She saw slow Phillips creep like Tate's poor page,
And all the mighty mad in Dennis2 rage.

In each she marks her image full express'd,
But chief in Bays's monster-breeding breast;
Bays, form'd 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
Blank'd his bold visage, and a thin third day:
Swearing and supperless the hero sate,
Blasphemed his gods, the dice, and damn'd his fate.
Then gnaw'd his pen, then dash'd it on the ground,
Sinking from thought to thought, a vast profound!
Plunged for his sense, but found no bottom there,
Yet wrote and flounder'd on, in mere despair.
Round him much embryo, much abortion lay,
Much future ode, and abdicated play;
Nonsense precipitate, like running lead,

That slipp'd through cracks and zig-zags at 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 sipp'd, how there he plunder'd snug,
And suck'd all o'er, like an industrious bug.

Here lay poor Fletcher's half-eat scenes; and here
The frippery of crucified Moliere;

There hapless Shakspeare, yet of Tibbald sore,
Wish'd 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 dress'd in red and gold;
Or where the pictures for the page atone,
And Quarles is saved by beauties not his own.

1 Nahum Tate was poet laureate, a cold writer, of no invention; but sometimes translated tolerably when befriended by Mr. Dryden.

2 Mr. John Dennis was the son of a saddler in London, born in 1657. He paid court to Mr. Dryden; and having obtained some correspondence with Mr. Wycherley and Mr. Congreve, he immediately obliged the public with their letters. He made himself known to the government by many admirable schemes and projects, which the ministry, for reasons best known to themselves, constantly kept private.

Here swells the shelf with Ogilby the great;1

There, stamp'd 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,3 Banks and Broome.
But, high above, more solid learning shone,
The classics of an age that heard of none;
There Caxton1 slept, with Wynkyn at his side,
One clasp'd in wood, and one in strong cow-hide;
There, saved by spice, like mummies, many a year,
Dry bodies of divinity appear:

De Lyra there a dreadful front extends,
And here the groaning shelves Philemon bends.
Of these twelve volumes, twelve of amplest size,
Redeem'd from tapers and defrauded pies,
Inspired he seizes: these an altar raise:
An hecatomb of pure unsullied lays

That altar crowns: a folio common-place

Founds the whole pile, of all his works the base:

1 "John Ogilby was one, who, from a late initiation into literature, made such a progress as might well style him the prodigy of his time in sending into the world so many large volumes!”

2 "The Duchess of Newcastle was one who busied herself in the ravishing delights of poetry; leaving to posterity in print three ample volumes of her studious endeavours." Langbaine reckons up eight folios of her Grace's; which were usually adorned with gilded covers, and had her coat of arms upon them.

3 The poet has mentioned these three authors in particular, as they are parallel to our hero in his three capacities: 1. Settle was his brother laureate; only indeed upon half-pay, for the city instead of the court; but equally famous for unintelligible flights in his poems on public occasions, such as shows, birth-days, &c. 2. Banks was his rival in tragedy, though more successful in one of his tragedies, the Earl of Essex, which is yet alive: Anna Boleyn, the Queen of Scots, and Cyrus the Great, are dead and gone. Those he dressed in a sort of beggar's velvet, or a happy mixture of the thick fustian and thin prosaic; exactly imitated in Perolla and Isidora, Cæsar in Egypt, and the Heroic Daughter. 3. Broome was a serving-man of Ben Jonson, who once picked up a comedy from his betters, or from some cast scenes of his master, not entirely contemptible.

4 A printer in the time of Ed. IV., Rich. III., and Hen. VII.; Wynkyn de Worde, his successor, in that of Hen. VII and VIII.

5 Nich. de Lyra, or Harpsfield, a very voluminous commentator, whose works, in five vast folios, were printed in 1472.

6 Philemon Holland, doctor in physic. He translated so many books, that a man would think he had done nothing else, insomuch that he might be called translator general of his age.

Quartos, octavos, shape the lessening pyre;
A twisted birth-day ode completes the spire.
Then he: Great tamer of all human art!
First in my care, and ever at my heart;
Dulness! whose good old cause I yet defend,
With whom my muse began, with whom shall end;
E'er since Sir Fopling's periwig was praise,
To the last honours of the Butt and Bays:
O thou! of business the directing soul!
To this our head like bias to the bowl,
Which, as more ponderous, made its aim more true,
Obliquely waddling to the mark in view:
O! ever gracious to perplex'd mankind,
Still spread a healing mist before the mind;
And lest we err by wit's wild dancing light,
Secure us kindly in our native night.
Or, if to wit a coxcomb make pretence,
Guard the sure barrier between that and sense;
Or quite unravel all the reasoning thread,
And hang some curious cobweb in its stead!
As, forced from wind-guns, lead itself can fly,
And ponderous slugs cut swiftly through the sky;
As clocks to weight their nimble motion owe,
The wheels above urged by the load below:
Me emptiness, and dulness could inspire,
And were my elasticity, and fire.

