And his this drum, whose hoarse heroic bass
Drowns the loud clarion of the braying Ass.’
Now thousand tongues are heard in one loud din:
The monkey-mimics rush discordant in;
’Twas chatt’ring, grinning, mouthing, jabb’ring all,
And Noise and Norton, Brangling and Breval,
Dennis and Dissonance, and captious Art,
240 And Snip-snap short, and Interruption smart,
And Demonstration thin, and Theses thick,
And Major, Minor, and Conclusion quick.
‘Hold (cried the Queen), a cat-call each shall win;
Equal your merits! equal is your din!
But that this well-disputed game may end,
Sound forth my Brayers, and the welkin rend.’
As when the long-eared milky mothers wait
At some sick miser’s triple-bolted gate,
For their defrauded, absent foals they make
250 A moan so loud, that all the guild awake;
Sore sighs Sir Gilbert, starting at the bray,
From dreams of millions, and three groats to pay.
So swells each windpipe; Ass intones to Ass,
Harmonic twang! of leather, horn, and brass;
Such as from lab’ring lungs th’ Enthusiast blows,
High sound, attemp’red to the vocal nose,
Or such as bellow from the deep Divine;
There Webster! pealed thy voice, and Whitfield! thine.
But far o’er all, sonorous Blackmore’s strain;
260 Walls, steeples, skies, bray back to him again.
In Tot’nam Fields the brethren, with amaze,
Prick all their ears up, and forget to graze;
Long Chanc’ry Lane retentive rolls the sound,
And courts to courts return it round and round;
Thames wafts it thence to Rufus’ roaring hall,
And Hungerford re-echoes bawl for bawl.
All hail him victor in both gifts of song,
Who sings so loudly, and who sings so long.
This labour past, by Bridewell all descend
270 (As morning pray’r, and flagellation end),
To where Fleet Ditch with disemboguing streams
Rolls the large tribute of dead dogs to Thames:
The king of dikes! than whom no sluice of mud
With deeper sable blots the silver flood.
‘Here strip, my children! here at once leap in,
Here prove who best can dash through thick and thin,
And who the most in love of dirt excel,
Or dark dexterity of groping well.
Who flings most filth, and wide pollutes around
280 The stream, be his the Weekly Journals bound,
A pig of lead to him who dives the best;
A peck of coals apiece shall glad the rest.’
In naked majesty Oldmixon stands,
And Milo-like surveys his arms and hands;
Then sighing, thus, ‘And am I now three score?
Ah why, ye gods! should two and two make four?’
He said, and climbed a stranded lighter’s height,
Shot to the black abyss, and plunged downright.
The senior’s judgement all the crowd admire,
290 Who but to sink the deeper, rose the higher.
Next Smedley dived; slow circles dimpled o’er
The quaking mud, that closed, and oped no more.
All look, all sigh, and call on Smedley lost;
‘Smedley’ in vain resounds through all the coast.
Then * essayed; scarce vanished out of sight,
He buoys up instant, and returns to light:
He bears no token of the sabler streams,
And mounts far off among the swans of Thames.
True to the bottom, see Concanen creep,
300 A cold, long-winded native of the deep:
If perserverance gain the diver’s prize,
Not everlasting Blackmore this denies:
No noise, no stir, no motion can’st thou make,
Th’ unconscious stream sleeps o’er thee like a lake.
Next plunged a feeble, but a desp’rate pack,
With each a sickly brother at his back:
Sons of a day! just buoyant on the flood,
Then numbered with the puppies in the mud.
Ask ye their names? I could as soon disclose
310 The names of these blind puppies as of those.
Fast by, like Niobe (her children gone)
Sits Mother Osborne, stupefied to stone!
And monumental brass this record bears,
‘These are, – ah no! these were, the Gazetteers!’
Not so bold Arnall; with a weight of skull
Furious he dives, precipitately dull.
Whirlpools and storms his circling arm invest,
With all the might of gravitation blest.
No crab more active in the dirty dance,
320 Downward to climb, and backward to advance,
He brings up half the bottom on his head,
And loudly claims the Journals and the lead.
The plunging Prelate, and his pond’rous Grace,
With holy envy gave one layman place.
When lo! a burst of thunder shook the flood.
Slow rose a form, in majesty of mud,
Shaking the horrors of his sable brows,
And each ferocious feature grim with ooze.
Greater he looks, and more than mortal stares;
330 Then thus the wonders of the deep declares.
First he relates, how sinking to the chin,
Smit with his mien, the mud-nymphs suck’d him in:
How young Lutetia, softer than the down,
Nigrina black, and Merdamante brown,
Vied for his love in jetty bow’rs below,
As Hylas fair was ravished long ago.
