ascends from the Third, a completed creation. To call that YAWN mock-heroic, would be profane—it is sublime!

"Speaking of the Dunciad," continues the Doctor, "as a work of art, in a critical, not religious light, I must venture to affirm, that the subject of this Fourth Book was foreign and heterogeneous, and the addition of it is injudicious, ill-placed, and incongruous, as any of those similar images we meet with in Pulci or Ariosto." The addition of a Fourth Book to a poem, previously consisting of Three, is not an image at all, look at it how you will, and cannot therefore be compared with "any of those dissimilar images we meet with in Pulci or Ariosto." We much admire Pulci and Ariosto, especially Ariosto, but they and their dissimilar images have no business here; and were Dr Joseph alive any where in the neighbourhood, we should whistle in his ear not to be so ostentatious in displaying his Italian literature, which was too thin to keep out the rain.

"It is," he keeps stuttering on, "like introducing a crucifix into one of Teniers's burlesque conversation pieces." We see no reason why a crucifix should not be in the room of a good Catholic during a burlesque conversation; and Teniers, if he never have, might have painted one in such a piece without offence, had he chosen to do so; but the question we ask, simply is, what did Doctor Joseph Warton mean? Just nothing at all.

"On the whole," stammereth the Doctor further on, "the chief fault of the Dunciad is the violence and vehemence of its satire." The same fault may be found with vitriolic acid, nay, with Richardson's Ultimate Result. No doubt, that for many domestic purposes water is preferable—for not a few, milk—and for some, milk and water. But not with that latter amalgam did Hannibal force his way through the Alps.

But, softly—the Doctor compares the violence and vehemence of Pope's satire—no—not the violence and vehemence, but the height—to water—but to water rare among the liquid elements. "And the excessive height to which it is carried, and which therefore I may compare to that marvellous column of boiling water near Mount Hecla in Iceland, thrown upwards, above ninety feet, by the force of subterraneous fire." And he adds in a note, to please the incredulous, "Sir Joseph Banks, our great philosophical traveller, had the satisfaction of seeing this wonderful phenomenon."

"What are the impressions," eloquently asks the inspired Joseph "left upon the mind after a perusal of this poem? Contempt, aversion vexation, and anger. No sentiments that enlarge, ennoble, move, or mend the heart! Insomuch so, that I know a person whose name would be an ornament to these papers, if I were suffered to insert it, who, after reading a book of the Dunciad, always soothes himself, as he calls it, by turning to a canto of the Faery Queene." There is no denying that satire is apt to excite the emotions the Doctor complains of, and few more strongly than the Dunciad. Yet what would it be without them—and what should we be? But other emotions, too, are experienced at some of the games; and some of an exalted kind, by innumerable passages throughout the poem. Were it not so, this would be a saturnine world indeed. Would we had had the name of the wise gentleman, that it might ornament these papers, who so frequently indulged in "contempt, aversion, vexation, and anger" over Pope, that he might soothe himself, as he called it, with Spenser. We wonder if he occasionally left the bosom of the Faery Queene for that of the Goddess of Dulness.

"This is not the case with that very delightful poem Mac-Flecnoe, from which Pope has borrowed many hints and images and ideas. But Dryden's poem was the offspring of contempt, and Pope's of indignation; one is full of mirth, and the other of malignity. A vein of pleasantry is uniformly preserved through the whole of Mac-Flecnoe, and the piece begins and ends in the same key." That very beautiful and delightful poem, Mac-Flecnoe! That very pretty and agreeable waterfall, Niagara! That very elegant and attractive crater of Mount Vesuvius! That very interesting and animated earthquake, vulgarly called the Great Earthquake at Lisbon! Having ourselves spoken of the good-humour of Dryden, (some twenty pages back, about the middle of this article,) we must not find fault with Warton for saying that a vein of pleasantry is preserved through the whole of Mac-Flecnoe; but what thought Mac-Flecnoe himself? "Ay, there's the rub." Then what a vein of pleasantry is preserved through the whole of Og! So light and delicate is the handling, that you might be charmed into the soft delusion, that you beheld Christopher with his Knout.

"Since the total decay," innocently exclaims this estimable man, "was foretold in the Dunciad, how many very excellent pieces of criticism, poetry, history, philosophy, and divinity, have appeared in this country, and to what a degree of perfection has almost every art, either useful or elegant, been carried?" Mr Bowles—mirabile dictu—backs his old schoolmaster against the goddess. "Can it be thought," says the Canon—standing up for the age of Pope himself—"that this period was enlightened by Young, Thomson, Glover, and many whose characters reflected equal lustre on religion, morals, and philosophy? But such is satire, when it is not guided by truth." All this might have been said in fewer words—"Look At Blackwood's Magazine." There is not, in the Dunciad itself, an instance of such stupidity recorded, as this indignant attribution of blindness to the present, and to the future, "as far off its coming shone," to "the seed of Chaos and old night," by two divines, editors both of the works of Alexander Pope, Esq. in eight (?) and in ten volumes.

