Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from The Works of Alexander Pope, Vol. 3: With a Memoir of the Author, Notes, and Critical Notices on Each Poem
Such also is the description of his gothic library, for Cibber troubled not himself with Caxton, Wynkyn, and De Lyra. Tib bald, who was an antiquarian, had collected those curious; Old writers: and to slumber in the Goddess's lap, was adapted to his stupidity, not to the vivacity of his successor.
On the whole, the chief fault of the Dunciad, is the violence and vehemence of its satire, and the excessive height to which it is carried; and which therefore I may compare to that marvellous column of boiling water, near Mount Hecla in Iceland, thrown up wards, above ninety feet, by the force of a subterraneous fire. What are the impressions left upon the mind after a perusal of this poem? Contempt, aversion, vexation, and anger. NO sentiments that enlarge, ennoble, move, or mend the heart! Insomuch that I know a person, whose name would be an ornament to these pa pers, if I were suffered to insert it, who, after reading a book ofthe Dunciad, always sooths himself, as he calls it, by turning to a canto in the Fairy Queen. This is not the case in that very de lightful mid beautiful poem, Mac Flecnoe, from which Pope has borrowed so many hints, and images, and ideas. But Dryden's poem was the ofi'spring of contempt, and Pope's of indignation one is full of mirth, and the other of malignity. A vein of plea santry is uniformly preserved through the Whole of Mac Flecnoe, and the piece begins and ends in the same key. It is natural and obvious to borrow a metaphor from music, when we are speak ing of a poem whose versification is particularly and exquisitely sweet and harmonious. The numbers of the Dunciad, by being much laboured, and encumbered with epithets, have something In them of stiffness and harshness. Since the total decay of learning and genius was foretold in the Dunciad, how many very excellent pieces of Criticism, Poetry, History, Philosophy, and Divinity, have appeared in this country, and to what a degree of perfection has almost every art, either useful or elegant, been carried!
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