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Thence to the banks where rev'rend barda repose, They led him soft; each rev'rend bard arose ; And Milbourn chief, deputed by the rest, Gave him the cassock, surcingle, and vest.

350

"Receive (he said) these robes which once were mine, "Dulness is sacred in a sound divine."

He ceas'd, and spread the robe; the crowd confess The rev'rend Flamen in his lengthen'd dress.

stand,

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Around him wide a sable army
A low-born, cell-bred, selfish, servile band,
Prompt or to guard or stab, or saint or damn,
Heav'n's Swiss, who fight for any God, or man.
Through Lud's fam'd gates, along the well-known

Fleet,

Rolls the black troop, and overshades the street, 360 Till

VER. 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 with that of the gentlemen of the Dunciad against our author, as will be seen in the parallel of Mr. Dryden and him. Append. WARBURTON.

VER 359. Lud's fam'd gates, "King Lud repairing the city, called it after his own name, Lud's Town; the strong gate which he built in the west part, he likewise, for his own honour, named Ludgate. In the year 1260, this gate was beautified with images of Lud and other kings. Those images in the reign of Edward VI. had their heads smitten off, and were otherwise defaced by unadvised folks. Queen Mary did set new heads upon their old bodies again. The 28th of Queen Elizabeth the same gate was clean taken down, and newly and beautifully builded, with images of Lud and others, as afore." Stowe's Survey of London. WARBURTON,

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 stopp'd the Goddess, and in pomp proclaims,
A gentler exercise to close the games.

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

366

"Which most conduce to sooth the soul in slumbers,

66

My H-ley's periods, or my Blackmore's num

bers;

"Attend the trial we propose to make :

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"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 pow'rs to sit

66

Judge of all present, past, and future wit; "To cavil, censure, dictate, right or wrong,

❝ Full and eternal privilege of tongue."

375

Three college sophs, and three pert templars

came,

The same their talents, and their tastes the same; 380 Each prompt to query, answer, and debate,

And smit with love of poesy and prate.

The pond'rous books two gentle readers bring;
The heroes sit, the vulgar form a ring;

The clam'rous crowd is hush'd with mugs of mum,

Till all tun'd equal, send a genʼral hum.

386

VOL. IV.

N

Then

Then mount the clerks, and in one lazy tone
Thro' the long, heavy, painful page drawl on;
Soft creeping, words on words, the sense compose,
At ev'ry line they stretch, they yawn, they doze. 390
As to soft gales top-heavy pines bow low

395

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 drowzy 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 Chrift's No kingdom here.

400 Who

VER. 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. But this gentleman since made himself much more eminent, and personally well known to the greatest statesmen of all parties, as well as to all the courts of law in this nation. WARBURTON.

VER. 399. in the first edit, it was,

Collins and Tindall, prompt at priests to jeer.

VER. 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 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 mutandis, against that very person. WARBURTON.

Who sate the nearest, by the words o'ercome,

Slept first; the distant nodded to the hum.

[lies

Then down are roll'd the books; stretch'd o'er 'em

Each gentle clerk, and mutt'ring 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 mid-most the nutation spreads

405

Round and more round, o'er all the sea of heads.

410

At last Centlivre felt her voice to fail,
Motteux himself unfinish'd left his tale,
Boyer the state, and Law the stage gave o'er,
Morgan and Mandevil could prate no more;

Norton

VER. 400. Christ's No kingdom here, &c.] This is said by Curl, Key to Dunc. to allude to a sermon of a reverend bishop. WARBURTON.

VER. 411. Centlivre] Mrs. Susanna Centlivre, wife to Mr. Centlivre, Yeoman of the Mouth to His Majefty. She writ many plays, and a song (says Mr. Jacob, vol. i. p. 32.) before she was seven years old. She also writ a ballad against Mr. Pope's Homer, before he began it.

VER. 413. in the first edit. it was, -s and T

T.

Nor*** talk'd, nor S

WARBURTON.

the church and state gave o'er, whisper'd more.

VER. 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. Mr. Law affirmed, "The playhouse is the temple of the devil; the peculiar pleasure of the devil; where all they who go yield to the devil; where all the laughter is a laughter among devils; and all who are there are hearing music in the very porch

Norton, from Daniel and Ostroea sprung,

41.5

Bless'd with his father's front, and mother's tongue, Hung silent down his never-blushing head;

And all was hush'd, as Folly's self lay dead.

Thus the soft gifts of sleep conclude the day,
And stretch'd on bulks, as usual, poets lay.
Why should I sing, what bards the nightly muse
Did slumb❜ring visit, and convey to stews;

420

Who

of hell." To which Mr. Dennis replied, that " There is every jot as much difference between a true play, and one made by a Poetaster, as between two religious books, the Bible and the Alcoran." Then he demonstrates, that "All those who had written against the stage were Jacobites and Non-jurors; and did it always at a time when something was to be done for the Pretender." Mr. Collier published his Short View when France declared for the Chevalier; and his Dissuasive, just at the great storm, when the devastation which that hurricane wrought, had amazed and astonished the minds of men, and made them obnoxious to melancholy and desponding thoughts. Mr. Law took the opportunity to attack the stage upon the great preparations he heard were making abroad, and which the Jacobites flattered themselves were designed in their favour. And as for Mr. Bedford's Serious Remonstrance, though I know nothing of the time of publishing, yet I dare to lay odds it was either upon the Duke d'Aumont's being at Somerset-house, or upon the late Rebellion. DENNIS, Stage defended against Mr. Law, p. ult. WARBURTON.

VER. 414. Morgan] A writer against religion, distinguished no otherwise from the rabble of his tribe, than by the pompousness of his title, of a Moral Philosopher. WARBURTON.

Ibid. Mandevil] 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. WARBURTON.

VER. 415. Norton,] Norton De Foe, said to be the natural offspring of the famous Daniel De Foe, one of the authors of the "Flying Post."

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