But, high above, more solid learning shone,
The classics of an age that heard of none;
There Caxton slept, with Wynkyn at his side,
One clasp'd in wood, and one in strong cow-hide;
There, sav'd 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 ample size,
Redeem'd from tapers and defrauded pies,
Inspir'd 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:
Quartos, octavos, shape the lessening pyre,
A twisted birth-day ode complets 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,!]
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: 3. Broome was a servant of Ben Jonson.
☐ Caxton.] A printer in the time of Henry IV. Rich. III. and Henry VII. Wynkyn de Word, his successor, in that of Henry VII. and VIII.
+ Nich. de Lyra; or Harpsfield, a very voluminous commentator, in 1472.
Philemon Holland, doctor of physic. "He translated so many books, that a man would think he had done nothing else. The books alone of his turning into English, are sufficient to make a country gentleman a complete library." Winstanley.
With whom my muse began, with whom shall end.]
A te principium, tibi desinet,"
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:
Oh! ever gracious to perplex 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, forc'd 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 urg'd 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 fall'n lame.
Did on the stage my fops appear confin'd?
My life gave ampler lessons to mankind.
Did the dead letter unsuccessful prove?
The brisk example never fail'd to move.
Yet sure, had heav'n decreed to save the state,
Heav'n had decreed these works a longer date.
Could Troy be sav'd by any single hand, *
This gray-goose weapon must have made her stand.
What can I now ? my Fletcher cast aside,
Take up the bible once my better guide?
Could Troy be sav'd-This gray-goose weapon.]
"Si Pergama dextra
Defendi possent, etiam hac defensa fuissent." Virg.
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 bidd'st 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)
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 Gazetteers give o'er,
Ev'n Ralph repents, and Henley writes no more.
What then remains? Ourself. Still, still remain t
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 !
+ George Ridpath, author of a Whig paper, called the Flying Post: Nath. Mist, of a famous Tory Journal.
An happy parody on the famous Moi in Corneille's Medea.
This box my thunder, this right hand my God?] "Dextra mihi Deus, et telum quod missile libro."
Virgil, of the gods of Mezentius.
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;
Nor sail with Ward to ape-and-monkey climes, t
Where vile Mundungus trucks for viler rhymes;
Not sulphur-tipt, 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: t
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 sev'nfold face;
And thrice he lifted high the birth-day brand, ||
And thrice he dropt it from his quivering hand;
Then lights the structure with averted eyes,
The rolling smoke involves the sacrifice.
The opening clouds disclose each work by turns,
Now flames the Cid, and now Perolla burns;
-gratis-given Bland,-Sent with a pass.] It was a practice so to give the Daily Gazetteer, and ministerial pamphlets (in which this B. was a writer), and to send them post-free to all the towns in the kingdom.
+-with Ward to ape-and-monkey climes.] “Edward Ward, a very voluminous poet in Hudibrastic verse, but best known by the London Spy, in prose.
-Tate-Shadwell.] Two of his predecessors in the
And thrice he lifted high the birth-day brand.] Ovid, of Althæa, on a like occasion, burning her offspring: "Tum conata quater flammis imponere torrem, Coepta quater tenuit."
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.
Rouz'd by the light, old Dulness heav'd the head, Then snatch'd a sheet of Thulé 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 may'rs
She looks, and breathes herself into their airs.
She bids him wait her to her sacred dome:
Well pleas'd he enter'd, and confess'd his home.
So spirits, ending their terrestrial race,
Ascend, and recognise their native place.
This the great mother dearer held than all
The clubs of quidnuncs, or her own Guildhall:
Here stood her opium, here she nurs'd 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:
How random thoughts now meaning chance to
find,
Now leave all memory of sense behind:
How prologues into prefaces decay,
And these to notes are fritter'd quite away:
How index-learning turns no student pale,
Yet holds the eel of science by the tail :
How, with less reading than makes felons 'scape,
Less human genius than God gives an ape,
Small thanksto France,and none to Rome or Greece,
A past, vamp'd, future, old reviv'd, new piece,
Thule.] An unfinished poem by Ambrose Phillips,
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