Teach thou the warbling Polypheme* to roar,
And scream thyself as none e'er scream'd before!
To aid our cause, if Heaven thou canst not bend,
Hell thou shalt move; for Faustus is our friend:
Pluto with Cato+ thou for this shalt join,
And link the Mourning Bride to Proserpine.
Grub-street! thy fall should men and gods conspire,
Thy stage shall stand, ensure it but from fire. ‡
Now, Bavius, take the poppy from thy brow,
And place it here! here all ye heroes bow!
This, this is he, foretold by ancient rhymes:
The Augustus born to bring Saturnian times.
Signs following signs lead on the mighty year
See! the dull stars roll round and reappear.
See, see, our own true Phoebus wears the bays!
Our Midas sits lord chancellor of plays!
On poets' tombs see Benson's titles writ !§
Lo! Ambrose Philips is preferr'd for wit!
See under Ripley rise a new Whitehall,
While Jones' and Boyle's united labours fall ! ||

While Wren with sorrow to the grave descends,
Gay ¶ dies unpensioned with a hundred friends,

*He translated the Italian opera of Polifemo; but unfortunately lost the whole jest of the story. The Cyclops asks Ulysses his name, who tells him his name is Noman. After his eye is put out, he roars and calls the brother Cyclops to his aid: They inquire who has hurt him? he answers Noman; whereupon they all go away again. Our ingenious translator made Ulysses answer, I take no name, whereby all that followed became unintelligible.

Names of miserable farces which it was the custom to act at the end of the best tragedies, to spoil the digestion of the audience.

In the farce of Proserpine a corn-field was set on fire; whereupon the other play-house had a barn burnt down for the recreation of the spectators. They also rivalled each other in shewing the burnings of hell-fire, in Dr Faustus.

Benson (surveyor of the buildings to his Majesty King George I.) gave in a report to the Lords, that their house and the Painted Chamber adjoining were in immediate danger of falling. Whereupon the Lords met in committee to appoint some other place to sit in, while the house should be taken down. But it being proposed to cause some other builders first to inspect it, they found it in very good condition. The Lords, upon this, were going upon an address to the King against Benson, for such a mis representation; but the Earl of Sunderland, then Secretary, gave them an assurance that his Majesty would remove him, which was done accordingly. In favour of this man, the famous Sir Christopher Wren, who had been architect to the Crown for above fifty years, who built most of the churches in London, laid the first stone of St Paul's, and lived to finish it, had been displaced from his employment at the age of near ninety years.

At the time when this poem was written, the banqueting-house of Whitehall, the church and piazza of Covent-garden, and the palace and chapel of Somerset House, the works of the famous Inigo Jones, had been for many years so neglected as to be in danger of ruin. The portico of Covent-garden church had been just then restored and beautified at the expense of the Earl of Burlington, who, at the same time, by his publication of the designs of that great master and Palladio, as well as by many noble buildings of his own, revived the true taste of architecture in this kingdom

See Mr Guy's fable of the " Hare and many Friends." This gentleman

Hibernian politics, O Swift! thy fate;

And Pope's ten years to comment and translate.
Proceed, great days! till learning fly the shore,
Till birch shall blush with noble blood no more,
Till Thames see Eton's sons for ever play,
Till Westminster's whole year be holiday,
Till Isis' elders reel, their pupils sport,
And Alma Mater lie dissolved in port!

Enough! enough! the raptured monarch cries,
And through the ivory gate the vision flies.

BOOK THE FOURTH.

ARGUMENT.

