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60

Immortal Rich! 59 how calm he sits at ease
'Mid snows of paper, and fierce hail of peace;
And proud his mistress' orders to perform,
Rides in the whirlwind, and directs the storm,
But lo! to dark encounter in mid air
New wizards rise; I see my Cibber there!
Booth in his cloudy tabernacle shrined,
On grinning dragons thou shalt mount the wind.
Dire is the conflict, dismal is the din,
Here shouts all Drury, there all Lincoln's-inn ;
Contending theatres our empire raise,

Alike their labours, and alike their praise.

And are these wonders, son, to thee unknown ? Unknown to thee? These wonders are thy own.61

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59 Mr. John Rich, master of the Theatre Royal in Covent Garden, was the first that excelled this way.

60 The history of the foregoing absurdities is verified by himself, in these words. (Life, chap. xv.) "Then sprung forth that succession of monstrous medleys that have so long infested the stage, which arose upon one another alternately at both houses, out-vying each other in expense." He then proceeds to excuse his own part in them, as follows: "If I am asked why I assented? I have no better excuse for my error than to confess I did it against my conscience, and had not virtue enough to starve. Had Henry IV. of France a better for changing his religion? I was still in my heart, as much as he could be, on the side of truth and sense; but with this difference, that I had their leave to quit them when they could not support me.-But let the question go which way it will, Harry IVth has always been allowed a great man." This must be confessed a full answer, only the question still seems to be, 1. How the doing a thing against one's conscience is an excuse for it? and 2dly, It will be hard to prove how he got the leave of truth and sense to quit their service, unless he can produce a certificate that he ever was in it. [Booth and Cibber were joint managers of Drury Lane, but they yielded to the vulgar taste with great reluctance, and never appeared personally in the pantomimes. Cibber says, they used them only as crutches for their weakest plays.]

61 In the former edit. followed,

"For works like these let deathless journals tell
None but thyself can be thy parellel."

a

[The latter of these lines Pope, in a note afterwards suppressed, terms ": marvellous line of Theobald's, unless the play called the Double Falsehood be (as he would have it believed) Shakspeare's." This heresy, never general, has long been exploded.]

These Fate reserved to grace thy reign divine,
Foreseen by me, but ah! withheld from mine.
In Lud's old walls though long I ruled, renown'd
Far as loud Bow's stupendous bells resound;
Though my own aldermen conferr'd the bays,
To me committing their eternal praise,
Their full-fed heroes, their pacific mayors,
Their annual trophies, and their monthly wars :
Though long my party built on me their hopes,63
For writing pamphlets, and for roasting popes; 64
Yet lo! in me what authors have to brag on!
Reduced at last to hiss in my own dragon.
Avert it, Heaven! that thou, my. Cibber, e'er
Should'st wag a serpent-tail in Smithfield fair;

62

Like the vile straw that's blown about the streets,
The needy poet sticks to all he meets,
Coach'd, carted, trod upon, now loose, now fast,
And carried off in some dog's tail at last.
Happier thy fortunes! like a rolling stone,
Thy giddy dulness still shall lumber on,
Safe in its heaviness, shall never stray,6
But lick up every blockhead in the way.

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62 On the Lord-mayor's day; and monthly wars in the Artillery-ground. 63 Settle, like most party-writers, was very uncertain in his political principles. He was employed to hold the pen in the character of a popish successor, but afterwards printed his Narrative on the other side. He had managed the ceremony of a famous Pope-burning on Nov. 17, 1680, then became a trooper in King James's army, at Hownslow-heath. After the revolution he kept a booth at Bartholomew-fair, where, in the droll called St. George for England, he acted in his old age in a dragon of green leather of his own invention; he was at last taken into the Charter-house, and there died, aged sixty years.

[He was much older. Settle was born at Dunstable, in Bedfordshire, in 1848 in 1666 he was entered as a commoner at Trinity College, Cambridge; and he died in the Charter-house in 1724. He was seventy-six at the time of his death.]

64 In the former edit. followed,

"Different our parties, but with equal grace
The goddess smiles on whig and tory race."

65 In the former edition,

"Too safe in inborn heaviness to stray;
And lick up every blockhead in the way.

L'Thy

Thee shall the patriot, thee the courtier taste,66
And every year be duller than the last.
Till raised from booths, to theatre, to court,
Her seat imperial Dulness shall transport.
Already Opera prepares the way,
The sure forerunner of her gentle sway;

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SETTLE SHOWING CIBBER THE GLORIES OF HIS REIGN.

Let her thy heart, next drabs and dice, engage,
The third mad passion of thy doting age.

Thy dragons, magistrates, and peers shall taste,
And from each shrew rise duller than the last.
Till raised from booths," &c.

