The Rape of the Lock and Other Major Writings
Page 34
20 Soft on her lap her Laureate son reclines.
Beneath her footstool Science groans in chains,
And Wit dreads exile, penalties, and pains.
There foamed rebellious Logic, gagged and bound,
There, stripped, fair Rhet’ric languished 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,
30 And dies, when Dullness gives her Page the word.
Mad Mathesis alone was unconfined,
Too mad for mere material chains to bind,
Now to pure space lifts her ecstatic stare,
Now running round the circle, finds it square.
But held in tenfold bonds the Muses lie,
Watched both by Envy’s and by Flatt’ry’s eye:
There to her heart sad Tragedy addressed
The dagger wont to pierce the Tyrant’s breast;
But sober History restrained her rage,
40 And promised vengeance on a barb’rous age.
There sunk Thalia, nerveless, cold, and dead,
Had not her sister Satyr held her head:
Nor could’st thou, Chesterfield! a tear refuse;
Thou wept’st, and with thee wept each gentle Muse.
When lo! a harlot form soft sliding by,
With mincing step, small voice, and languid eye;
Foreign her air, her robe’s discordant pride
In patchwork flutt’ring, and her head aside,
By singing Peers upheld on either hand,
50 She tripped and laughed, too pretty much to stand;
Cast on the prostrate Nine a scornful look,
Then thus in quaint recitativo spoke:
‘O cara! cara! silence all that train;
Joy to great Chaos! let Division reign:
Chromatic tortures soon shall drive them hence,
Break all their nerves, and fritter all their sense,
One trill shall harmonize joy, grief, and rage,
Wake the dull Church, and lull the ranting Stage;
To the same notes thy sons shall hum, or snore,
60 And all thy yawning daughters cry, encore.
Another Phoebus, thy own Phoebus, reigns,
Joys in my jigs, and dances in my chains.
But soon, ah soon Rebellion will commence,
If Music meanly borrows aid from Sense.
Strong in new arms, lo! giant Handel stands,
Like bold Briareus, with a hundred hands;
To stir, to rouse, to shake the soul he comes,
And Jove’s own thunders follow Mars’s drums.
Arrest him, Empress; or you sleep no more’ –
70 She heard, and drove him to th’ Hibernian shore.
And now had Fame’s posterior trumpet blown,
And all the nations summoned to the throne.
The young, the old, who feel her inward sway,
One instinct seizes, and transports away.
None need a guide, by sure attraction led,
And strong impulsive gravity of head;
None want a place, for all their centre found,
Hung to the Goddess, and cohered around.
Not closer, orb in orb, conglobed are seen
80 The buzzing bees about their dusky queen.
The gath’ring number, as it moves along,
Involves a vast involuntary throng,
Who gently drawn, and struggling less and less,
Roll in her vortex, and her pow’r confess.
Not those alone who passive own her laws,
But who, weak rebels, more advance her cause.
Whate’er of dunce in College or in Town
Sneers at another, in toupee or gown;
Whate’er of mungril no one class admits,
90 A wit with dunces, and a dunce with wits.
Nor absent they, no members of her state,
Who pay her homage in her sons, the Great;
Who false to Phoebus, bow the knee to Baal,
Or impious, preach his Word without a call.
Patrons, who sneak from living worth to dead,
Withhold the pension, and set up the head;
Or vest dull Flatt’ry in the sacred gown;
Or give from fool to fool the laurel crown.
And (last and worst) with all the cant of wit,
100 Without the soul, the Muse’s Hypocrite.
There marched the bard and blockhead, side by side,
Who rhymed for hire, and patronized for pride.
Narcissus, praised with all a parson’s pow’r,
Looked a white lily sunk beneath a show’r.
There moved Montalto with superior air;
His stretched-out arm displayed a Volume fair;
Courtiers and Patriots in two ranks divide,
Through both he passed, and bowed from side to side:
But as in graceful act, with awful eye
110 Composed he stood, bold Benson thrust him by.
On two unequal crutches propped he came,
Milton’s on this, on that one Johnston’s name.
The decent knight retired with sober rage,
Withdrew his hand, and closed the pompous page.
But (happy for him as the times went then)
Appeared Apollo’s may’r and aldermen,
On whom three hundred gold-capped youths await
To lug the pond’rous volume off in state.
When Dullness, smiling – ‘Thus revive the Wits!
120 But murder first, and mince them all to bits;
As erst Medea (cruel, so to save!)
A new Edition of old Aeson gave;
Let standard-Authors, thus, like trophies borne,
Appear more glorious as more hacked and torn,
And you, my critics! in the chequered shade,
Admire new light through holes yourselves have made.
‘Leave not a foot of verse, a foot of stone,
A page, a grave, that they can call their own;
But spread, my sons, your glory thin or thick,
130 On passive paper, or on solid brick.
So by each Bard an Alderman shall sit,
A heavy Lord shall hang at ev’ry Wit,
And while on Fame’s triumphal car they ride,
Some slave of mine be pinioned to their side.’
