The Dunciad

“ There is no harder fate than to be immortalized as a fool; to have one's name—which merits nothing sterner than obliteration—handed down to generations as an example of silliness, or stupidity, or presumption; to be enshrined pitilessly in the amber of the "Dunciad"; to be laughed at forever because of Charles Lamb's impatient and inextinguishable raillery. ”

“ Pope could never become the English Virgil if he "let meaner Satire ... stain the Glory" of his "nobler Lays." [16] And Aaron Hill wrote an allegorical poem to show Pope the error of The Dunciad and to suggest means of escape from entombment "in his own PROFUND." [17] In such censure we perhaps glimpse an opinion attributable to the still influential genres theories: a poet of "sublime Genius" should work in a more sublime poetic genre than satire.
In opposing this low view of satire, Harte drew upon ideas more congenial to his purposes and far more congenial to The Dunciad. ”

“ WHEREAS, upon occasion of certain Pieces relating to the Gentlemen of the Dunciad, some have been willing to suggest, as if they looked upon them as an abuse: we can do no less than own, it is our opinion, that to call these Gentlemen bad authors is no sort of abuse, but a great truth. ”

“ Unfortunately for him, some of those whom he attacked, such as Pope and Swift, had the power of conferring upon him an unenviable immortality. Embalmed in The Dunciad, his name has attained a fame which no work of his own could have given it. ”

“ But since that had happened, he could no longer deny this justice either to him or the Dunciad.
And yet I will venture to say, there was another motive which had still more weight with our Author: This person was one, who from every Folly (not to say Vice) of which another would be ashamed, has constantly derived a Vanity; and therefore was the man in the world who would least be hurt by it. ”

“ Although he says, "The smooth numbers of the Dunciad are all that recommend it, nor has it any other merit;" yet that same paper hath these words: "The author is allowed to be a perfect master of an easy and elegant versification. In all his works we find the most happy turns, and natural smilies, wonderfully short and thick sown."
The Essay on the Dunciad also owns, p.25. it is very full of beautiful images. But the panegyric, which crowns all that can be said on this Poem, is bestowed by our Laureate,
Mr. ”

“ He was wholly illiterate and knew no language, not even French. Being advised to read the rules of dramatic poetry before he began a play, he smiled and replied 'Shakspeare writ without rules.' He ended at last in the common sink of all such writers, a political newspaper, to which he was recommended by his friend Arnal, and received a small pittance for pay; and being detected in writing on both sides on one and the same day, he publicly justified the morality of his conduct." Another couplet of the Dunciad is this:
"And see! ”

“ Between the years 1731 and 1739 he issued a series of poetical essays moral and philosophical, with satires and imitations of Horace, all admirable for sense, wit, spirit and brilliancy of these delightful productions, the most celebrated is the Essay on Man to which Bolingbroke is believed to have contributed the spurious philosophy and false sentiment, but its merit consists in detached passages, descriptions, and pictures. A fourth book to the Dunciad, containing many beautiful and striking lines and a general revision of his works, closed the poet's literary cares and toils. ”

“ Pope is the author of it." The writer of Gulliveriana is of another opinion; and says, "the whole, or greatest part, of the merit of this treatise must and can only be ascribed to Gulliver [56] ." [Here, gentle reader! cannot I but smile at the strange blindness and positiveness of men; knowing the said treatise to 2ppertain to none other but to me, Martinus Scriblerus.]
We are assured, in Mist of June 8, "That his own Plays and Farces would better have adorned the Dunciad, than those of Mr. Theobald; for he had neither genius for Tragedy nor Comedy." ”

“ Even the Malicious, though they may like the Libel, don’t always believe it. But since the Publication of your last new Dunciad (where you still seem to enjoy your so often repeated Glory of being bright upon my Dulness) my Friends now insist, that it will be thought Dulness indeed, or a plain Confession of my being a Bankrupt in Wit, if I don’t immediately answer those Bills of Discredit you have drawn upon me: For, say they, your dealing with him, like a Gentleman, in your Apology for your own Life, &c. ”

