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body, by the hands 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.

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YET, yet a moment, one dim ray of light
Indulge, dread Chaos, and eternal Night!
Of darkness visible so much be lent,
As half to show, half veil the deep intent.
Ye powers! whose mysteries restored I sing,
To whom Time bears me on his rapid wing,
Suspend awhile your force inertly strong,
Then take at once the poet and the song.

Now flamed the dog-star's unpropitious ray,
Smote every brain, and wither'd every bay;
Sick was the sun, the owl forsook her bower,
The moon-struck prophet felt the madding hour:
Then rose the seed of Chaos, and of Night,
To blot out order, and extinguish light,
Of dull and venal a new world to mould,
And bring Saturnian days of lead and gold.

She mounts the throne: her head a cloud conceal'd, In broad effulgence all below reveal'd,

('Tis thus aspiring Dulness ever shines)

Soft on her lap her laureate son reclines.

Beneath her foot-stool, Science groans in chains,

And Wit dreads exile, penalties and pains.
There foam'd rebellious Logic, gagg'd and bound,
There, stript, fair Rhetoric languish'd 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,
And dies, when Dulness 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 ten-fold bonds the Muses lie,
Watch'd both by Envy's and by Flattery's eye:

There to her heart sad Tragedy addrest
The dagger wont to pierce the tyrant's breast;
But sober History restrain'd her rage,

And promised vengeance on a barbarous age.
There sunk Thalia, nerveless, cold, and dead,
Had not her sister Satire 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 fluttering, and her head aside:
By singing peers upheld on either hand,

She tripp'd and laugh'd, 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 harmonise joy, grief, and rage,
Wake the dull church, and lull the ranting stage;
To the same notes thy sons shall hum, or snore,
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-
She heard, and drove him to the Hibernian shore.
And now again had Fame's loud trumpet blown,
And all the nations summon'd 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
The buzzing bees about their dusky queen.

The gathering number, as it moves along,
Involves a vast involuntary throng,

Who gently drawn, and struggling less and less,
Roll in her vortex, and her power 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 mongrel no one class admits,
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 Flattery in the sacred gown ;
Or give from fool to fool the laurel crown.
And (last and worst) with all the cant of wit,
Without the soul, the Muse's hypocrite.

There march'd the bard and blockhead, side by side, Who rhymed for hire, and patronised for pride. Narcissus, praised with all a parson's power, Look'd a white lily sunk beneath a shower. There moved Montalto with superior air; His stretch'd-out arm display'd a volume fair ; Courtiers and patriots in two ranks divide,

Through both he pass'd, and bow'd from side to side:
But as in graceful act, with awful eye

Composed he stood, bold Benson i thrust him by :
On two unequal crutches propt 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.

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iThis man endeavoured to raise himself to fame by erecting monuments, striking coins, setting up heads, and procuring translations, of Milton; and afterwards by a great passion for Arthur Johnston, a Scotch physician's version of the Psalms, of which he printed many fine editions. See more of him, Book III. ver. 325.

J An eminent person, who was about to publish a very pompous edition of a great author, at his own expense.

See Christians, Jews, one heavy sabbath keep,
And all the western world believe and sleep.

Lo! Rome herself, proud mistress now no more
Of arts, but thundering against heathen lore";
Her grey-hair'd synods damning books unread,
And Bacon trembling for his brazen head.
Padua, with sighs, beholds her Livy burn,
And even the Antipodes Virgilius mourn.
See, the cirque falls, the unpillar'd temple nods,
Streets paved with heroes, Tiber choak'd with gods:
Till Peter's keys some christian'd Jove adorn,
And Pan to Moses lends his pagan horn;
See graceless Venus to a virgin turn'd,
Or Phidias broken, and Apelles burn'd.
Behold yon isle, by palmers, pilgrims trod,

Men bearded, bald, cowl'd, uncowl'd, shod, unshod,
Peel'd, patch'd, and piebald, linsey-wolsey brothers,
Grave mummers! sleeveless some, and shirtless others.
That once was Britain-Happy, had she seen P
No fiercer sons, had Easter never been!

