[Footnote 182:  Coffee-house near St. James’s.]

ALEXANDER POPE.

(1688-1744.)

XXXV.  THE DUNCIAD—­THE DESCRIPTION OF DULNESS.

One of the most scathing satires in the history of literature.  Pope in the latest editions of it rather spoilt its point by substituting Colley Gibber for Theobald as the “hero” of it.  Our text is from the edition of 1743.  The satire first appeared in 1728, and other editions, greatly altered, were issued in 1729, 1742, 1743.

  The mighty mother, and her son, who brings
  The Smithfield muses[183] to the ear of kings,
  I sing.  Say you, her instruments the great! 
  Called to this work by Dulness, Jove, and fate: 
  You by whose care, in vain decried and curst,
  Still Dunce the second reigns like Dunce the first;
  Say, how the goddess bade Britannia sleep,
  And poured her spirit o’er the land and deep. 
    In eldest time, ere mortals writ or read,
  Ere Pallas issued from the Thunderer’s head,
  Dulness o’er all possessed her ancient right,
  Daughter of chaos and eternal night: 
  Fate in their dotage this fair idiot gave,
  Gross as her sire, and as her mother grave
  Laborious, heavy, busy, bold, and blind,
  She ruled, in native anarchy, the mind. 
    Still her old empire to restore she tries,
  For, born a goddess, Dulness never dies. 
  O thou! whatever title please thine ear,
  Dean, Drapier, Bickerstaff, or Gulliver! 
  Whether thou choose Cervantes’ serious air,
  Or laugh and shake in Rabelais’ easy chair,
  Or praise the court, or magnify mankind,[184]
  Or thy grieved country’s copper chains unbind;
  From thy Boeotia though her power retires,
  Mourn not, my Swift, at aught our realm acquires,
  Here pleased behold her mighty wings outspread
  To hatch a new Saturnian age of lead. 
    Close to those walls where folly holds her throne,
  And laughs to think Monroe would take her down,
  Where o’er the gates, by his famed father’s hand,[185]
  Great Cibber’s brazen, brainless brothers stand;
  One cell there is, concealed from vulgar eye,
  The cave of poverty and poetry,
  Keen, hollow winds howl through the bleak recess,
  Emblem of music caused by emptiness. 
  Hence bards, like Proteus long in vain tied down,
  Escape in monsters, and amaze the town. 
  Hence miscellanies spring, the weekly boast
  Of Curll’s chaste press, and Lintot’s rubric post:[186]
  Hence hymning Tyburn’s elegiac lines,[187]
  Hence journals, medleys, mercuries, magazines;
  Sepulchral lies, our holy walls to grace,
  And new-year odes,[188] and all the Grub Street race. 
    In clouded majesty here Dulness shone;
  Four guardian virtues, round, support her throne: 
  Fierce champion fortitude, that knows