66

All look, all sigh, and call on Smedley lost;
Smedley" in vain resounds through all the coast.
Then essay'd; scarce vanish'd out of sight, 295
He buoys up instant, and returns to light;

He bears no tokens of the sabler streams,
And mounts far off among the swans of Thames.
True to the bottom, see Concanen creep,
A cold, long-winded native of the deep;
If perseverance gain the diver's prize,
Not everlasting Blackmore this denies :

300

No noise, no stir, no motion canst thou make,
Th' unconscious stream sleeps o'er thee like a lake.
Next plung'd a feeble, but a desperate pack, 305
With each a sickly brother at his back:

Sons of a day! just buoyant on the flood,
Then number'd with the puppies in the mud.

REMARKS.

meant the laureate, nothing was more absurd, no part agreeing with his character. The allegory evidently demands a person dipped in scandal, and deeply immersed in dirty work: whereas Mr. Eusden's writings rarely offended but by their length and multitude, and accordingly are taxed of nothing else in Book I. v. 102. But the person here mentioned, an Irishman, was author and publisher of many scurrilous pieces, in a Weekly Whitehall Journal, in the year 1722, in the name of Sir James Baker; and particularly whole volumes of abuse against Dr. Swift and Mr. Pope, called Gulliveriana and Alexandriana, printed in 8vo. 1728.

W.

v. 295. Then essay'd.] A gentleman of genius and spirit, who was secretly dipt in some papers of this sort, on whom our poet be. stows a panegyric instead of a satire, as deserving to be better employed than in party-quarrels and personal invectives.

v. 299. Concunen.] Matthew Concanen, an Irishman, bred to the law. Smedley (one of his brethren in enmity to Swift), in his Metamorphosis of Scriblerus, p.7, accuses him of " having boasted of what he had not written, but others had revised and done for him." He was author of several dull and dead scurrilities in the British and London Journals, and in a paper called The Speculatist. In a pamphlet called A Supplement to the Profound, he dealt very unfairly with our poet, not only frequently imputing to him Mr. Broome's verses (for which he might indeed seem in some degree accountable, having corrected what that gentleman did), but those of the Duke of Buckingham and others: to this rare piece somebody humorously caused him to take for his motto, De profundis clamavi. He was since a hired scribbler in the Daily Courant, where he poured forth much abuse against the Lord Bolingbroke and others; after which, this man was surprisingly promoted to admi mister justice and law in Jamaica.

W.

Ask ye their names? I could as soon disclose
The names of these blind puppies as of those.
Fast by, like Niobe, (her children gone)
Sits mother Osborne, stupified to stone!
And monumental brass this record bears,
"These are, ah no! these were the Gazetteers!"
Not so bold Arnall; with a weight of scull
Furious he dives, precipitately dull.

Whirlpools and storms his circling arms invest,
With all the might of gravitation blest.

No crab more active in the dirty dance,

310

315

Downward to climb, and backward to advance; 320
He brings up half the bottom on his head,
And loudly claims the journals and the lead.
The plunging prelate, and his ponderous grace,
With holy envy gave one layman place.

When lo! a burst of thunder shook the flood,
Slow rose a form in majesty of mud,
Shaking the horrors of his sable brows,
And each ferocious feature grim with ooze.
Greater he looks, and more than mortal stares;
Then thus the wonders of the deep declares.
First he relates how, sinking to the chin,

325

330

Smit with his mien, the mud-nymphs suck'd him in;
How young Lutetia, softer than the down;
Nigrina black, and Merdamante brown,

REMARKS.

v. 312. ---Osborne.] A name assumed by the eldest and gravest of these writers, who at last, being ashamed of his pupils, gave his paper over, and remained silent.

W.

v.315. Arnall.] William Arnall, bred an attorney, was a perfect genius in this sort of work. He began, under twenty, with furious party-papers; then succeeded Concanen in the British Journal. At the first publication of the Dunciad, he prevailed on the author not to give him his due place in it, by a letter professing his detestation of such practices as his predecessors. But since, by the most unexampled insolence, and personal abuse of several great men, the poet's particular friends, he most amply deserved a niche in the temple of Infamy: witness a paper called The Free Briton, a Dedication, intitled, To the Genuine Blunderer, 1732, and many others. He writ for hire, and valued himself upon it; not indeed without cause, it appearing that he received" for Free Britons, and other writings, in the space of four years, no less than 10,997 1. 6s. 8d. out of the Treasury.'"

W.

Vied for his love in jetty bowers below,
As Hylas fair was ravish'd long ago.

335

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Then sung, how shewn him by the nut-brown maids,
A branch of Styx here rises from the shades,
That tinctur'd as it runs with Lethe's streams,
And wafting vapours from the land of dreams,
(As under seas Alpheus' secret sluice
Bears Pisa's offerings to his Arethuse)
Pours into Thames; and hence the mingled wave
Intoxicates the pert, and lulls the grave:
Here brisker vapours o'er the Temple creep;
There all from Paul's to Aldgate drink and sleep.
Thence to the banks where reverend bards repose
They led him soft; each reverend bard arose;
And Milbourn chief, deputed by the rest,
Gave him the cassock, surcingle, and vest.
"Receive (he said) these robes which once were mine;
Dulness is sacred in a sound divine."