The poet being, in this book, to declare the completion of the prophecies mentioned at the end of the former, makes a new invocation; as the greater poets are wont, when some high and worthy matter is to be sung. He shews the goddess coming in her majesty, to destroy order and science, and to substitute the kingdom of the dull upon earth. How she leads captive the sciences, and silenceth the muses, and what they be who succeed in their stead. All her children, by a wonderful attraction, are drawn about her; and bear along with them divers others, who promote her empire by connivance, weak resistance, or discourage ment of arts; such as half-wits, tasteless admirers, vain pretenders, the flatterers of dunces, or the patrons of them. All these crowd round her; one of them, offering to approach her, is driven back by a rival, but she commends and encourages both. The first who speak in form are the Geniuses of the schools, who assure her of their care to advance her cause, by confining youth to words, and keeping them out of the way of real knowledge. Their address, and her gracious answer; with her charge to them and the Universities. The Universities appear by their proper deputies, and assure her that the same method is observed in the progress of education; the speech of Aristarchus on this subject. They are driven off by a band of young gentlemen returned from travel with their tutors, one of whom delivers to the goddess, in a polite oration, an account of the whole conduct and fruits of their travels, presenting to her at the same time a young nobleman perfectly accomplished. She receives him graciously, and endues him with the happy quality of want of shame. She sees loitering about her a number of indolent persons, abandoning all business and duty, and dying with lazi ness: to these approaches the antiquary Annius, entreating her to make them virtuosos, and assign them over to him; but Mummius, another antiquary, complaining of his fraudulent proceeding, she finds a method to reconcile their difference. Then enter a troop of people fantastically adorned, offering her strange and exotic presents: amongst them one stands forth and demands justice on another, who had deprived him of one of the greatest curiosities in nature: but he justifies himself so well that the goddess gives them both her approbation. She recommends was early in the friendship of our author, which continued to his death. He wrote several works of humour with great success: the Shepherd's Week," "Trivia," the "What-d'ye-call-it," Fables, and lastly, the celebrated "Beggars' Opera," a piece of satire, which hit all tastes and degrees of men. from those of the highest quality to the very rabble.

to them to find proper employment for the indolents before mentioned in the study of butterflies, shells, birds' nests, moss, &c., but with particular caution not to proceed beyond trifles to any useful or extensive views of nature, or of the Author of nature. Against the last of these apprehensions, she is secured by a hearty address from the minute philosophers and freethinkers, one of whom speaks in the name of the rest. The youth, thus instructed and principled, are delivered to her in a body, by the hands of Silenus; and then admitted to taste the cup of the Magus, her high priest, which causes a total oblivion of all obligations, divine, civil, moral, or rational. To these her adepts she sends priests, attendants, and comforters, of various kinds: confers on them orders, and degrees; and then, dismissing them with a speech, confirming to each his privileges, and telling what she expects from each, concludes with a yawn of extraordinary virtue; the progress and effects whereof on all orders of men, and the consummation of all, in the restoration of night and chaos, conclude the poem.

YET, yet a moment, one dim ray of light
Indulge, dread Chaos, and eternal Night!
Of darkness visible so much be lent,
As half to shew, half veil the deep intent.
Ye powers! whose mysteries restored I sing,
To whom Time bears me on his rapid wing,
Suspend awhile your force, inertly strong,
Then take at once the poet and the song.

Now flamed the dog-star's unpropitious ray,
Smote every brain, and wither'd every bay,
Sick was the sun, the owl forsook his bower,
The moon-struck prophet felt the madding hour:
Then rose the seed of Chaos, and of Night,
To blot out order, and extinguish light.

Of dull and venal a new world to mould,

And bring Saturnian days of lead and gold.

She mounts the throne: her head a cloud conceal'd,

In broad effulgence all below reveal'd,

('Tis thus aspiring Dulness ever shines,)

Soft on her lap her laureate son reclines.

Beneath her footstool, Science groans in chains,

And Wit dreads exile, penalties, and pains.

There foam'd rebellious Logic, gagg'd and bound,

There, stript, fair Rhetoric languish'd on the ground;
His blunted arms by Sophistry are borne,

And shameless Billingsgate her robes adorn.
Morality, by her false guardians drawn,
Chicane in furs, and Casuistry in lawn,

Gasps, as they straiten at each end the cord,

And dies, when Dulness gives her Page the word.*
Mad Mathesis alone was unconfined,

Too mad for mere material chains to bind,

* There was a judge of this name, always ready to hang any man, of which he was suffered to give a hundred miserable examples during a long life, even to his dotage.

H