esting and animated earthquake, vulgarly called the Great
Earthquake at Lisbon! Having ourselves spoken of the good-humour of
Dryden, (some twenty pages back, about the middle of this article,) we
must not find fault with Warton for saying that a vein of pleasantry is
preserved through the whole of _Mac-Flecnoe_; but what thought
Mac-Flecnoe himself? "Ay, there's the rub." Then what a vein of
pleasantry is preserved through the whole of _Og_! So light and delicate
is the handling, that you might be charmed into the soft delusion, that
you beheld Christopher with his Knout.

"Since the total decay," innocently exclaims this estimable man, "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?" Mr Bowles--_mirabile dictu_--backs his
old schoolmaster against the goddess. "Can it be thought," says the
Canon--standing up for the age of Pope himself--"that this period was
enlightened by Young, Thomson, Glover, and many whose characters
reflected equal lustre on religion, morals, and philosophy? But such is
satire, when it is not guided by truth." All this might have been said
in fewer words--"LOOK AT BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE." There is not, in the
_Dunciad_ itself, an instance of such stupidity recorded, as this
indignant attribution of blindness to the present, and to the future,
"as far off its coming shone," to "the seed of Chaos and old night," by
two divines, editors both of the works of Alexander Pope, Esq. in eight
(?) and in ten volumes.

Lord Kames, in his _Elements of Criticism_, urges an objection to the
opening of the _Dunciad_, which, if sustained, is sufficient to prove
the whole poem vicious on beginning to end. "This author (Pope) is
guilty of much greater deviation from the rule. Dulness may be imagined
a Deity or Idol, to be worshipped by bad writers; but then some sort of
disguise is requisite, some bastard virtue must be bestowed, to give
this Idol a plausible appearance. Yet, in the _Dunciad_, Dulness,
without the least disguise, is made the object of worship. The mind
rejects such a fiction as unnatural." Warburton meets this objection
with his usual _fierte_ and acumen. "But is there no bastard virtue in
the mighty Mother of so numerous an offspring, which she takes care to
bring to the ears of kings? Her votaries wo