Then sung, how shown him by the nut-brown maids
A branch of Styx here rises from the shades,
That tinctured as it runs with Lethe’s streams,
340 And wafting vapours from the Land of Dreams
(As under seas Alphaeus’ secret sluice
Bears Pisa’s off’rings to his Arethuse)
Pours into Thames: and hence the mingled wave
Intoxicates the pert, and lulls the grave;
Here brisker vapours o’er the Temple creep,
There, all from Paul’s to Aldgate drink and sleep.
Thence to the banks where rev’rend Bards repose,
They led him soft; each rev’rend Bard arose;
And Milbourne chief, deputed by the rest,
350 Gave him the cassock, surcingle, and vest.
‘Receive (he said) these robes which once were mine;
Dullness is sacred in a sound divine.’
He ceased, and spread the robe; the crowd confess
The rev’rend Flamen in his lengthened dress.
Around him wide a sable army stand,
A low-born, cell-bred, selfish, servile band,
Prompt or to guard or stab, to saint or damn;
Heav’n’s Swiss, who fight for any god, or man.
Through Lud’s famed gates, along the well-known Fleet
360 Rolls the black troop, and overshades the street,
Till show’rs of Sermons, Characters, Essays,
In circling fleeces whiten all the ways:
So clouds replenished from some bog below
Mount in dark volumes, and descend in snow.
Here stopped 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;
Which most conduce to soothe the soul in slumbers,
370 My Henley’s periods, or my Blackmore’s numbers;
Attend the trial we propose to make:
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
Judge of all present, past, and future wit;
To cavil, censure, dictate, right or wrong,
Full and eternal privilege of tongue.’
Three College Sophs, and three pert Templars came,
380 The same their talents, and their tastes the same;
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 hushed with mugs of mum,
Till all tuned equal, send a gen’ral hum.
Then mount the Clerks, and in one lazy tone
Through the long, heavy, painful page drawl on;
Soft creeping, words on words, the sense compose;
390 At ev’ry line they stretch, they yawn, they doze.
As to soft gales top-heavy pines bow low
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 drowsy god.
Thrice Budgele aimed to speak, but thrice suppressed
By potent Arthur, knocked his chin and breast.
Toland and Tindal, prompt at priests to jeer,
400 Yet silent bowed to Christ’s No Kingdom here.
Who sate the nearest, by the words o’ercome,
Slept first; the distant nodded to the hum.
Then down are rolled the books; stretched o’er ’em lies
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 Dullness dropped among her sons imprest
Like motion from one circle to the rest;
So from the midmost the nutation spreads
410 Round and more round, o’er all the sea of heads.
At last Centlivre felt her voice to fail,
Motteux himself unfinished left his tale,
Boyer the state, and Law the stage gave o’er,
Morgan and Mandeville could prate no more;
Norton, from Daniel and Ostroea sprung,
Blessed with his father’s front, and mother’s tongue,
Hung silent down his never-blushing head;
And all was hushed, as Folly’s self lay dead.
Thus the soft gifts of Sleep conclude the day,
420 And stretched on bulks, as usual, Poets lay.
Why should I sing what bards the nightly Muse
Did slumb’ring visit, and convey to stews;
Who prouder marched with magistrates in state
To some famed roundhouse, ever open gate!
How Henley lay inspired beside a sink,
And to mere mortals seemed a priest in drink,
While others, timely, to the neighb’ring Fleet
(Haunt of the Muses) made their safe retreat.
Book the Third
ARGUMENT
After the other persons are disposed in their proper places of rest, the Goddess transports the King to her Temple, and there lays him to slumber with his head on her lap; a position of marvellous virtue, which causes all the visions of wild enthusiasts, projectors, politicians, inamoratos, castle-builders, chemists, and poets. He is immediately carried on the wings of Fancy, and led by a mad poetical Sibyl, to the Elysian shade; where, on the banks of Lethe, the souls of the dull are dipped by Bavius before their entrance into this world. There he is met by the ghost of Settle, and by him made acquainted with the wonders of the place, and with those which he himself is destined to perform. He takes him to a Mount of Vision, from whence he shows him the past triumphs of the Empire of Dullness, then the present, and lastly the future: how small a part of the world was ever conquered by Science, how soon those conquests were stopped, and those very nations again reduced to her dominion. Then distinguishing the island of Great Britain, shows by what aids, by what persons, and by what degrees it shall be brought to her Empire. Some of the persons he causes to pass in review before his eyes, describing each by his proper figure, character, and qualifications. On a sudden the scene shifts, and a vast number of miracles and prodigies appear, utterly surprising and unknown to the King himself, till they are explained to be the wonders of his own reign now commencing. On this subject Settle breaks into a congratulation, yet not unmixed with concern, that his own times were but the types of these. He prophesies how first the nation shall be overrun with Farces, Operas, and Shows; how the throne of Dullness shall be advanced over the Theatres, and set up even at Court; then how her sons shall preside in the seats of Arts and Sciences: giving a glimpse, or Pisgah-sight of the future fullness of her Glory, the accomplishment whereof is the subject of the fourth and last book.