Now crowds on crowds around the Goddess press,
Each eager to present the first Address.
Dunce scorning Dunce beholds the next advance,
But Fop shews Fop superior complaisance.
When lo! a Spectre rose, whose index-hand
140 Held forth the virtue of the dreadful wand;
His beavered brow a birchen garland wears,
Dropping with infant’s blood, and mother’s tears.
O’er ev’ry vein a shudd’ring horror runs;
Eton and Winton shake through all their sons.
All flesh is humbled, Westminster’s bold race
Shrink, and confess the Genius of the place;
The pale boy-senator yet tingling stands,
And holds his breeches close with both his hands.
Then thus: ‘Since Man from beast by Words is known,
150 Words are Man’s province, Words we teach alone.
When Reason doubtful, like the Samian letter,
Points him two ways, the narrower is the better.
Placed at the door of Learning, youth to guide,
We never suffer it to stand too wide.
To ask, to guess, to know, as they commence,
As Fancy opens the quick springs of Sense,
We ply the Memory, we load the brain,
Bind rebel Wit, and double chain on chain;
Confine the thought, to exercise the breath,
1
60 And keep them in the pale of Words till death.
Whate’er the talents, or howe’er designed,
We hang one jingling padlock on the mind:
A poet the first day, he dips his quill;
And what the last? a very poet still.
Pity! the charm works only in our wall,
Lost, lost too soon in yonder House or Hall.
There truant WYNDHAM ev’ry Muse gave o’er,
There TALBOT sunk, and was a Wit no more!
How sweet an Ovid, MURRAY was our boast!
170 How many Martials were in PULT’NEY lost!
Else sure some Bard, to our eternal praise,
In twice ten thousand rhyming nights and days,
Had reached the Work, the All that mortal can;
And South beheld that Masterpiece of Man.
‘Oh (cried the Goddess) for some pedant reign!
Some gentle JAMES, to bless the land again;
To stick the Doctor’s chair into the throne,
Give law to Words, or war with Words alone,
Senates and Courts with Greek and Latin rule,
180 And turn the Council to a grammar school!
For sure, if Dullness sees a grateful day,
’Tis in the shade of Arbitrary Sway.
O! if my sons may learn one earthly thing,
Teach but that one, sufficient for a king;
That which my Priests, and mine alone, maintain,
Which as it dies, or lives, we fall, or reign:
May you, may Cam, and Isis preach it long!
“The RIGHT DIVINE of Kings to govern wrong.”
Prompt at the call, around the Goddess roll
190 Broad hats, and hoods, and caps, a sable shoal:
Thick and more thick the black blockade extends,
A hundred head of Aristotle’s friends.
Nor wert thou, Isis! wanting to the day,
[Though Christ Church long kept prudishly away].
Each staunch Polemic, stubborn as a rock,
Each fierce Logician, still expelling Locke,
Came whip and spur, and dashed through thin and thick
On German Crouzaz, and Dutch Burgersdyck.
As many quit the streams that murm’ring fall
200 To lull the sons of Marg’ret and Clare Hall,
Where Bentley late tempestuous wont to sport
In troubled waters, but now sleeps in port.
Before them marched that awful Aristarch;
Ploughed was his front with many a deep Remark;
His hat, which never vailed to human pride,
Walker with rev’rence took, and laid aside.
Low bowed the rest: he, kingly, did but nod;
So upright Quakers please both Man and God.
‘Mistress! dismiss that rabble from your throne:
210 Avaunt—is Aristarchus yet unknown?
Thy mighty Scholiast, whose unwearied pains
Made Horace dull, and humbled Milton’s strains.
Turn what they will to verse, their toil is vain,
Critics like me shall make it prose again.
Roman and Greek Grammarians! know your better:
Author of something yet more great than Letter;
While tow’ring o’er your alphabet, like Saul,
Stands our Digamma, and o’er-tops them all.
’Tis true, on Words is still our whole debate,
220 Disputes of Me or Te, of aut or at,
To sound or sink in cano, O or A,
Or give up Cicero to C or K.
Let Freind affect to speak as Terence spoke,
And Alsop never but like Horace joke:
For me, what Virgil, Pliny may deny,
Manilius or Solinus shall supply;
For Attic phrase in Plato let them seek,
I poach in Suidas for unlicensed Greek.
In ancient sense if any needs will deal,
230 Be sure I give them fragments, not a meal;
What Gellius or Stobaeus hashed before,
Or chewed by blind old Scholiasts o’er and o’er.
The critic eye, that microscope of Wit,
Sees hairs and pores, examines bit by bit.
How parts relate to parts, or they to whole,
The body’s harmony, the beaming soul,
Are things which Kuster, Burman, Wasse shall see,
When Man’s whole frame is obvious to a flea.