345

350

He ceas'd, and spread the robe; the crowd confess
The reverend flamen in his lengthen'd dress.
Around him wide a sable army stand,

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A low-born, cell-bred, selfish, servile band,
Prompt or to guard or stab, or saint or damn ;
Heaven's Swiss, who fight for any god or man. [Fleet,
Through Lud's fam'd gates, along the well-known
Rolls the black troop, and overshades the street, 360
Till showers of sermons, characters, essays,
In circling fleeces whiten all the ways:

So clouds, replenish'd from some bog below,
Mount in dark volumes, and descend in snow.
Here stopt the goddess; and in pomp proclaims 365
A gentler exercise to close the games.

Ye critics! in whose heads, as equal scales,
I weigh what author's heaviness prevails;

REMARKS.

v. 349. And Milbourn.] Luke Milbourn, a clergyman, the fairest of critics; who, when he wrote against Mr. Dryden's Virgil, did him justice in printing at the same time his own translations of him, which were intolerable. His manner of writing has a great resemblance to that of the gentlemen of the Dunciad against our auther.

W.

Which most conduce to soothe the soul in slumbers,
My H-nley's periods, or my Blackmore's numbers`;
Attend the trial we propose to make:

If there be man who o'er such works can wake,
Sleep's all-subduing charms who dares defy,
And boasts Ulysses' ear with Argus' eye:
To him we grant our amplest powers to sit
Judge of all present, past, and future wit;
To cavil, censure, dictate, right or wrong,
Full and eternal privilege of tongue."

370

375

Three college sophs, and three pert Templars came,
The same their talents, and their tastes the same;
Each prompt to query, answer, and debate,
And smit with love of poesy and prate.

The ponderous books two gentle readers bring;
The heroes sit, the vulgar form a ring.

381

386

The clamorous crowd is hush'd with mugs of mum,
Till all tun'd equal send a general hum.
Then mount the clerks, and in one lazy tone
Through the long, heavy, painful page drawl on;
Soft creeping words on words the sense compose.
At every line they stretch, they yawn, they doze. 390
As to soft gales top-heavy pines bow low
Their heads, and lift them as they cease to blow;
Thus oft they rear, and oft the head decline,
As breathe, or pause, by fits, the airs divine.
And now to this side, now to that they nod,
As verse, or prose, infuse the drowsy god.
Thrice Budgel aim'd to speak, but thrice supprest
By potent Arthur, knock'd his chin and breast.
Toland and Tindal, prompt at priests to jeer,
Yet silent bow'd to "Christ's no kingdom here." 400

REMARKS.

395

v. 397. Thrice Budgel aim'd to speak.] Famous for his speeches on many occasions about the South-sea scheme, &c. "He is a very ingenious gentleman, and hath written some excellent epilogues to plays, and one small piece on Love, which is very pretty. Jacob, Lives of Poets, vol. ii. p. 289.

W.

v. 399. Toland and Tindal.] Two persons, not so happy as to be obscure, who writ against the religion of their country. Toland, the author of the Atheist's Liturgy, called Pantheisticon, was a spy in pay to Lord Oxford. Tindal was author of The Rights of the

405

Who sat the nearest, by the words o'ercome,
Slept first; the distant nodded to the hum.
Then down are roll'd the books; stretch'd o'er 'em lies
Each gentle clerk, and muttering seals his eyes.
As what a Dutchman plumps into the lakes,
One circle first, and then a second, makes;
What Dulness dropt among her sons imprest
Like motion from one circle to the rest:
So from the midmost the nutation spreads

Round and more round, o'er all the "sea of heads."
At last Centlivre felt her voice to fail,

411

Motteux himself unfinish'd left his tale.

Boyer the state, and Law the stage gave o'er,

Morgan and Mandeville could prate no more;

Norton, from Daniel and Ostra sprung,

415

Bless'd with his father's front and mother's tongue,

REMARKS.

Christian Church, and Christianity as old as the Creation. He also wrote an abusive pamphlet against Earl S-, which was suppressed while yet in MS. by an eminent person, then out of the ministry, to whom he shewed it, expecting his approbation. This Doctor afterwards published the same piece, mutatis mutundis, against that very person.

W.

v. 411. Centlivre.] Mrs. Susannah Centlivre, wife to Mr. Centlivre, Yeoman of the Mouth to his Majesty. She writ many plays, and a song (says Mr. Jacob, vol. i. p. 82.) before she was seven years old. She also writ a ballad against Mr. Pope's Homer before he began it.

W.

v. 413. Boyer the state, and Law the stage gave o'er.] A. Boyer, a voluminous compiler of annals, political collections, &c.---William Law, A. M. wrote with great zeal against the stage; Mr. Dennis answered with as great. Their books were printed in 1726.

W.

v. 414. Morgan.] A writer against religion, distinguished no otherwise from the rabble of his tribe, than by the pompousness of his title; for having stolen his morality from Tindal, and his philosophy from Spinoza, he calls himself by the courtesy of England, a Moral Philosopher.

Ibid. Mandeville.] This writer, who prided himself as much in the reputation of an immoral philosopher, was author of a famous book called The Fable of the Bees; written to prove, that moral virtue is the invention of knaves, and Christian virtue the imposition of fools; and that vice is necessary, and alone sufficient, to render society flourishing and happy.

W.

v.415. Norton.] Norton de Foe, offspring of the famous Daniel; Fortes creantur fortibus: one of the authors of the Flying Post, in which Mr. P. had sometimes the honour to be abused with his betters; and of many hired scurrilities and daily papers, to whick he never set his name.