Lord Kames, in his Elements of Criticism, urges an objection to the opening of the Dunciad, which, if sustained, is sufficient to prove the whole poem vicious on beginning to end. "This author (Pope) is guilty of much greater deviation from the rule. Dulness may be imagined a Deity or Idol, to be worshipped by bad writers; but then some sort of disguise is requisite, some bastard virtue must be bestowed, to give this Idol a plausible appearance. Yet, in the Dunciad, Dulness, without the least disguise, is made the object of worship. The mind rejects such a fiction as unnatural." Warburton meets this objection with his usual fierté and acumen. "But is there no bastard virtue in the mighty Mother of so numerous an offspring, which she takes care to bring to the ears of kings? Her votaries would, for this single virtue, prefer her influence to Apollo and the Nine Muses. Is there no bastard virtue in the peace of which the poet makes her the author?—'The goddess bade Britannia sleep.' Is she not celebrated for her beauty, another bastard virtue?—'Fate this fair idol gave.' One bastard virtue the poet hath given her; which, with these sort of critics, might make her pass for a wit; and that is, her love of a joke—'For gentle Dulness ever loved a joke.' Her delight in games and races is another of her bastard virtues, which would captivate her nobler sons, and draw them to her shrine; not to speak of her indulgence to young travellers, whom she accompanies as Minerva did Telemachus. But of all her bastard virtues, her FREE-THINKING, the virtue which she anxiously propagates amongst her followers in the Fourth Book, might, one would think, have been sufficient to have covered the poet from this censure. But had Mr Pope drawn her without the least disguise, it had not signified a rush. Disguised or undisguised, the poem had been neither better nor worse, and he has secured it from being rejected as unnatural by ten thousand beauties of nature." This is too Warburtonian—and Lord Kames must be answered after another fashion, by Christopher North.

What would his lordship have? That she should be called by some other more specious name? By that of some quality to which writers and other men do aspire, and under the semblance of which Dulness is actually found to mask itself—as Gravity, Dignity, Solemnity? Why, two losses would thus be incurred. First, the whole mirth of the poem, or the greater part of it, would be gone. Secondly, the comprehensiveness of the present name would be forfeited, and a more partial quality taken.

The vigour and strength of the fiction requires exactly what Pope has done—the barefaced acceptance of Dulness as the imperial power. The poet acts, in fact, under a logical necessity. She is really the goddess under whose influence and virtue they, her subjects, live; whose inspiration sustains and governs their actions. But it would be against all manners that a goddess should not be known and worshipped under her own authentic denomination. To cheat her followers out of their worship, by showing herself to them under a diversity of false appearances, would have been unworthy of her divinity.

As to the probability of the fiction, the answer is plain and ready. Nobody asks for probability. Far otherwise. The bravery of the jest is its improbability. There is a wild audacity proper to the burlesque Epos which laughs at conventional rules, and the tame obligations of ordinary poetry. The absurd is one legitimate source of the comic.

For example, are the Games probable? Take the reading to sleep—which is purely witty—a thing which the poet does not go out of his way to invent. It lies essentially on the theme, being a literary αγων and it is indeed only that which is continually done, (oh, us miserable!) thrown into poetical shape. But it is perfectly absurd and improbable, done in the manner in which it is represented—not therefore to be blamed, but therefore to be commended with cachinnation while the world endures.

The truth is, that the Dunces are there, not for the business of saying what they think of themselves, or not that alone, but they must say that which we think of them. They must act from motives from which men do not act. They must aspire to be dull, and be proud of their dulness. They must emulate one another's dulness, or they are unfaithful votaries. In short, they are poetically made, and should be so made, to do, consciously and purposely, that which, in real life, they do undesignedly and unawares.

Lord Kames goes wrong—and very far wrong indeed—though Warburton was not the man to set him right—through applying to a composition extravagantly conceived—an epic extravaganza—rules of writing that belong to a sober and guarded species. In a comedy, you make a man play the fool without his knowing that he is one; because that is an imitation of human manners. And if you ironically praise the virtues of a villain, you keep the veil of irony throughout. You do not now and then forget yourself, and call him a villain by that name. But the spirit and rule of the poem here is, that discretion and sobriety are thrown aside. Here is no imitation of manners—no veil. The persons of the poem, under the hand of the poet, are something in the condition of the wicked ghosts who come before the tribunal of the Gnossian Rhadamanthus; and whom he, by the divine power of his judgment-seat, constrains to bear witness against themselves. The poor ghosts do it, knowing that they condemn themselves. Here the mirth of the poet makes the Dull glorify themselves by recounting each misdeed under its proper appellation.