sight, or imperfect sense of things. It includes (as we see by the poet's own words) labour, industry, and some degrees of activity and boldness; a ruling principle not inert, but turning topsy-turvy the understanding, and inducing an anarchy or confused state of mind. This remark ought to be carried along with the reader throughout the work; and without this caution he will be apt to mistake the importance of many of the characters. as well as of the design of the poet. Hence it is, that some have complained he chooses too mean a subject, and imagined he employs himself like Domitian, in killing flies; whereas those who have the true key will find he sports with nobler quarry, and embraces a larger compass; or, (as one saith, on a like occasion) "Will see his work, like Jacob's ladder, rise, Its foot in dirt, its head amid the skies."-Bentl. Ver. 16. She ruled in native anarchy the mind.] The native anarchy of the mind is that state which precedes the time of reason's assuming the rule of the passions. But in that state, the uncontrolled violence of the passions would soon bring things to confusion, were it not for the intervention of Dulness, in this absence of reason; who, though she cannot regulate them like reason, yet blunts and deadens their vigour, and, indeed, produces some of the good effects of it: hence it is that Dulness has often the appearance of reason. This is the only good she ever did; and the poet takes particular care to tell it in the very introduction of his poem. It is to be observed, indeed, that this is spoken of the universal rule of Dulness in ancient days, but we may form an idea of it from her partial government in later times. DEAN SWIFT. Ver. 21. Whether thou choose Cervantes' serious air Or praise the court or magnify mankind,1 1 In the MS. it followed thus: "Or in the graver gown instruct mankind, Or silent let thy morals tell thy mind." 2 Ironicè, alluding to Gulliver's representations of both.-The next line relates to the papers of the Drapier against the currency of Wood's copper coin in Ireland, which, upon the great discontent of the people, his majesty was graciously pleased to recall. 3 Boeotia of old lay under the raillery of the neighbouring wits, as Ireland does now, though each of those nations produced one of the greatest wits and greatest generals of the age. [This note was displaced in the edition of 1743. The character of Boeotia was certainly redeemed by Pindar and Epaminondas; and Plutarch might also have been cited. The latter imputes the stupidity of the Boeotians to a cause never urged against the Irish-to their gross indulgence in animal food. The Irish wit, of course, was Swift; the general, the Earl of Ossory. Ireland has since, in Moore and Wellington, gained a glorious addition! The affair of Wood's half-pence, alluded to' by Pope, was a simple but successful party movement. The copper coinage was wanted for Ireland. Wood, in 1724, obtained a patent for coining half-pence and farthings to the value of £108,000. Sir Isaac Newton had reported favourably on the coins as to quality; but Swift, from hatred to Walpole's government, especially the administration of Irish affairs by Primate Boulter, and his secretary, Ambrose Philips, roused up a spirit of discontent and resistance among the people, and by his Drapier letters ultimately compelled government to abandon the scheme. The national pride was touched by the fact that neither the Lord-lieutenant nor the privy council of Ireland had been consulted on the subject; and Wood, it was reported, had obtained his patent by a bribe given to the king's mistress, the Duchess of Kendal. The contract itself was both just and legal, and Wood might have pleaded the precedent of the royal mint, for the moneyers there also contracted with the government for the coinage. But Swift's object stretched far beyond the " copper chains" of Ireland. country was neglected and oppressed under the British sway, and he burned to emancipate it-to let the British rulers see "that by the laws of God, of nature, and of nations, the Irish were and ought to be as free a people as their brethren in England." Pope alludes to Rabelais as the prototype of Swift. Voltaire said that, in the Tale of a Tub, Swift was Rabelais in his senses. Coleridge more happily characterises him as anima Rabelaisii habitans in siccothe soul of Rabelais dwelling in a dry place. Yet how marvellous is Swift in his insight into human nature-in the various and grotesque combinations of his wit-and in the tremendous power of his irony and invective!] His Ver. 31. BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL. Where o'er the gates, by his famed brother's hand, Mr. Caius Gabriel Cibber, father of the poet laureate. The two statues of the lunatics over the gates of Bedlam Hospital were done by him, and (as the son justly says of them) are no ill monuments of his fame as an artist. [The statues by Cibber are now in the hall of Bethlehem Hospital in St. George's Fields. One represents raving and the other melancholy madness. On the removal of the hospital to the present building, about 1815, the statues (which are not of brass, but stone painted,) were repaired by Bacon the sculptor. The conception and execution of the figures attest Cibber's genius and knowledge of art. It may illustrate the state of manners in Pope's time to mention here, that the old Bedlam was then a place of common resort, visited by the idle, the gay, and the curious, who paid a penny or twopence each for admission, and from this source a sum of about £400 per annum was derived. The "Tatler" classes Bedlam with the Lions in the Tower, the Tombs (Westminster Abbey), and the other places which are entertainments to raw minds. Pepys has an entry in his diary which might have served Pope : -"Stept into Bedlam, when I saw several poor miserable creatures in chains: one of them was mad with making verses."] THE CAVE OF POVERTY AND POETRY. Ver. 33. One cell there is, conceal'd from vulgar eye,1 