And all the mighty mad[196] in Dennis rage. 
    In each she marks her image full exprest,
  But chief in Bays’s monster-breeding breast,
  Bays, formed by nature stage and town to bless,
  And act, and be, a coxcomb with success. 
  Dulness, with transport eyes the lively dunce,
  Remembering she herself was pertness once. 
  Now (shame to fortune!) an ill run at play
  Blanked his bold visage, and a thin third day: 
  Swearing and supperless the hero sate,
  Blasphemed his gods, the dice, and damned his fate;
  Then gnawed his pen, then dashed it on the ground,
  Sinking from thought to thought, a vast profound! 
  Plunged for his sense, but found no bottom there;
  Yet wrote and floundered on in mere despair. 
  Round him much embryo, much abortion lay,
  Much future ode, and abdicated play;
  Nonsense precipitate, like running lead,
  That slipped through cracks and zigzags of the head;
  All that on folly frenzy could beget,
  Fruits of dull heat, and sooterkins of wit,
  Next, o’er his books his eyes began to roll,
  In pleasing memory of all he stole,
  How here he sipped, how there he plundered snug,
  And sucked all o’er, like an industrious bug. 
  Here lay poor Fletcher’s half-eat scenes, and here
  The frippery of crucified Moliere;
  There hapless Shakespeare, yet of Tibbald sore,
  Wished he had blotted for himself before. 
  The rest on outside merit but presume,
  Or serve (like other fools) to fill a room;
  Such with their shelves as due proportion hold,
  Or their fond parents dressed in red and gold;
  Or where the pictures for the page atone,
  And Quarles is saved by beauties not his own. 
  Here swells the shelf with Ogilby the great;
  There, stamped with arms, Newcastle shines complete: 
  Here all his suffering brotherhood retire,
  And ’scape the martyrdom of jakes and fire: 
  A Gothic library! of Greece and Rome
  Well purged, and worthy Settle, Banks, and Broome.

[Footnote 183:  Smithfield is the place where Bartholomew Fair was kept, whose shows and dramatical entertainments were, by the hero of this poem and others of equal genius, brought to the theatres of Covent Garden, Lincolns-Inn-Fields, and the Haymarket, to be the reigning pleasures of the court and town.  This happened in the reigns of King George I. and II.]

[Footnote 184:  Ironice, alluding to Gulliver’s representations of both.—­The next line relates to the papers of the Drapier against the currency of Wood’s copper coin in Ireland, which, upon the great discontent of the people, his majesty was graciously pleased to recall.]

[Footnote 185:  Mr. Caius Gabriel Cibber, father of the poet laureate.  The two statues of the lunatics over the gates of Bedlam Hospital were done by him, and (as the son justly says of them) are no ill monuments of his fame as an artist.]