[234] 'The Dunciad:' _sic_ MS. It may well be disputed whether this be a right reading. Ought it not rather to be spelled Dunceiad, as the etymology evidently demands? Dunce with an _e_, therefore Dunceiad with an _e_? That accurate and punctual man of letters, the restorer of Shakespeare, constantly observes the preservation of this very letter _e_, in spelling the name of his beloved author, and not like his common careless editors, with the omission of one, nay, sometimes of two _e's_ (as Shakspear), which is utterly unpardonable. 'Nor is the neglect of a single letter so trivial as to some it may appear; the alteration whereof in a learned language is an achievement that brings honour to the critic who advances it; and Dr Bentley will be remembered to posterity for his performances of this sort, as long as the world shall have any esteem for the remains of Menander and Philemon.'--_Theobald_.

This is surely a slip in the learned author of the foregoing note, there having been since produced by an accurate antiquary, an autograph of Shakspeare himself, whereby it appears that he spelled his own name without the first _e_. And upon this authority it was, that those most critical curators of his monument in Westminster Abbey erased the former wrong reading, and restored the true spelling on a new piece of old Egyptian granite. Nor for this only do they deserve our thanks, but for exhibiting on the same monument the first specimen of an edition of an author in marble; where (as may be seen on comparing the tomb with the book), in the space of five lines, two words and a whole verse are changed, and it is to be hoped will there stand, and outlast whatever hath been hitherto done in paper; as for the future, our learned sister University (the other eye of England) is taking care to perpetuate a total new Shakspeare, at the Clarendon press.--_Bentl_.

It is to be noted, that this great critic also has omitted one circumstance: which is, that the inscription with the name of Shakspeare was intended to be placed on the marble scroll to which he points with his hand; instead of which it is now placed behind his back, and that specimen of an edition is put on the scroll, which indeed Shakspeare hath great reason to point at.--_Anon_.

Though I have as just a value for the letter _e_ as any grammarian living, and the same affection for the name of this poem as any critic for that of his author, yet cannot it induce me to agree with those who would add yet another _e_ to it, and call it the Dunceiade; which being a French and foreign termination, is no way proper to a word entirely English and vernacular. One _e_, therefore, in this case is right, and two _e's_ wrong. Yet, upon the whole, I shall follow the manuscript, and print it without any _e_ at all; moved thereto by authority (at all times, with critics, equal, if not superior to reason). In which method of proceeding, I can never enough praise my good friend, the exact Mr Thomas Hearne; who, if any word occur which to him and all mankind is evidently wrong, yet keeps he it in the text with due reverence, and only remarks in the margin _sic_ MS. In like manner we shall not amend this error in the title itself, but only note it _obiter_, to evince to the learned that it was not our fault, nor any effect of our ignorance or inattention.--_Scriblerus_.

This poem was written in the year 1726. In the next year, an imperfect edition was published at Dublin, and reprinted at London in twelves; another at Dublin, and another at London in octavo; and three others in twelves the same year. But there was no perfect edition before that of London in quarto; which was attended with notes. We are willing to acquaint posterity, that this poem was presented to King George the Second and his queen by the hands of Sir Robert Walpole, on the 12th of March 1728-9.--_Schol. Vet_.

It was expressly confessed in the preface to the first edition, that this poem was not published by the author himself. It was printed originally in a foreign country. And what foreign country? Why, one notorious for blunders; where finding blanks only instead of proper names, these blunderers filled them up at their pleasure.

The very hero of the poem hath been mistaken to this hour; so that we are obliged to open our notes with a discovery who he really was. We learn from the former editor, that this piece was presented by the hands of Sir Robert Walpole to King George II. Now the author directly tells us, his hero is the man

'who brings The Smithfield muses to the ear of kings.'

And it is notorious who was the person on whom this prince conferred the honour of the laurel.

It appears as plainly from the apostrophe to the great in the third verse, that Tibbald could not be the person, who was never an author in fashion, or caressed by the great; whereas this single characteristic is sufficient to point out the true hero, who, above all other poets of his time, was the peculiar delight and chosen companion of the nobility of England, and wrote, as he himself tells us, certain of his works at the earnest desire of persons of quality.

Lastly, the sixth verse affords full proof; this poet being the only one who was universally known to have had a son so exactly like him, in his poetical, theatrical, political, and moral capacities, that it could justly be said of him,

'Still Dunce the second reign'd like Dunce the first.'--_Bentl_.