‘Ah, think not, Mistress! more true Dullness lies
240 In Folly’s cap, than Wisdom’s grave disguise.
Like buoys, that never sink into the flood,
On Learning’s surface we but lie and nod.
Thine is the genuine head of many a House,
And much Divinity without a Noς.
Nor could a BARROW work on ev’ry block,
Nor has one ATTERBURY spoiled the flock.
See! still thy own, the heavy Canon roll,
And Metaphysic smokes involve the pole.
For thee we dim the eyes, and stuff the head
250 With all such reading as was never read;
For thee explain a thing till all men doubt it,
And write about it, Goddess, and about it:
So spins the silkworm small its slender store,
And labours till it clouds itself all o’er.
‘What though we let some better sort of fool
Thrid ev’ry science, run through ev’ry school?
Never by tumbler through the hoops was shown
Such skill in passing all, and touching none.
He may indeed (if sober all this time)
260 Plague with Dispute, or persecute with Rhyme.
We only furnish what he cannot use,
Or wed to what he must divorce, a Muse;
Full in the midst of Euclid dip at once,
And petrify a Genius to a Dunce;
Or set on Metaphysic ground to prance,
Show all his paces, not a step advance.
With the same cement, ever sure to bind,
We bring to one dead level ev’ry mind.
Then take him to develop, if you can,
270 And hew the block off, and get out the Man.
But wherefore waste I words? I see advance
Whore, pupil, and laced governor from France.
Walker! our hat’— nor more he deigned to say,
But, stern as Ajax’ spectre, strode away.
In flowed at once a gay embroidered race,
And titt’ring pushed the Pedants off the place:
Some would have spoken, but the voice was drowned
By the French horn, or by the op’ning hound.
The first came forwards, with as easy mien
280 As if he saw St James’s and the Queen.
When thus th’attendant Orator begun:
‘Receive, great Empress! thy accomplished Son:
Thine from the birth, and sacred from the rod,
A dauntless infant! never scared with God.
The sire saw, one by one, his virtues wake:
The mother begged the blessing of a rake.
Thou gav’st that ripeness, which so soon began,
And ceased so soon, he ne’er was boy, nor man.
Through school and college, thy kind cloud o’ercast,
290 Safe and unseen the young Aeneas passed;
Thence bursting glorious, all at once let down,
Stunned with his giddy larum half the town.
Intrepid then, o’er seas and lands he flew:
Europe he saw, and Europe saw him too.
There all thy gifts and graces we display,
Thou, only thou, directing all our way!
To where the Seine, obsequious as she runs,
Pours at great Bourbon’s feet her silken sons;
Or Tiber, now no longer Roman, rolls,
300 Vain of Italian arts, Italian souls:
To happy convents, bosomed deep in vines,
Where slum
ber abbots, purple as their wines;
To isles of fragrance, lily-silvered vales,
Diffusing languor in the panting gales;
To lands of singing, or of dancing slaves,
Love-whisp’ring woods, and lute-resounding waves.
But chief her shrine where naked Venus keeps,
And Cupids ride the Lion of the Deeps;
Where, eased of fleets, the Adriatic main
310 Wafts the smooth eunuch and enamoured swain.
Led by my hand, he sauntered Europe round,
And gathered ev’ry vice on Christian ground;
Saw ev’ry Court, heard ev’ry King declare
His royal sense, of op’ras or the fair;
The stews and palace equally explored,
Intrigued with glory, and with spirit whored;
Tried all hors-d’oeuvres, all liqueurs defined,
Judicious drank, and greatly-daring dined,
Dropped the dull lumber of the Latin store,
320 Spoiled his own language, and acquired no more;
All classic learning lost on classic ground;
And last turned Air, the echo of a sound!
See now, half-cured, and perfectly well-bred,
With nothing but a solo in his head;
As much Estate, and Principle, and Wit,
As Jansen, Fleetwood, Cibber shall think fit;
Stol’n from a duel, followed by a nun,
And, if a borough choose him, not undone;
See, to my country happy I restore
330 This glorious Youth, and add one Venus more.
Her too receive (for her my soul adores);
So may the sons of sons of sons of whores
Prop thine, O Empress! like each neighbour throne,
And make a long posterity thy own.’
Pleased, she accepts the Hero and the Dame,
Wraps in her veil, and frees from sense of shame.
Then looked, and saw a lazy, lolling sort,
Unseen at church, at senate, or at court,
Of ever-listless loit’rers, that attend
340 No cause, no trust, no duty, and no friend.
Thee too, my Paridel! she marked thee there,
Stretched on the rack of a too easy chair,
And heard thy everlasting yawn confess
The pains and penalties of Idleness.
She pitied! but her pity only shed
Benigner influence on thy nodding head.
But Annius, crafty Seer, with ebon wand,
And well dissembled em’rald on his hand,
False as his gems, and cankered as his coins,
350 Came, crammed with capon, from where Pollio dines.