ters. Dryden supposes him to be the
King of Dulness, who, advanced in years, will abdicate his
well-possessed throne. He selects Shadwell from amongst his numerous
offspring, all the Dunces, as the son or Dunce the most nearly
resembling himself--hence the name of the poem--and appoints him his
successor. That is the whole plan. The verse flows unstinted from the
full urn of Dryden. The perfect ease, and the tone of mastery
characteristic of him, are felt throughout. He amuses himself with
laughing at his rival, and the amusement remains to all time; for all
who, having felt the pleasure of wit, are the foes of the Dunces. It is
not a laboured poem--it is a freak of wit. You cannot imagine him
attaching much importance to the scarcely two hundred lines, thrown off
in a few gleeful outpourings. To _us_, Shadwell is _nothing_. He is a
phantom, an impersonation. His Duncehood is exaggerated, for he was a
writer of some talent in one walk; but being selected for the throne, it
was imperative to make him Dunce all through. To us, there, he is merely
a Type; and we judge the strokes of Dryden in their universality, not
asking if they were truly applicable to his victim, but whether they
express pointedly and poignantly the repulsion entertained by Wit for
Dulness. In this enlarged sense and power we feel it as poetry. When the
father, encouraging his heir, says--

"And when false flowers of ret'ric thou wouldst cull, Trust Nature;
do not labour to be dull; But, write they best, and top"----

Nothing can be happier. The quiet assumption of Dulness for the highest
point of desirable human attainment--the good-nature and indulgent
parental concern of the wish to save the younger emulator of his own
glory from spending superfluous pains on a consummation sure to come of
itself--the confidence of the veteran Dullard in the blood of the race,
and in the tried and undegenerate worth of his successor--the sufficient
direction of a life and reign comprehended, summed up, concentrated in
the one master-precept--"do not labour to be dull"--are inimitable. You
feel the high artist, whom experience has made bold; and you feel your
own imagination roused to conceive the universe of Dunces, each yielding
to the attraction of his genius, fluttering his pinions with an
exquisite grace, and all, without labour or purpose, arriving at the
goal predestined by nature and fate.

We know of no good reason why, for the delectation of myria