A strong instance of this pious rage is placed to Pope Gregory's account. John of Salisbury gives a very odd encomium of this Pope, at the same time that he mentions one of the strangest effects of this excess of zeal in him: Doctor sanctissimus ille Gregorius, qui melleo prædicationis imbre totam rigavit et inebriavit ecclesiam; non modo Mathesin jussit ab aula, sed, ut traditur a majoribus, incendio dedit probatæ lectionis scripta, Palatinus quæcunque tenebat Apollo. And in another place: Fertur beatus Gregorius bibliothecam combussisse gentilem ; quo divinæ paginæ gratior esset locus, et major authoritas, et diligentia studiosior. Desiderius, Archbishop of Vienna, was sharply reproved by him for teaching grammar and literature, and explaining the poets; because (says this Pope) In uno se ore cum Jovis laudibus Christi laudes non capiunt: Et quam grave nefandumque sit Episcopis canere quod nec Laico religioso conveniat, ipse considera. He is said, among the rest, to have burned Livy; Quia in superstitionibus et sacris Romanorum perpetuo versatur. The same Pope is accused by Vossius, and others, of having caused the noble monuments of the old Roman magnificence to be destroyed, lest those who came to Rome should give more attention to triumphal arches, &c. than to holy things.-BAYLE, Dict.

• After the government of Rome devolved to the Popes, their zeal was for some time exerted in demolishing the heathen temples and statues, so that the Goths scarce destroyed more monuments of antiquity out of rage, than these out of devotion. At length they spared some of the temples, by converting them to churches; and some of the statues, by modifying them into images of saints. In much later times, it was thought necessary to change the statues of Apollo and Pallas, on the tomb of Sannazarius, into David and Judith; the lyre easily became a harp, and the Gorgon's head turned to that of Holofernes.

P Wars in England anciently, about the right time of celebrating Easter. Et fortunatam, si nunquam armenta fuissent.-VIRG. Ecl. vi.

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 P;
And keep them in the pale of words till death.
Whate'er the talents, or howe'er desgn'd,
We hang one jingling padlock on the mind a :
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 every Muse gave o'er,
There TALBOT sunk, and was a wit no more!
How sweet an Ovid, MURRAY, was our boast!
How many Martials were in PULTENEY lost!
Else sure some bard, to our eternal praise,
In twice ten thousand rhyming nights and days,
Had reach'd the work, the all that mortal can;
And South beheld that master-piece of man.

O (cried the goddess ') for some pedant reign!

• This circumstance of the Genius Loci (with that of the index-hand before) seems to be an allusion to the Table of Cebes, where the Genius of Human Nature points out the road to be pursued by those entering into life. Ὁ δὲ γέρων ὁ ἄνω ἑστηκὼς, ἔχων χάρτην τινὰ ἐν τῇ χειρὶ, καὶ τῇ ἑτέρᾳ ὥσπερ δεικνύων, τι, οὗτος Δαίμων καλεῖται, δε.

P By obliging them to get the classic poets by heart, which furnishes them with endless matter for conversation, and verbal amusement for their whole lives.

For youth being used like pack-horses and beaten on under a heavy load of words, lest they should tire, their instructors contrive to make the words jingle in rhyme or metre.

r Westminster Hall and the House of Commons.

• Viz. an epigram. The famous Dr. South declared a perfect epigram to be as difficult a performance as an epic poem. And the critics say, "an epic poem is the greatest work human nature is capable of."

The matter under debate is how to confine men to words for life. The instructors of youth show how well they do their parts; but complain that when men come into the world they are apt to forget their learning, and turn themselves to useful knowledge. This was an evil that wanted to be redressed. And this the Goddess assures them will need a more extensive tyranny than that of grammar schools. She therefore points out to them the remedy, in her wishes for arbitrary power; whose interest it being to keep men from the study of things, will encourage the propagation of words and sounds; and to make all sure, she wishes for another pedant monarch. The sooner to obtain so great a blessing, she is willing even for once to violate the fundamental principle of her politics, in

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