The trial involves another matter of some doubt. Do the two clerks read aloud at one and the same time? and to the same audience? The description conveys the impression that they do. If so, one might have been tempted to fear that the sermon and the poem might have neutralized each other; but, on the contrary, the mixture worked like a patent.
Where has Cibber been all the while, and what has he been doing? "What su'd he hae been doin'? Sittin' on his nain lowpin'-on-stane—lukin' frae him." Joe Warton complains that he is too much of a passive hero. Why, he is not so active as Achilles, or even Diomed; yet in Book Second he is equal to Æneas. He is almost as long-winded, and excels the Pious in this, that he braves a fire of his own raising, whereas the other flies from one kindled much against his will—
"High on a gorgeous seat, that far outshone
Henley's gilt tub, or Flecknoe's Irish throne,
Or that where on her Curls the public pours
All-bounteous, fragrant grains and golden showers,
Great Cibber sate!
——All eyes direct their rays
On him, and crowds turn coxcombs as they gaze!"
Is that being passive? The crowds are passive—not he surely, who, in the potent prime of coxcombhood, without shifting his seat of honour, breathes over all his subjects such family resemblance that they seem one brotherhood, sprung from his own royal loins. Besides, who ever heard, in an Epic poem, of a hero contending in games instituted in his own honour? Yet we do not fear to say, that had he, inspired by the spectacle of Curl and Osborne displaying their prowess for the fair Eliza, leapt from his gorgeous "seat," and amid the shouts of the lieges, in rainbow glory jointed the contest, that infallibly he had won the day. We have the authority of Aristotle on our side.
You cry aloud for an extract. Here is a superb one:—
"'Ye Critics! in whose heads, as equal scales,
I weigh what author's heaviness prevails;
Which most conduce to sooth the soul in slumbers,
My H—ley's periods, or my Blackmore's numbers;
Attend the trial we propose to make:
If there be man who o'er such works can wake,
Sleep's all-subduing charms who dares defy,
And boasts Ulysses' ear with Argus' eye;
To him we grant our amplest pow'rs to sit
Judge of all present, past, and future wit;
To cavil, censure, dictate, right or wrong,
Full and eternal privilege of tongue.'
"Three college sophs, and three pert Templars came,
The same their talents, and their tastes the same;
Each prompt to query, answer, and debate,
And smit with love of poesy and prate.
The pond'rous books two gentle readers bring;
The heroes sit, the vulgar form a ring.
The clam'rous crowd is hush'd with mugs of mum,
Till all, tun'd equal, send a gen'ral hum.
Then mount the clerks, and in one lazy tone
Through the long, heavy, painful page drawl on;
Soft creeping, words on words, the sense compose,
At ev'ry line they stretch, they yawn, they doze.
As to soft gales top-heavy pines bow low
Their heads, and lift them as they cease to blow;
Thus oft they rear, and oft the head decline,
As breathe, or pause, by fits, the airs divine.
And now to this side, now to that they nod,
As verse, or prose, infuse the drowsy god.
Thrice Budgel aim'd to speak, but thrice supprest
By potent Arthur, knock'd his chin and breast.
Toland and Tindal, prompt at priests to jeer,
Yet silent bow'd to Christ's no kingdom here.
Who sat the nearest, by the words o'ercome,
Slept first; the distant nodded to the hum;
Then down are roll'd the books, stretch'd o'er 'em lies
Each gentle clerk, and mutt'ring seals his eyes.
As what a Dutchman plumps into the lakes,
One circle first, and then a second makes;
What dulness dropt among her sons imprest,
Like motion from one circle to the rest:
So from the midmost the nutation spreads,
Round and more round, o'er all the sea of heads.
At last Centlivre felt her voice to fail,
Motteux himself unfinish'd left his tale.
Boyer the state, and Law the stage gave o'er,
Morgan and Mandeville could prate no more;
Norton from Daniel and Ostroea sprung,
Bless'd with his father's front and mother's tongue,
Hung silent down his never-blushing head,
And all was hush'd, as Folly's self lay dead.
"Thus the soft gifts of Sleep conclude the day,
And stretch'd on bulks, as usual, poets lay.
Why should I sing what bards the nightly Muse
Did slumb'ring visit, and convey to stews;
Who prouder march'd, with magistrates in state,
To some fam'd round-house, ever-open gate!
How Henley lay inspir'd beside a sink,
And to mere mortals seem'd a priest in drink:
While others, timely, to the neighb'ring Fleet
(Haunt of the Muses) made their safe retreat."
Ulysses and Æneas presented themselves alive and in the body, as visitors in the land of departed souls. A descent to the shades is not wanting in our Epos. It fills the whole Third Book. But our poet again manages a discreet difference in his imitation. Our Dunce hero visits Elysium in a dream; whilst he sleeps, his head recumbent on the lap of the goddess, in the innermost recess of her sanctuary. His vision resembles the Trojan's rather than the Greek's adventure. "A slipshod sibyl,"
"In lofty madness meditating song,
leads him. She seems to be typical of the half-crazed human poetess, in usual sublime dishabille. Venerable shades of the Dull greet him. As in Virgil's Elysian fields a glimpse is afforded into the dark philosophy of human existence, and we see the Lethean bank crowded with spirits, who taste and become prepared to live again—so here. And as Æneas finds Anchises engaged in taking cognizance of the ghosts that are to animate Roman bodies, so here Cibber sees a great Patriarch of Dulness, Bavius, (him of old classical renown,) dipping in Lethe the souls that are to be born dull upon the earth. The poet cannot resist a slight deviation from the doctrine of his original. By the ancient theory the Lethean dip extinguishes the memory of a past life, of its faults, and of their punishment; and thence the willingness to inhabit the gross, earthy frame, as generated anew. But the dip of Bavius is more powerful; it quenches the faculties that are innate in a spirit, fitting it
"for a skull
Of solid proof, impenetrably dull."