conjectured in
a writer who principally dedicates himself to the championship of
political principles. The rules, in the Third Book, for the conduct of a
prince, afford the opportunity of describing the idea of a patriot king,
of censuring that which is actually done adversely to these rules; and, at
the same time, they acquire something of a peculiar meaning, if they are
to be construed as a scheme of right political thinking--the intelligence
of the general welfare which is obligatory upon the political ruler being
equally so upon the political teacher. If this kind of deliberate,
allegorical design may be mercifully supposed, the wild self-imagination,
and apparently downright nonsense of the First Book, may pretend a
palliation of its glaring vanity and absurdity; since the blissful reign
of King Churchill over Gotham, which is extolled very much like the "Jovis
incrementum," in Virgil's Fourth Eclogue, thus comes to mean, when
translated into the language of men, the reign in England of the opinions
for which Churchill battles in rhyme. Or, this may be too much attribution
of plan to a caprice that meant little or nothing. The first book was
published by itself, and may have aimed at something to which the author
found that he could not give shape and consistency. Yet Cowper declares
Gotham to be a noble and beautiful poem.

THE AUTHOR might almost seem intended for a sequel to MacFlecnoe and the
Dunciad. Not that it assumes, like them, a fanciful vehicle for the
satire, but it undertakes the lashing of peccant authors, and recognises
DULNESS as an enthroned power to whose empire the writer is hostile; and
where he adverts to his own early life, and clerical destination, he
mentions her as the patroness upon whom his friends had relied for his
future church preferment.

"But now, when Dulness rears aloft her throne,
When lordly vassals her wide empire own;
When Wit, seduced by Envy, starts aside,
And basely leagues with Ignorance and Pride, &c.

* * * * *

Bred to the church, and for the gown decreed,
Ere it was known that I should learn to read;
Though that was nothing for my friends, who knew
What mighty Dulness of itself could do,
Never design'd me for a working priest,
But hoped I should have been a dean at least," &c.

The writers more formally and regularly attacked, are Smollett, Murphy,
Shebbeare, Guthrie, and one Kidgell, who contrived to earn shame,