The Dunciad in Four Books

Valerie Rumbold, Valerie Rumbold

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317863236
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

The Dunciad in Four Books of 1743 was the culmination of the series of Dunciads which Alexander Pope produced over the last decade and a half of his life. It comprises not only a poem, but also a mass of authorial annotation and appendices, and this authoritative edition is the only one available which gives all the verse and the prose in a clearly laid-out form, with a full modern commentary. Accessibly presented on the same page as Pope's text are explanatory notes, written in a style adapted to the needs of undergraduate readers, but still comprehensive enough to address the interests of scholars. The many books and pamphlets to which Pope refers have been examined in detail, and the commentary takes advantage of the fifty years' scholarship on literary, bibliographical, cultural and political aspects of the period which has accumulated since James Sutherland's The Dunciad, volume five of the Twickenham Edition. A substantial introduction offers a stimulating and helpful approach to the work, and the bibliography includes extensive suggestions for further reading.

BOOK FOUR

HEADNOTE. This book is adapted from The New Dunciad, separately published in 1742. Pope declared that he had shifted his focus towards ‘the whole polite world’ and away from ‘the Dunces of a lower Species’, attacking ‘all Imposition either Literary, Moral, or Political’ with ‘General, not particular Satire’ (Corr.: IV, 377, 396). Although The New Dunciad and The Dunciad in Four Books both appeared after the fall of Walpole in February 1742, there is no explicit allusion to this long-awaited event in 1743, rather a new boldness in attacking the minister and the regime he served (Mack 1969: 152–3; Goldgar 1976: 210–16). Various topics in Book IV had at a much earlier stage been envisaged as part of a procession to the throne of the new king in Book II (Mack 1982: 339–43; Mack 1984: 98, 127–8; and for dating of this section of the draft material, see Vander Meulen 1991: 49–59; McLaverty 1993: 9–14). These topics, including the Grand Tour, aristocratic opera enthusiasts, virtuosi, Bentley, and the universities, typically reflect on the culture of the ruling class; and the draft attacks George II in more offensive and personal terms than anything admitted into any of the published Dunciads (Erskine-Hill 1996: 103–4). The existence of this early draft qualifies the claim made by Warburton, who had met Pope only in 1740, that ‘it was at my request he laid the plan of a fourth Book’, although Pope had written flatteringly to him that ‘the Encouragement you gave me to add the fourth book, first determind me to do so: & the Approbation you seemd to give it, was what singly determind me to print it’ (Warburton 1751: vii; Corr.: IV, 434). In Warburton’s view, the principal importance of Book IV is its defence of religious orthodoxy (Warburton 1751: vii). Many readers, perhaps over-influenced by his claims, have regarded the extra book as a damaging addition (e.g. Warton 1797: V, 224–5). The extent of his influence on the verse of Book IV is unclear (see for example Corr.: IV, 357), but his contributions to the commentary are marked by pedantic display, allegorising or summarising of extended passages, laborious wit, and insistence on philosophical and theological controversy.

Among the many formal models proposed for aspects of Book IV are the ancient allegory known as the ‘Table of Cebes’ (Williams 1953a: 807–10; Fitzgerald & White 1983); the temple designed for Augustus at the beginning of Virgil’s Georgics III (lines 10–39); Chaucer’s Hous of Fame (as imitated in Pope’s Temple of Fame: see Sitter 1971: 66–97); sessions poems, such as Rochester’s ‘Session of the Poets’ or the anonymous The Session of Musicians (1724), in which aspirants compete for the approval of a presiding deity (Williams 1953a: 810–13); the ambitious goddess Faction and her votaries in Shippen’s Moderation Display’d and Faction Display’d (both 1704: see Lord 1963–75: VI, 651–3, 668–70; VII, 23); the God of Dulness’s review of suppliants in Blackmore’s The Kit-Cats (1708); the goddess Alecto’s allegorical supporters in Rufinus (1712), attributed to William King (Lund 1984: 296–8); and the assemblies of suitors to the Goddess Nonsense and to Queen Ignorance in Fielding’s The Author’s Farce and Pasquin (Fielding 1730, 1736). Visual models may include Renaissance depictions of the Virgin Mary’s assumption into heaven (Gneiting 1975: 428–30), or representations of virtues surmounting chained vices (Sitter 1971: 44). There are also echoes of such social events as masquerades, degree givings and the receptions held by the King and Queen on their birthdays (Jack 1942: 119; Williams 1953a; Sherburn in Mack 1964: 670–73; Sitter 1971: ch. 3; Rogers 1985: 103, 115–16).

THE
DUNCIAD:

BOOK the FOURTH.

ARGUMENT.