Some demon stole my pen (forgive the offence)
And once betray'd me into common sense:

Else all my prose and verse were much the same;
This, prose on stilts; that, poetry fallen lame.
Did on the stage my fops appear confined?
My life gave ampler lessons to mankind.
Did the dead letter unsuccessful prove?
The brisk example never fail'd to move.
Yet sure had heaven decreed to save the state,
Heaven had decreed these works a longer date.
Could Troy be saved by any single hand,

This grey-goose weapon must have made her stand.
What can I now? my Fletcher cast aside,
Take up the Bible, once my better guide?
Or tread the path by venturous heroes trod,
This box my thunder, this right hand my god?
Or chair'd at White's amidst the doctors sit,
Teach oaths to gamesters, and to nobles wit?

Or bidst thou rather party to embrace?
(A friend to party thou, and all her race;
'Tis the same rope at different ends they twist;
To Dulness Ridpath is as dear as Mist.1)
Shall I, like Curtius, desperate in my zeal,
O'er head and ears plunge for the commonweal?
Or rob Rome's ancient geese of all their glories,
And cackling save the monarchy of tories?
Hold-to the minister I more incline;

To serve his cause, O queen! is serving thine.
And see! thy very gazetteers2 give o'er,
Even Ralph repents, and Henly writes no more.
What then remains? Ourself. Still, still remain
Cibberian forehead, and Cibberian brain.
This brazen brightness, to the squire so dear;
This polish'd hardness, that reflects the peer;
This arch absurd, that wit and fool delights;
This mess, toss'd up of Hockley-hole and White's;
Where dukes and butchers join to wreathe my crown,
At once the bear and fiddle of the town.

O born in sin, and forth in folly brought!

Works damn'd, or to be damn'd! (your father's fault)
Go, purified by flames, ascend the sky,

My better and more christian progeny!
Unstain'd, untouch'd, and yet in maiden sheets;
While all your smutty sisters walk the streets.
Ye shall not beg, like gratis-given Bland,
Sent with a pass, and vagrant through the land;
Not sail, with- Ward,3 to ape-and-monkey climes,
Where vile Mundungus trucks for viler rhymes;

1 George Ridpath, author of a Whig paper, called the Flying Post; Nathaniel Mist, of a famous Tory journal.

2 A band of ministerial writers, who, on the very day their patron quitted his post, laid down their paper, and declared they would never more meddle in politics.

3 " Edward Ward, a very voluminous poet in Hudibrastic verse, but best known by the London Spy, in prose. He has of late years kept a public-house in the City, (but in a genteel way,) and with his wit, humour, and good liquor (ale) afforded his guests a pleasurable entertainment, especially those of the high-church party."-JACOB, Lives of Poets, vol. ii. p 225. Great numbers of his works were yearly sold into the Plantations. Ward, in a book called Apollo's Maggot, declared this account to be a great falsity, protesting that his public-house was not in the City, but in Moorfields.

Not sulphur-tipp'd, emblaze an ale-house fire!
Not wrap up oranges, to pelt your sire!
O! pass more innocent, in infant state,
To the mild limbo of our father Tate:1
Or peaceably forgot, at once be blest
In Shadwell's bosom with eternal rest!
Soon to that mass of nonsense to return,

Where things destroy'd are swept to things unborn.
With that, a tear (portentous sign of grace!)
Stole from the master of the sevenfold face:
And thrice he lifted high the birth-day brand,
And thrice he dropp'd it from his quivering hand;
Then lights the structure, with averted eyes:
The rolling smokes involve the sacrifice,
The opening clouds disclose each work by turns,
Now flames the Cid, and now Perolla burns;
Great Cæsar roars, and hisses in the fires;
King John in silence modestly expires:
No merit now the dear Nonjuror claims,
Moliere's old stubble in a moment flames.
Tears gush'd again, as from pale Priam's eyes
When the last blaze sent Ilion to the skies.

Roused by the light, old Dulness heaved the head; Then snatch'd a sheet of Thule2 from her bed, Sudden she flies, and whelms it o'er the pyre, Down sink the flames, and with a hiss expire. Her ample presence fills up all the place:

A veil of fogs dilates her awful face :

Great in her charms! as when on shrieves and mayors
She looks, and breathes herself into their airs.

She bids him wait her to her sacred dome:
Well pleased he entered, and confess'd his home.
So spirits, ending their terrestial race,
Ascend, and recognise their native place.
This the great mother dearer held than all
The clubs of quidnuncs, or her own Guild-hall:
Here stood her opium, here she nursed her owls,
And here she plann'd the imperial seat of fools.

Here to her chosen all her works she shows;
Prose swell'd to verse, verse loitering into prose:

1 Tate and Shadwell, two of his predecessors in the Laurel.

2 An unfinished poem of that name, of which one sheet was printed many years ago, by Amb. Phillips.