Perfume to you, to me is Excrement. But hear me further-Japhet, 'tis agreed, Writ not, and Chartres 1 scarce could write or read, But Pens can forge, my Friend, that cannot write; 185 195 Th' Affront is mine, my friend, and should be yours. 200 Who think a Coxcomb's Honour like his Sense; Mine, as a Friend to ev'ry worthy mind; P. So proud, I am no Slave: So odd, my Country's Ruin makes me grave. 205 Safe from the Bar, the Pulpit, and the Throne, 210 Yet touch'd and sham'd by Ridicule alone. O sacred weapon! left for Truth's defence, The Muse may give thee, but the Gods must guide: . All that makes Saints of Queens, and Gods of Kings. .215 220 225 Of making those who fear not God, fear HIM. Lord Hervey's Difference between Verbal and Practical Virtue, &c.] 5 Cobwebs] Weak and slight sophistry against virtue and honour. Thin colours over vice, as unable to hide the light of Truth, as cobwebs to shade the sun. P. Like the last Gazette, or the last Address 1. When black Ambition stains a public Cause 2, 230 Not so, when diadem'd with rays divine, Touch'd with the Flame that breaks from Virtue's Shrine, And may descend to Mordington from STAIR 5: 240 Let Envy howl, while Heav'n's whole Chorus sings, And bark at Honour not conferr'd by Kings; 245 250 After v. 227 in the MS. 'Where's now the Star that lighted Charles tó -With that which follow'd Julius to the skies. 2 When black Ambition, etc.] The cause of Cromwell in the civil war of England; (v. 229) of Louis XIV. in his conquest of the Low Countries. P. [Waller's Panegyric to my Lord Protector was written about 16:4.] 3 Nor Boileau turn the Feather to a Star.] See his Ode on Namur; where (to use his own words) "il a fait un Astre de la Plume blanche que le Roy porte ordinairement à son Chapeau, et qui est en effet une espèce de Comète, fatale à nos ennemis." P. 4 Anstis] The chief Herald at Arms. It is the custom, at the funeral of great peers, tcast into the grave the broken staves and ensigns of honour. P. 5 Stair] John Dalrymple, Earl of Stair, Knight of the Thistle; served in all the wars 255 under the Duke of Marlborough; and afterwards as Ambassador in France. P. [Bennet, who supplies the blanks in v. 239 by the names of Kent and Grafton has 'some notion that Lord Mordington kept a gaming-house.'] 6 Hough and Digby] Dr John Hough, Bishop of Worcester, and the Lord Digby. The one an assertor of the Church of England in opposition to the false measures of King James II. The other as firmly attached to the cause of that King. Both acting out of principle, and equally men of honour and virtue. P. 7 Ver. 255 in the MS. Quit, quit these themes, and write Essays on Man. This was the last poem of the kind printed by our author, with a resolution to publish no more; but to enter thus, in the most plain and solemn manner he could, a sort of PROTEST against that insuperable corruption and depravity of manners, which he had been so unhappy as to live to see. Could he have hoped to have amended any, he had continued those attacks; but bad men were grown so shameless and so powerful, that Ridicule was become as unsafe as it was ineffectual. The Poem raised him, as he knew it would, some enemies; but he had reason to be satisfied with the approbation of good men, and the testimony of his own conscience. P. THE DUNCIAD. [IT may fairly be doubted whether the mystification in which every step connected with the publication of the various editions of the Dunciad was intentionally involved by Pope, has not answered an end beyond that proposed to himself by the poet, and provided a tangle of literary difficulties, which no learned ingenuity will ever suffice entirely to unravel. In the second volume of Notes and Queries for 1854 will be found an animated and sustained controversy on the subject, which even the editorial summing-up leaves to a certain degree in suspenso. It is therefore necessary in the following Remarks to confine ourselves to such an enumeration of editions as will suffice to indicate the main history of the work. The earliest known edition of the Dunciad (in three Books), and in all probability the earliest actual edition, was published in May 1728. It bore the frontispiece of an Owl. The Edition with the notes Variorum and the Prolegomena of Martinus Scriblerus (accompanied by the Letter to the Publisher, infra, p. 355, signed William Cleland) appeared in 1729. It bore the vignette of an ass laden with a pile of books1, with an owl perched on the top of these. It contained nearly all the pieces with which the poem is surrounded in subsequent editions 2, though these were afterwards varied as to both length and arrangement. The New Dunciad, 'as it was found in the year 1741,' appeared in 1742; and this is the first edition of the Fourth Book. The edition forming the third volume of Dodsley's edition of Pope's Works, in which Colley Cibber was by mere 'proclamation' (see p. lv.) substituted as hero for Theobald, appeared in 1743; and in the same year was published an edition 'according to the complete copy found in the year 1742,' which contained Warburton's Dissertation under the name of Ricardus Aristarchus, on the Hero of the Poem, and an Advertisement by the same hand (for which see p. 360). It is uncertain what amount of influence should be ascribed to Swift upon the gradual growth of the original idea of the Dunciad. 'Without you,' Pope wrote to Swift, Nov. 12th, 1728, 'the poem had never been.' It cannot however be doubted that the original idea itself was Pope's own, except in so far as it was founded upon the supposed contents of the Margites ascribed to Homer (see note to p. 361), and upon Dryden's satire of MacFlecknoe. But MacFlecknoe (like Margites as it would seem) is only a Satire upon one dull poet; Pope from the first appears to have had a wider scheme; for in his correspondence with Bolingbroke and Swift the embryo poem is mentioned under the titles of Dulness,' or the 'Progress of Dulness.' Mr Carruthers points out that the date of the action of the poem is 1720, when Sir George Thorold was Lord Mayor; and that this circumstance and the introduction of several dunces long dead 'seem to point to a period anterior to 1727' as the time when Pope commenced to work out his conception. In 1727, however, when Swift was in England, the main labour of the execution was accomplished; and to Swift, who had watched over its birth and influenced its character, the first complete edition (that of April 1729) was duly dedicated. The prolego [The works of Welsted, Ward, Dennis, Theobald, Oldmixon and others, and the Mist's Journal being labelled with their authors' names.] 2 [The 'Testimonies of Authors,' arguments and indices.] |