The Poet being, in this Book, to declare the Completion of the Prophecies mention’d at the end of the former, makes a new Invocation; as the greater Poets are wont, when some high and worthy matter is to be sung. He shews the Goddess coming in her Majesty, to destroy Order and Science, and to substitute the Kingdom of the Dull upon earth. How she leads captive the Sciences, and silenceth the Muses; and what they be who succeed in their stead. All her Children, by a wonderful attraction, are drawn about her; and bear along with them divers others, who promote her Empire by connivance, weak resistance, or discouragement of Arts; such as Half-wits, tasteless Admirers, vain Pretenders, the Flatterers of Dunces, or the Patrons of them. All these crowd round her; one of them offering to approach her, is driven back by a Rival, but she commends and encourages both. The first who speak in form are the Genius’s of the Schools, who assure her of their care to advance her Cause, by confining Youth to Words, and keeping them out of the way of real Knowledge. Their Address, and her gracious Answer; with her Charge to them and the Universities. The Universities appear by their proper Deputies, and assure her that the same method is observ’d in the progress of Education; The speech of Aristarchus on this subject. They are driven off by a band of young Gentlemen return’d from Travel with their Tutors; one of whom delivers to the Goddess, in a polite oration, an account of the whole Conduct and Fruits of their Travels: presenting to her at the same time a young Nobleman perfectly accomplished. She receives him graciously, and indues him with the happy quality of Want of Shame. She sees loitering about her a number of Indolent Persons abandoning all business and duty, and dying with laziness: To these approaches the Antiquary Annius, intreating her to make them Virtuosos, and assign them over to him: But Mummius, another Antiquary, complaining of his fraudulent proceeding, she finds a method to reconcile their difference. Then enter a Troop of people fantastically adorn’d, offering her strange and exotic presents: Amongst them, one stands forth and demands justice on another, who had deprived him of one of the greatest Curiosities in nature: but he justifies himself so well, that the Goddess gives them both her approbation. She recommends to them to find proper employment for the Indolents before-mentioned, in the study of Butterflies, Shells, Birds-nests, Moss, etc. but with particular caution, not to proceed beyond Trifles, to any useful or extensive views of Nature, or of the Author of Nature. Against the last of these apprehensions, she is secured by a hearty Address from the Minute Philosophers and Freethinkers, one of whom speaks in the name of the rest. The Youth thus instructed and principled, are delivered to her in a 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.

YET, yet a moment, one dim Ray of Light

Indulge, dread Chaos, and eternal Night!

The DUNCIAD, Book IV.] This Book may properly be distinguished from the former, by the Name of the Greater Dunciad, not so indeed in Size, but in Subject; and so far contrary to the distinction anciently made of the Greater and Lesser Iliad. But much are they mistaken who imagine this Work in any wise inferior to the former, or of any other hand than of our Poet; of which I am much more certain than that the Iliad itself was the Work of Solomon, or the Batrachomuomachia of Homer, as Barnes hath affirmed. BENT.

1, etc.] This is an Invocation of much Piety. The Poet willing to approve himself a genuine Son, beginneth by shewing (what is ever agreeable to Dulness) his high respect for Antiquity and a Great Family, how dull, or dark soever: Next declareth his love for Mystery and Obscurity; and lastly his Impatience to be re-united to her.

SCRIBL.

Of darkness visible so much be lent,

As half to shew, half veil the deep Intent.

5 Ye Pow’rs! whose Mysteries restor’d I sing,

To whom Time bears me on his rapid wing,

2. dread Chaos, and eternal Night!] Invoked, as the Restoration of their Empire is the Action of the Poem.

4.] This is a great propriety, for a dull Poet can never express himself otherwise than by halves, or imperfectly.

SCRIBL.

I understand it very differently; the Author in this work had indeed a deep Intent; there were in it Mysteries or ἀπόῤῥητα which he durst not fully reveal, and doubtless in divers verses (according to Milton) ‘more is meant than meets the ear.’

BENT.

6.] Fair and softly, good Poet! (cries the gentle Scriblerus on this place.) For sure in spite of his unusual modesty, he shall not travel so fast toward Oblivion, as divers others of more Confidence have done: For when I revolve in my mind the Catalogue of those who have the most boldly promised to themselves Immortality, viz. Pindar, Luis Gongora, Ronsard, Oldham, Lyrics; Lycophron, Statius, Chapman, Blackmore, Heroics; I find the one half to be already dead, and the other in utter darkness. But it becometh not us, who have taken upon us the office of Commentator, to suffer our Poet thus prodigally to cast away his Life; contrariwise, the more hidden and abstruse is his work, and the more remote its beauties from common Understanding, the more is it our duty to draw forth and exalt the same, in the face of Men and Angels. Herein shall we imitate the laudable Spirit of those, who have (for this very reason) delighted to comment on the Fragments of dark and uncouth Authors, preferred Ennius to Virgil, and chosen to turn the dark Lanthorn of Lycophron, rather than to trim the everlasting Lamp of Homer.

SCRIBL.

Suspend a while your Force inertly strong,

Then take at once the Poet and the Song.

Now flam’d the Dog-star’s unpropitious ray,

10 Smote ev’ry Brain, and wither’d ev’ry Bay;

Sick was the Sun, the Owl forsook his bow’r,

The moon-struck Prophet felt the madding hour:

Then rose the Seed of Chaos, and of Night,

To blot out Order, and extinguish Light,

15 Of dull and venal a new World to mold,

7. Force inertly strong,] Alluding to the Vis inertiae of Matter, which, tho’ it really be no Power, is yet the Foundation of all the Qualities and Attributes of that sluggish Substance.

11, 12.] The Poet introduceth this, (as all great events are supposed by sage Historians to be preceded) by an Eclipse of the Sun; but with a peculiar propriety, as the Sun is the Emblem of that intellectual light which dies before the face of Dulness. Very apposite likewise is it to make this Eclipse, which is occasioned by the Moon’s predominancy, the very time when Dulness and Madness are in Conjunction; whose relation and influence on each other the poet hath shewn in many places, Book I. ver. 29. Book 3. ver. 5, et seq.

14.] The two great Ends of her Mission; the one in quality of Daughter of Chaos, the other as Daughter of Night. Order here is to be understood extensiv...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Series page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Frontispiece
• Introduction
• Map: The London area in the 1740s
• The Dunciad in Four Books.
• Book One
• Book Two
• Book Three
• Book Four
• Appendix.
• By the Author A Declaration.
• Index of Persons
• Index of Matters
• Bibliography
• Selective index to editorial matter