“ P. at large. Anon. [John Dennis.]
All these were afterwards reprinted in a pamphlet, entituled A Collection of all the Verses, Essays, Letters, and Advertisements occasioned by Mr. Pope and Swift's Miscellanies, prefaced by Concanen, Anonymous, octavo, and printed for A. Moore, 1728, price 1s. Others of an elder date, having lain as waste Paper many years, were, upon the publication of the Dunciad, brought out, and their Authors betrayed by the mercenary Booksellers (in hope of some possibility of vending a few) by advertising them in this manner—"The Confederates, a farce. ”

“ That the author of the three first books had a design to extend and complete his poem in this manner, appears from the dissertation prefixt to it, where it is said, that the design is more extensive, and that we may expect other episodes to complete it: And from the declaration in the argument to the third book, that the accomplishment of the prophecies therein, would be the theme hereafter of a greater Dunciad. But whether or no he be the author of this, we declare ourselves ignorant. ”

“ BOOKS, PAPERS, and VERSES,
In which our Author was abused, before the Publication of the
Dunciad; with the true Names of the Authors.
Reflections critical and satyrical on a late Rhapsody, called An Essay on Criticism. By Mr. Dennis, printed by B. Lintot, price 6d.
A New Rehearsal, or Bays the younger; containing an Examen of Mr. Row's plays, and a word or two on Mr. Pope's Rape of the Lock. Anon. [by Charles Gildon] printed for J. Roberts, 1714. price Is.
Homerides, or a Letter to Mr. Pope, occasioned by his intended translation of Homer. By Sir Iliad Dogrel. ”

“ Dennis, the son of a saddler in London, born 1657, was a mediocre writer, and rather better critic of the time, with whom Pope came a good deal into collision. Addison's tragedy of Cato, for which Pope had written a prologue, had been attacked by Dennis. Pope, to defend Addison, wrote an imaginary report, pretending to be written by a notorious quack mad-doctor of the day, entitled The Narrative of Dr. Robert Norris on the Frenz of F. D. Dennis replied to it by his Character of Mr. Pope. Ultimately Pope gave him a place in his Dunciad, and wrote a prologue for his benefit. ”

“ And after a while whenever these garlands died the poet came to her with his chaplets of song; and still she laughed at him and wore the worthless wreaths, though they always died at evening.
And one day in his bitterness the poet rebuked her, and said to her: "Lovely Fame, even in the highways and the byways you have not foreborne to laugh and shout and jest with worthless men, and I have toiled for you and dreamed of you and you mock me and pass me by." ”

“ Call the Queen's maidens. Send quickly for her maidens. Do not let the future frighten you.
Queen:
Men laugh at the gods; they often laugh at the gods. I am more sure that the gods laugh too. It is dreadful to think of the laughter of the gods. O the lute! the lute! How clearly I hear the lute. But you all hear it? Do you not? You swear that you all hear it?
King Karnos:
Yes, yes. We all hear the lute. It is only a man playing.
Queen:
I wish I could see him. Then I should know that he was only a man and not Gog-Owza, most terrible of the gods. ”

“ So I rose and followed her into the presence of the princess, who said to me, “O light of the eye, art thou the lady Dunya’s beloved?” “At thy service,” answered I. Quoth she, “He spoke sooth who reported thee possessed of grace and beauty and good breeding and all good qualities; indeed, thou surpassest report; but now sing to me, that I may hear thee.” “I hear and obey,” answered I. So she brought me a lute, and I sang the following verses:
The heart of the lover is weary with loving and striving in vain, And even as a spoil is his body in the hands of sickness and pain. ”

“ At evening, when he thought me gone upon my pleasure, I watched him from the shadows of the hall, grave with youth, wishing, all the while, that he might greet the night with gratitude for the mercy of it; and I listened to his muttering––and I saw that he was grown old and weak with age: unequal, it might be, to the wickedness he would command in my service. “For behold the Lord will come with fire, and with his chariots like a whirlwind, to render his anger with fury, and his rebuke with the flames of fire.” ”

“ Or sometimes walking through the dusk with steps unheard by men, in a form unseen by the people, Limpang-Tung goeth abroad, and, standing behind the minstrels in cities of song, waveth his hands above them to and fro, and the minstrels bend to their work, and the voice of the music ariseth; and mirth and melody abound in that city of song, and no one seeth Limpang-Tung as he standeth behind the minstrels. ”