Hence bards, like Proteus, long in vain tied down,3 1 The cell of poor Poetry is here very properly represented as a little unendowed hall in the neighbourhood of the magnific college of Bedlam, and as the surest seminary to supply those learned walls with professors; for there cannot be a plainer indication of madness than in men persisting to starve themselves and offend the public by scribbling, Escape in monsters, and amaze the town; when they might have benefited themselves and others in profitable and honest employments. The qualities and productions of the students of this private academy are afterwards described in this first book, as are also their actions throughout the second, by which it appears, how near allied dulness is to madness. This naturally prepares us for the subject of the third book, where we find them in union and acting in conjunction, to produce the catastrophe of the fourth; a mad poetical sibyl leading our hero through the regions of vision, to animate him in the present undertaking, by a view of the past triumphs of barbarism over science. one, 2 I cannot here omit a remark that will greatly endear our author to every who shall attentively observe that humanity and candour, which everywhere appears in him towards those unhappy objects of the ridicule of all mankind, the bad poets. He here imputes all scandalous rhymes, scurrilous weekly papers, base flatteries, wretched elegies, songs, and verses (even from those sung at court to ballads in the streets) not so much to malice or servility as to dulness, and not so much to dulness as to necessity: and thus, at the very commencement of his satire, makes an apology for all that are to be satirised. 3 Sunt quibus in plures jus est transire figuras: Neither Palæphatus, Phurnutus, nor Heraclides gives us any steady light into the mythology of this mysterious fable. If I be not deceived in a part of learning which has so long exercised my pen, by Proteus must certainly be meant a hackneyed town-scribbler; and by his transformations, the various disguises such a one assumes, to elude the pursuit of his irreconcilable enemy, the bailiff. Proteus is represented as one bred of the mud and slime of Egypt, the original soil of arts and letters: and what is a town-scribbler, but a creature made up of the excrements of luxurious science? By the change then into a boar is meant his character of a furious and dirty partywriter: the snake signifies a libeller; and the horns of the bull, the dilemmas of a polemical answerer. These are the three great parts he acts under; and when he has completed his circle he sinks back again, as the last change into a stone denotes, into his natural state of immovable stupidity. If I may expect thanks of the learned world for this discovery, I would by no means deprive that excellent critic of his share, who discovered before me, that in the character of Proteus was designed sophistam, magum, politicum, præsertim rebus sese accommodantem: which in English is, a political writer, a libeller, and a disputer, writing indifferently for or against every party in the state, every sect in religion, and every character in private life. See my Fables of Ovid explained.-ABBE BANIER. CURLL AND LINTOT. Ver. 40. Curll's chaste press and Lintot's rubric post, Two booksellers, of whom see book ii. The former was fined by the Court of King's Bench for publishing obscene books; the latter usually adorned his shop with titles in red letters. [Bernard Lintot was Pope's principal publisher, and displayed his favourite red lines on the title-pages of the Iliad and Odyssey, and on those of various editions of the poet's works. He was the Longman or Murray of his day, and having made a handsome fortune, and left his business to his son, he died high sheriff of Sussex, in 1736, aged sixty-cne. Edmund Curll was of a different stamp. He was audacious, unscrupulous, and shameless. In his reply to the Dunciad, he admitted the above offences, but attempted to defend his indecent publications by stating that they were medical treatises. He was confined five months in the King's Bench prison. He was also fined twenty marks, and set in the pillory for publishing a volume of Memoirs and Negotiations at the Courts of England, Vienna, Hanover, &c., which he had obtained, he said, from a fellow-prisoner in the King's Bench, John Kerr, Esq., of Kerrsland. This was in 1726. The readiness and alacrity with which Curll met Pope's repeated attacks, or threw out occasion for new ones, would suggest the idea that he enjoyed the conflict, and thought himself benefited by the notoriety which such warfare brought him. He considered himself quite a match for Pope in prose, and hurled at him his favourite motto, the Scotch proverb, Nemo me impune lacesset. The affair of the correspondence he looked upon as a complete triumph, and he occasionally sported with his formidable antagonist. In one of his impudent addresses, we find this ridiculous story: "The New Year's Gift, I sent by a special messenger to Mr. Pope at Twickenham, was a little book neatly bound in red Turkey leather, ruled, and the capital letters illuminated with gold and various colours), entitled Heures des Prières: dédie à Madame la Duchesse de Char tres. Avec les Sept. Pseaumes Pénitentieux. A Paris, 1696. This manual was likewise illustrated with four beautiful prints, one in particular representing David prostrate; in which part of the book, upon a label, was wrote the following lines: "As friends who of a criminal take leave, Curll died December 11, 1747, aged 72. His business had for some years before been carried on by his son, Henry Curll, whom Pope also attacked in a note, which he afterwards suppressed. In a letter to Martha Blount, Pope alludes to "Mr. Edmund Curll having been exercised in a blanket, and whipped at Westminster school by the boys, whereof (he adds), the common prints have given some account." The following letter in the St. James's Chronicle records the famous exploit: |