[235] 'Her son who brings,' &c. Wonderful is the stupidity of all the former critics and commentators on this work! It breaks forth at the very first line. The author of the critique prefixed to Sawney, a poem, p. 5, hath been so dull as to explain 'the man who brings,' &c., not of the hero of the piece, but of our poet himself, as if he vaunted that kings were to be his readers--an honour which though this poem hath had, yet knoweth he how to receive it with more modesty.

We remit this ignorant to the first lines of the Aeneid, assuring him that Virgil there speaketh not of himself but of Aeneas:

'Arma virumque cano, Trojae qui primus ab oris Italiam, fato profugus, Lavinaque venit Littora: multum ille et terris jactatus et alto,' &c.

I cite the whole three verses, that I may by the way offer a conjectural emendation, purely my own, upon each: First, _oris_ should be read _aris_, it being, as we see, Aen. ii. 513, from the altar of Jupiter Hercaeus that Aeneas fled as soon as he saw Priam slain. In the second line I would _flatu_ for _fato_, since it is most clear it was by winds that he arrived at the shore of Italy. _Jactatus_, in the third, is surely as improperly applied to _terris_, as proper to _alto_. To say a man is tossed on land, is much at one with saying, he walks at sea.

_Risum teneatis, amici_? Correct it, as I doubt not it ought to be, _vexatus_.--_Scriblerus_.

[236] 'The Smithfield Muses.' Smithfield was the place where Bartholomew Fair was kept, whose shows, machines, and dramatical entertainments, formerly agreeable only to the taste of the rabble, were, by the hero of this poem and others of equal genius, brought to the theatres of Covent Garden, Lincolns-Inn-Fields, and the Haymarket, to be the reigning pleasures of the court and town. This happened in the reigns of King George I. and II. See Book iii.

[237] 'By Dulness, Jove, and Fate:' _i.e._, by their judgments, their interests, and their inclinations.--W.

[238] 'Say how the goddess,' &c. The poet ventureth to sing the action of the goddess; but the passion she impresseth on her illustrious votaries, he thinketh can be only told by themselves.--_Scribl. W_.

[239] 'Daughter of Chaos,' &c. The beauty of this whole allegory being purely of the poetical kind, we think it not our proper business, as a scholiast, to meddle with it, but leave it (as we shall in general all such) to the reader, remarking only that Chaos (according to Hesiod's [Greek: Theogonia]), was the progenitor of all the gods.--_Scriblerus_.

[240] 'Laborious, heavy, busy, bold,' &c. I wonder the learned Scriblerus has omitted to advertise the reader, at the opening of this poem, that Dulness here is not to be taken contractedly for mere stupidity, but in the enlarged sense of the word, for all slowness of apprehension, shortness of sight, or imperfect sense of things. It includes (as we see by the poet's own words) labour, industry, and some degree of activity and boldness--a ruling principle not inert, but turning topsy-turvy the understanding, and inducing an anarchy or confused state of mind. This remark ought to be carried along with the reader throughout the work; and without this caution he will be apt to mistake the importance of many of the characters, as well as of the design of the poet. Hence it is, that some have complained he chooses too mean a subject, and imagined he employs himself like Domitian, in killing flies; whereas those who have the true key will find he sports with nobler quarry, and embraces a larger compass; or (as one saith, on a like occasion)--

'Will see his work, like Jacob's ladder, rise, Its foot in dirt, its head amid the skies.'--_Bentl_.

[241] 'Still her old empire to restore.' This restoration makes the completion of the poem. _Vide_ Book iv.--P.

[242] 'Drapier, Bickerstaff, or Gulliver!' the several names and characters he assumed in his ludicrous, his splenetic, or his party-writings; which take in all his works.--P.

[243] 'Or praise the court, or magnify mankind:' _ironice_, alluding to Gulliver's representations of both. The next line relates to the papers of the Drapier against the currency of Wood's copper coin in Ireland, which, upon the great discontent of the people, his Majesty was graciously pleased to recall.

[244] 'By his famed father's hand:' Mr Caius-Gabriel Cibber, father of the poet laureate. The two statues of the lunatics over the gates of Bedlam Hospital were done by him, and (as the son justly says of them) are no ill monuments of his fame as an artist.

[245] 'Bag-fair' is a place near the Tower of London, where old clothes and frippery are sold--P.

