How prologues into prefaces decay,
And these to notes are frittered quite away:
How index-learning turns no student pale,
Yet holds the eel of science by the tail;

How, with less reading than makes felons scape,
Less human genius than God gives an ape,

Small thanks to France, and none to Rome or
Greece,

A vast, vamped, future, old, revived, new piece, 'Twixt Plautus, Fletcher, Shakespeare, and Corneille,

Can make a Cibber, Tibbald, or Ozell.

The Goddess then, o'er his anointed head,
With mystic words, the sacred opium shed.
And lo! her bird (a monster of a fowl,
Something betwixt a heideggre and owl)
Perched on his crown. "All hail! and hail
again,

My son: the promised land expects thy reign.
Know, Eusden thirsts no more for sack or praise;
He sleeps among the dull of ancient days;
Safe, where no critics damn, no duns molest,
Where wretched Withers, Ward, and Gildon rest,
And high-born Howard, more majestic sire,
With fool of quality completes the quire.
Thou, Cibber! thou, his laurel shalt support,
Folly, my son, has still a friend at court.
Lift up your gates, ye princes, see him come!
Sound, sound, ye viols; be the cat-call dumb!
Bring, bring the madding bay, the drunken vine;
The creeping, dirty, courtly ivy join.

And thou! his aide-de-camp, lead on my sons,
Light-armed with points, antitheses, and puns.
Let bawdry, Billingsgate, my daughters dear,
Support his front, and oaths bring up the rear:
And under his, and under Archer's wing,
Gaming and Grub Street skulk behind the king.

"O! when shall rise a monarch all our own, And I, a nursing-mother, rock the throne; 'Twixt prince and people close the curtain draw, Shade him from light, and cover him from law; Fatten the courtier, starve the learned band, And suckle armies, and dry-nurse the land: Till senates nod to lullabies divine,

And all be sleep, as at an ode of thine."

She ceased. Then swells the chapel-royal throat:

"God save King Cibber! " mounts in every note. Familiar White's, "God save King Colley!" cries;

"God save King Colley!" Drury Lane replies: To Needham's quick the voice triumphal rode, But pious Needham dropt the name of God; Back to the devil the last echoes roll,

And "Coll!" each butcher roars at Hockley Hole.

So when Jove's block descended from on high (As sings thy great forefather Ogilby),

Loud thunder to its bottom shook the bog,
And the hoarse nation croaked, "God save King
Log!"

BOOK THE SECOND

ARGUMENT

The king being proclaimed, the solemnity is graced with public games, and sports of various kinds; not instituted by the hero, as by Æneas in Virgil, but for greater honour by the goddess in person (in like manner as the games Pythia, Isthmia, etc., were anciently said to be ordained by the gods, and as Thetis herself appearing, according to Homer, Odyss. xxiv. proposed the prizes in honour of her son Achilles). Hither flock the poets and critics, attended, as is but just, with their patrons and booksellers. The goddess is first pleased, for her disport, to propose games to the booksellers, and setteth up the phantom of a poet, which they contend to overtake. The races described, with their divers accidents. Next, the game for a poetess. Then follow the exercises for the poets, of tickling, vociferating, diving; The first holds forth the acts and practices of dedicators, the second of disputants and fustian poets, the third of profound, dark, and dirty party-writers. Lastly, for the critics, the goddess proposes (with great propriety) an exercise, not of their parts, but their patience, in hearing the works of two voluminous authors, one in verse, and the other in prose, deliberately read without sleeping; The various effects of which, with the several degrees and manners of the operation, are here set forth; till the whole number, not of critics only, but of spectators, actors, and all present, fall asleep, which naturally and necessarily ends the games.

BOOK II

HIGH on a gorgeous seat, that far out-shone
Henley's gilt tub, or Fleckno's Irish throne,
Or that where on her Curlls the public pours,

All-bounteous, fragrant grains and golden showers,

Great Cibber sate: The proud Parnassian sneer,
The conscious simper, and the jealous leer,
Mix on his look: All eyes direct their rays

On him, and crowds turn coxcombs as they gaze:
His peers shine round him with reflected grace:
New edge their dulness, and new bronze their
face.

So from the sun's broad beam in shallow urns Heaven's twinkling sparks draw light, and point their horns.

Not with more glee, by hands pontific crowned, With scarlet hats wide-waving circled round, Rome in her capitol saw Querno sit,

Throned on seven hills, the antichrist of wit. And now the queen, to glad her sons, proclaims,

By herald hawkers, high heroic games.

They summon all her race: an endless band
Pours forth, and leaves unpeopled half the land.
A motley mixture! in long wigs, in bags,
In silks, in crapes, in garters, and in rags,
From drawing-rooms, from colleges, from

garrets,

On horse, on foot, in hacks, and gilded chariots:
All who true dunces in her cause appeared,
And all who knew those dunces to reward.

Amid that area wide they took their stand, Where the tall May-pole once o'erlooked the Strand.

But now (so Anne and piety ordain)

A church collects the saints of Drury Lane.
With authors, stationers obeyed the call
(The field of glory is a field for all).

Glory, and gain, the industrious tribe provoke;
And gentle dulness ever loves a joke.
A poet's form she placed before their eyes,
And bade the nimblest racer seize the prize;
No meagre, muse-rid mope, adust and thin,
In a dun night-gown of his own loose skin;
But such a bulk as no twelve bards could raise,
Twelve starveling bards of these degenerate days.
All as a partridge plump, full-fed, and fair,
She formed this image of well-bodied air;
With pert flat eyes she windowed well its head:
A brain of feathers, and a heart of lead;
And empty words she gave, and sounding strain,
But senseless, lifeless! idol void and vain!
Never was dashed out, at one lucky hit,

A fool, so just a copy of a wit;

So like, that critics said, and courtiers swore,
A wit it was, and called the phantom Moore.
All gaze with ardour: some a poet's name,
Others a sword-knot and laced suit inflame.
But lofty Lintot in the circle rose:

"This prize is mine; who tempt it are my foes;
With me began this genius, and shall end."
He spoke and who with Lintot shall contend?
Fear held them mute. Alone, untaught to
fear,

Stood dauntless Curll, "Behold that rival here!