But in her Temple’s last recess enclosed,
On Dullness’ lap th’ anointed head reposed.
Him close she curtains round with vapours blue,
And soft besprinkles with Cimmerian dew.
Then raptures high the seat of sense o’erflow,
Which only heads refined from reason know.
Hence, from the straw where Bedlam’s prophet nods,
He hears loud oracles, and talks with gods;
Hence the fool’s paradise, the statesman’s scheme,
10 The air-built castle, and the golden dream,
The maid’s romantic wish, the chemist’s flame,
And poet’s vision of eternal fame.
And now, on Fancy’s easy wing conveyed,
The King descending, views th’ Elysian shade.
A slipshod Sibyl led his steps along,
In lofty madness meditating song;
Her tresses staring from poetic dreams,
And never washed, but in Castalia’s streams.
Taylor, their better Charon, lends an oar,
20 (Once swan of Thames, though now he sings no more).
Benlowes, propitious still to blockheads, bows,
And Shadwell nods the poppy on his brows.
Here, in a dusky vale where Lethe rolls,
Old Bavius sits, to dip poetic souls,
And blunt the sense, and fit it for a skull
Of solid proof, impenetrably dull.
Instant, when dipped, away they wing their flight,
Where Brown and Mears unbar the gates of light,
Demand new bodies, and in calf’s array,
30 Rush to the world, impatient for the day.
Millions and millions on these banks he views,
Thick as the stars of night, or morning dews,
As thick as bees o’er vernal blossoms fly,
As thick as eggs at Ward in pillory.
Wond’ring he gazed: when lo! a Sage appears,
By his broad shoulders known, and length of ears,
Known by the band and suit which Settle wore
(His only suit) for twice three years before:
All as the vest, appeared the wearer’s frame,
40 Old in new state, another yet the same.
Bland and familiar as in life, begun
Thus the great Father to the greater Son:
‘Oh born to see what none can see awake!
Behold the wonders of th’ oblivious Lake.
Thou, yet unborn, hast touched this sacred shore;
The hand of Bavius drenched thee o’er and o’er.
But blind to former as to future fate,
What mortal knows his pre-existent state?
Who knows how long thy transmigrating soul
50 Might from Boeotian to Boeotian roll?
How many Dutchmen she vouchsafed to
thrid?
How many stages through old monks she rid?
And all who since, in mild benighted days,
Mixed the Owl’s ivy with the poet’s bays.
As man’s meanders to the vital spring
Roll all their tides, then back their circles bring;
Or whirligigs, twirled round by skilful swain,
Suck the thread in, then yield it out again:
All nonsense thus, of old or modern date,
60 Shall in thee centre, from thee circulate.
For this our Queen unfolds to vision true
Thy mental eye, for thou hast much to view:
Old scenes of glory, times long cast behind
Shall, first recalled, rush forward to thy mind;
Then stretch thy sight o’er all her rising reign,
And let the past and future fire thy brain.
‘Ascend this hill, whose cloudy point commands
Her boundless empire over seas and lands.
See, round the poles where keener spangles shine,
70 Where spices smoke beneath the burning Line,
(Earth’s wide extremes) her sable flag displayed,
And all the nations covered in her shade!
‘Far eastward cast thine eye, from whence the sun
And orient Science their bright course begun:
One godlike monarch all that pride confounds,
He, whose long wall the wand’ring Tartar bounds;
Heav’ns! what a pile! whole ages perish there,
And one bright blaze turns Learning into air.
‘Thence to the south extend thy gladdened eyes;
80 There rival flames with equal glory rise;
From shelves to shelves see greedy Vulcan roll,
And lick up all their physic of the soul.
‘How little, mark! that portion of the ball
Where, faint at best, the beams of Science fall:
Soon as they dawn, from hyperborean skies
Embodied dark, what clouds of Vandals rise!
Lo! where Maeotis sleeps, and hardly flows
The freezing Tanais through a waste of snows,
The North by myriads pours her mighty sons,
90 Great nurse of Goths, of Alans and of Huns!
See Alaric’s stern port! the martial frame
Of Genseric! and Attila’s dread name!
See the bold Ostrogoths on Latium fall;
The Rape of the Lock and Other Major Writings: Poems and Other Writings (Penguin Classics) Page 32