“ As a deaf person is very often, apparently at least, stupid; a stupid, intractable person is, therefore, called a DUNCE: one who is deaf and intractable. What now becomes of Duns Scotus, and all the rest of the recondite observations bestowed upon DUNCE?—See GROSE.
I have no doubt that Dunch is Anglo-Saxon, although I cannot find it in any of our old dictionaries, except Bailey's. But it ought not to be forgotten, that many words are floating about which are being arrested by our etymologists in the present advancing age of investigation. ”

“ DUNGARREN.
The sound of their spades and their mattocks. O my brave miners! they will do their work nobly at last.
VIOLET.
A way to escape under ground! my ears ring and my senses are confounded. Escape and deliverance?
DUNGARREN.
Yes, love, and friend, and dear human creature! escape and deliverance are at hand.
VIOLET.
How good and noble thou art to provide such deliverance for me, believing me unfaithful!
DUNGARREN.
Come, come; that is nothing: be what thou wilt, if I can but save thee!—Life and death are now on the casting of a die.——The ground moves; it is life! ”

“ Thou settest all my words a-wing,
And meltest me to melody.
Thou art my life, by thee I live,
From thee proceed the joys I know;
Sweetheart, thy hand has power to give
The meed of love—the cup of woe. ”

“ The real foe of Dulness, then, is Truth—not simply wit or genius. The night of mind is all that Dulness labours to produce. Misdirected wit and genius help on this consummation, and therefore deserve her smile—all the more that they are her born enemies, turned traitors to their native cause; and most formidable enemies too, had they remained faithful. Needs must she load them with dignity and emoluments. Trace the thought. The poem begins from the real dull Dunces; and their goddess is Dulness, inevitably: nothing can be gainsaid there. ”

“ But time will never diminish the love I bear thee, Lilian; and the memory of this hour's bitter struggle—this conflict between a love that is irresistible and the strong ties of honour, that bind me to the banner of Dundee, will haunt me to my grave! ”

“ Dunyazad said to her, "Allah upon thee, O my sister, an thou be other than sleepy, finish for us thy tale that we may cut short the watching of this our latter night!" She replied, "With love and good will!" It hath reached me, O auspicious King, the director, the right-guiding, lord of the rede which is benefiting and of deeds fair-seeming and worthy celebrating, that the three Kings desired, one and all of them, to depart and return to their countries and their capitals; and their son-in-law presented them with gifts and rarities, whereupon they blessed him and went their ways. ”

“ He sang of life, serenely sweet,
With, now and then, a deeper note.
From some high peak, nigh yet remote,
He voiced the world's absorbing beat.
He sang of love when earth was young,
And Love, itself, was in his lays. ”

“ Of the real Dundee we catch only flying glimpses here and there,—on his wedding night, for instance, when he is off and away after the now daring rebels, leaving his bride of an hour to weep his absence, and listen with what patience she might to her mother's assiduous reproaches. "I shall be revenged some time or other of the unseasonable trouble these dogs give me," grumbles the young husband with pardonable irritation. ”

“ My guardian’s gray head rose before me. My heart tightened. The finest, straightest old chap who ever took a forlorn little tike in out of the wet, and petted him, and frolicked with him, and filled his stocking all the year round, and made his holidays things of rapture, and taught him how to ride and shoot and fish and swim and cut his losses and do pretty much everything that makes life worth living—that was Dunny. ”

“ Some feel of draught from the entrance gave him its direction and he made his way uncertainly towards it. She saw him outlined against the dying light, his fingers making sure of the exit. Then he blocked it.
"Come down," he cried again. "Curse you for a jade, speak up!" His voice faltered, whimpered like a child in the dark. Even if she obeyed him, unless he was guided by the sound of her voice he could not find her. So she prayed and believed. Bound as her ankles were, she could not do more than wriggle from the niche to the floor and this she determined not to do. ”

“ DUNGARREN.
And the moor was at times one blaze of fiery light, like returning bursts of mid-day, giving every thing to view for an instant in the depth of midnight darkness. (A pause.) One who was there told me so. (Another pause, and she seems uneasy.) And more than that, a strange unlikely story. (A still longer pause, and she more uneasy.) But thou hast no desire to hear it: even natural curiosity has forsaken thee. What is the matter?
VIOLET.
Nothing is the matter: tell me whatever you please, and I will listen to it. Were witches on the moor? ”