The poet being, in this book, to declare the Completion of the Prophecies mentioned at the end of the former, makes a new Invocation; as the greater poets are wont, when some high and worthy matter is to be sung. He shows the Goddess coming in her majesty to destroy Order and Science, and to substitute the Kingdom of the Dull upon earth: how she leads captive the Sciences, and silences the Muses; and what they be who succeed in their stead. All her children, by a wonderful attraction, are drawn about her; and bear along with them divers others, who promote her empire by connivance, weak resistance, or discouragement of Arts; such as Halt-wits, tasteless Admirers, vain Pretenders, the Flatterers of Dunces, or the Patrons of them. All these crowd round her; one of them offering to approach her, is driven back by a rival, but she commends and encourages both. The first who speak in form are the Geniuses of the Schools, who assure her of their care to advance her cause by confining youth to words, and keeping them out of the way of real knowledge. Their address, and her gracious answer; with her charge to them and the Universities. The Universities appear by their proper deputies, and assure her that the same method is observed in the progress of Education. The speech of Aristarchus on this subject. They are driven off by a band of young Gentlemen returned from travel with their tutors; one of whom delivers to the Goddess, in a polite oration, an account of the whole conduct and fruits of their travels; presenting to her at the same time a young Nobleman perfectly accomplished. She receives him graciously, and endues him with the happy quality of Want of Shame. She sees loitering about her a number of indolent persons abandoning all business and duty, and dying with laziness to these approaches the antiquary Annius, entreating her to make them Virtuosos, and assign them over to him; but Mummius, another antiquary, complaining of his fraudulent proceeding, she finds a method to reconcile their difference. Then

offering her strange and exotic Presents: among them, one stands forth, and demands justice on another who had deprived him of one of the greatest curiosities in Nature; but he justifies himself so well, that the Goddess gives them both her approbation. She recommends to them to find proper employ ment for the Indolents before mentioned, in the study of Butterflies, Shells, Birds-nests, Moss, &c., but with particular caution not to proceed beyond trifles, to any useful or extensive views of Nature, or of the Author of Nature. Against the last of these apprehensions, she is secured by a hearty address from the Minute Philosophers and Freethinkers, one of whom speaks in the name of the rest. The Youth thus instructed and principled, are delivered to her in a body, by the lands of Silenus; and then admitted to taste the cup of the Magus, her high priest, which causes a total oblivion of all Obligations, divine, civil, moral, or rational. To these her adepts she sends Priests, Attendants, and Comforters, of various kinds; confers on them Orders and Degrees; and then dismissing them with a speech, confirming to each his privileges, and telling what she expects from each, concludes with a Yawn of extraordinary virtue: the Progress and Effects whereof on all orders of men, and the Consummation of all, in the restoration of Night and Chaos, conclude the Poem.

There sunk Thalia, nerveless, cold, and dead,

Had not her sister Satire held her head: Nor couldst 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, She tripp'd and laugh'd, too pretty much to stand;

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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 The buzzing bees about their dusky

Whate'er of Dunce in College or in Town Sneers at another, in toupee or gown; Whate'er of mongrel no one class admits, A Wit with Dunces, and a Dunce with Wits.

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Nor absent they, no members of her state, Who pay her homage in her sons, the Great;

But spread, my sons, your glory thin or thick,

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On passive paper, or on solid brick.
So by each Bard an Alderman shall sit,
A heavy Lord shall hang at every Wit,
And while on Fame's triumphal car they
ride,

Some slave of mine be pinion'd 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 shows Fop superior complaisance. When lo! a spectre rose, whose index hand Held forth the virtue of the dreadful wand; His beaver'd brow a birchen garland wears,

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Dropping with infants' blood and mothers'

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,

And turn the Council to a grammar school! For sure if Dulness sees a grateful day, 181 '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

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'Tis true, on words is still our whole debate,
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 Friend 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 unlicens'd Greek.
In ancient sense if any needs will deal,
Be sure I give them fragments, not a meal;
What Gellius or Stobæus hash'd before, 231
Or chew'd 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

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 voûs.

Nor could a Barrow work on ev'ry block, Nor has one Atterbury spoil'd 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 With all such reading as was never read: For thee explain a thing till all men doubt it,

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A dauntless infant! never scared with God. The sire saw, one by one, his Virtues wake; The mother begg'd the blessing of a Rake. Thou gavest that ripeness, which so soon began,

And ceas'd so soon, he ne'er was boy nor

man.

Thro' school and college, thy kind cloud o'ercast,

Safe and unseen the young Eneas past: 290 Thence bursting glorious, all at once let down,

Stunn'd 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;

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Or Tyber, now no longer Roman, rolls,
Vain of Italian arts, Italian souls:
To happy convents, bosom'd deep in vines,
Where slumber abbots, purple as their
wines:

To isles of fragrance, lily-silver'd vales,
Diffusing languor in the panting gales:
To lands of singing, or of dancing, slaves,
Love-whisp'ring woods, and lute-resound-
ing waves.

But chief her shrine where naked Venus keeps,

And Cupids ride the lion of the deeps; Where, eas'd of fleets, the Adriatic main Wafts the smooth eunuch and enamour'd swain.

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