[246] 'A yawning ruin hangs and nods in air:'--Here in one bed two shivering sisters lie, The cave of Poverty and Poetry.

[247] 'Curll's chaste press, and Lintot's rubric post:' two booksellers, of whom, see Book ii. The former was fined by the Court of King's Bench for publishing obscene books; the latter usually adorned his shop with titles in red letters.--P.

[248] 'Hence hymning Tyburn's elegiac lines:' it is an ancient English custom for the malefactors to sing a psalm at their execution at Tyburn, and no less customary to print elegies on their deaths, at the same time, or before.--P.

[249] 'Sepulchral lies:' is a just satire on the flatteries and falsehoods admitted to be inscribed on the walls of churches, in epitaphs, which occasioned the following epigram:--

'Friend! in your epitaphs, I'm grieved, So very much is said: One-half will never be believed, The other never read.'--W.

[250] 'New-year odes:' made by the poet laureate for the time being, to be sung at Court on every New-Year's Day, the words of which are happily drowned in the voices and instruments.--P.

[251] 'Jacob:' Tonson, the well-known bookseller.

[252] 'How farce and epic--how Time himself,' allude to the transgressions of the unities in the plays of such poets. For the miracles wrought upon time and place, and the mixture of tragedy and comedy, farce and epic, see Pluto and Proserpine, Penelope, &c., if yet extant.--P.

[253] ''Twas on the day, when Thorold rich and grave, like Cimon, triumph'd:' viz., a Lord Mayor's day; his name the author had left in blanks, but most certainly could never be that which the editor foisted in formerly, and which no way agrees with the chronology of the poem.--_Bentl_. The procession of a lord mayor is made partly by land, and partly by water. Cimon, the famous Athenian general, obtained a victory by sea, and another by land, on the same day, over the Persians and Barbarians.--P.

[254] 'Glad chains:' The ignorance of these moderns! This was altered in one edition to gold chains, showing more regard to the metal of which the chains of aldermen are made than to the beauty of the Latinism and Graecism--nay, of figurative speech itself: _Loetas segetes_, glad, for making glad, &c.--P.

[255] 'But lived, in Settle's numbers, one day more:' a beautiful manner of speaking, usual with poets in praise of poetry, in which kind nothing is finer than those lines of Mr Addison:--

'Sometimes, misguided by the tuneful throng, I look for streams immortalised in song, That lost in silence and oblivion lie, Dumb are their fountains, and their channels dry; Yet run for over by the Muses' skill, And in the smooth description murmur still.--P.

Settle was poet to the city of London. His office was to compose yearly panegyrics upon the lord mayors, and verses to be spoken in the pageants. But that part of the shows being at length frugally abolished, the employment of city-poet ceased, so that upon Settle's demise there was no successor to that place.--P.

[256] John Heywood, whose interludes were printed in the time of Henry VIII.--P.

[257] 'Daniel Defoe,' a man in worth and original genius incomparably superior to his defamer.

[258] 'And Eusden eke out,' &c.: Laurence Eusden, poet laureate. Mr Jacob gives a catalogue of some few only of his works, which were very numerous. Mr Cook, in his Battle of Poets, saith of him--

'Eusden, a laurell'd bard, by fortune raised, By very few was read, by fewer praised.'--P.

[259] Nahum Tate was poet laureate, a cold writer, of no invention; but sometimes translated tolerably when befriended by Mr Dryden. In his second part of Absalom and Achitophel are above two hundred admirable lines together of that great hand, which strongly shine through the insipidity of the rest. Something parallel may be observed of another author here mentioned.--P.

[260] 'Dennis rage:' Mr John Dennis was the son of a sadler in London, born in 1657. He paid court to Mr Dryden; and having obtained some correspondence with Mr Wycherly 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.--P.

[261] 'Shame to Fortune:' because she usually shows favour to persons of this character, who have a threefold pretence to it.

[262] 'Poor Fletcher's half-eat scenes:' a great number of them taken out to patch up his plays.--P.

[263] 'Tibbald:' this Tibbald, or Theobald, published an edition of Shakspeare, of which he was so proud himself as to say, in one of Mist's journals, June 8, 'That to expose any errors in it was impracticable.'

And in another, April 27, 'That whatever care might for the future be taken by any other editor, he would still give above five hundred emendations, that shall escape them all.'--P.