66 It stood in the first edition with blanks, ** and **. Concanen was sure, "they must needs mean nobody but King George and Queen Caroline; and said he would insist it was so, till the poet cleared himself by filling up the blanks otherwise, agreeably to the context, and consistent with his allegiance." Pref. to a collection of verses, essays, letters, &c., against Mr. P. printed for A. Moore, p. 6.

Teach thou the warbling Polypheme to roar,67
And scream thyself, as none e'er scream'd before!
To aid our cause, if Heaven thou can'st not bend,
Hell thou shalt move; for Faustus is our friend:
Pluto with Cato thou for this shall join,
And link the Mourning Bride to Proserpine.68
Grub-street! thy fall should men and gods conspire,

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Thy stage shall stand, ensure it but from fire.69
Another Eschylus appears! prepare 70

For new abortions, all ye pregnant fair!

In flames, like Semele's be brought to bed,71
While opening hell spouts wild-fire at your head.
Now Bavius take the poppy from thy brow,
And place it here! here all ye heroes bow!
This, this is he, foretold by ancient rhymes:
Th' Augustus born to bring Saturnian times.72
Signs following signs lead on the mighty year!
See the dull stars roll round and re-appear.

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67 He translated the Italian Opera of Polisemo; but unfortunately lost the whole gist of the story. The Cyclops asks Ulysses his name, who tells him his name is Noman: After his eye is put out, he roars and calls the brother Cyclops to his aid. They inquire, who has hurt him? he answers, Noman: whereupon they all go away again. Our ingenious translator made Ulysses answer, I take no name; whereby all that followed became unintelligible. Hence it appears that Mr. Cibber (who values himself on subscribing to the English Translation of Homer's Iliad) had not that merit with respect to the Odyssey, or he might have been better instructed in the Greek Pun-ology.

68 Names of miserable farces, which it was the custom to act at the end of the best tragedies, to spoil the digestion of the audience.

69 In Tibbald's farce of Proserpine, a corn-field was set on fire whereupon the other playhouse had a barn burnt down for the recreation of the spectators. They also rivalled each other in shewing the burning of hell-fire, in Dr. Faustus.

70 It is reported of Eschylus, that when his tragedy of the Furies was acted, the audience were so terrified, that the children fell into fits, and the bigbellied women miscarried.

71 See Ovid. Met. iii.

72

"Hic vir, hic est! tibi quem promitti sæpius audis,

Augustus Cæsar, divum genus; aurea condet

Secula qui rursus Latio, regnata per arva

Saturno quondam."-Virg. Æneid, vi.

Saturnian here relates to the age of Lead, mentioned book i. ver. 26.

See, see, our own true Phoebus wears the bays! 73
Our Midas sits Lord Chancellor of Plays!
On poet's tombs see Benson's titles writ!
Lo! Ambrose Philips is preferr'd for wit!
See under Ripley 74 rise a new White-hall,
While Jones' and Boyle's united labours fall: 75
While Wren with sorrow to the grave descends,76
Gay dies unpension'd with a hundred friends,
Hibernian politics, O Swift! thy fate;

And Pope's, ten years to comment and translate.77

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73 [In the edit. of 1729, the passage following this verse stands as follows:

"Beneath his reign, shall Eusden wear the bays,

Cibber preside Lord Chancellor of plays,

B* * sole judge of architecture sit

And namby-pamby be preferr'd for wit!

While naked mourns the dormitory wall,

And Jones' and Boyle's united labours fall;
While Wren with sorrow," &c.]

74 [Ripley the architect. See allusions to him in Moral Essays, iv. 18; and Imitations, Epist. ii. 1, 186.]

75 At the time when this poem was written, the banqueting-house at White-hall, the church and piazza of Covent-garden, and the palace and chapel of Somerset-house, the works of the famous Inigo Jones, had been for many years so neglected, as to be in danger of ruin. The portico of Coventgarden church had been just then restored and beautified at the expense of the Earl of Burlington; who at the same time, by his publication of the designs of that great Master and Palladio, as well as by many noble buildings of his own, revived the true taste of architecture in this kingdom.

76 [Sir Christopher Wren, in 1718, when he was in his eighty-fifth year, was shamefully deprived of his office of Surveyor of the Royal Works, and otherwise thwarted and annoyed by the administration of the day. He died in 1723, and, as is well known, was buried under the dome of his own magnificent fabric of St. Paul's.]

77"In the former editions thus:

"O Swift! thy doom,

And Pope's, translating three whole years with Broome."

On which was the following Note: "He concludes his irony with a stroke upon himself: for whoever imagines this a sarcasm on the other ingenious person, is surely mistaken. The opinion our author had of him was suffi ciently shown by his joining him in the undertaking of the Odyssey; in which Mr. Broome having engaged without any previous agreement, discharged his part so much to Mr. Pope's satisfaction, that he gratified him with the full sum of five hundred pounds, and a present of all those books for which his

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