Dennis, who beginning with Criticism, became afterwards such Poets as no age hath paralleled. With good reason therefore did our author chuse to write his Essay on that subject at twenty, and reserve for his maturer years this great and wonderful work of the Dunciad.

 

 

Notes

1 Vide Bossu, Du Poeme Epique, ch. viii.

 

2 Bossu, chap. vii.

 

3 Book I.v. 32, etc.

 

4 Ver. 45 to 54.

 

5 Ver. 57 to 77.

 

6 Ver. 80.

 

7 Ibid. chap. vii, viii.

 

8 Ibid. chap. viii. Vide Aristot. Poetic, cap. ix.

 

9 Cibber's Letter to Mr. P. pag. 9, 12, 41.

 

10 See his Essays.

 

Ricardus Aristarchus of the Hero of the Poem

Of the Nature of Dunciad in general, whence derived, and on what authority founded, as well as of the art and conduct of this our poem in particular, the learned and laborious Scriblerus hath, according to his manner, and with tolerable share of judgment, dissertated. But when he cometh to speak of the Person of the Hero fitted for such poem, in truth he miserably halts and hallucinates. For, misled by one Monsieur Bossu, a Gallic critic, he prateth of I cannot tell what Phantom of a Hero, only raised up to support the Fable. A putid conceit! As if Homer and Virgil, like modern Undertakers, who first build their house and then seek out for a tenant, had contrived the story of a War and a Wandering, before they once thought either of Achilles or Æneas. We shall therefore set our good brother and the world also right in this particular, by giving our word, that in the greater Epic, the prime intention of the Muse is to exalt Heroic Virtue, in order to propagate the love of it among the children of men; and consequently that the Poet's first thought must needs be turned upon a real subject meet for laud and celebration; not one whom he is to make, but one whom he may find, truly illustrious. This is the primum mobile of his poetic world, whence every thing is to receive life and motion. For this subject being found, he is immediately ordained, or rather acknowledged, an Hero, and put upon such action as befitteth the dignity of his character.

But the Muse ceases not here her Eagle-flight. Sometimes, satiated with the contemplation of these Suns of glory, she turneth downward on her wing, and darts like lightning on the Goose and Serpent kind. For we may apply to the Muse in her various moods, what an ancient master of Wisdom affirmeth of the Gods in general: Si Dii non irascuntur impiis et injustis, nec pios utique justosque diligunt. In rebus enim diversis, aut in utramque partem moveri necesse est, aut in neutram. Itaque qui bonos diligit, & malos odit; & qui malos non odit, nec bonos diligit. Quia & diligere bonos ex odio malorum venit; & malos odisse ex bonorum caritate descendit. Which in the vernacular idiom may be thus interpreted: »If the Gods be not provoked at evil men, neither are they delighted with the good and just.