The Dunciad in four books

465 Pages·2014·2.237 MB·English

by  Pope, Alexander;Rumbold, Valerie

THE
D U N C I A D
IN FOUR BOOKS
LONGMAN ANNOTATED TEXTS
general editors
Charlotte Brewer, Hertford College, Oxford
H. R. Woudhuysen, University College London
Daniel Karlin, University College London
published titles
Michael Mason, Wordsworth and Coleridge: Lyrical Ballads
Alexandra Barratt, Women’s Writing in Middle English
Tim Armstrong, Thomas Hardy: Selected Poems
René Weis, King Lear: A Parallel Text Edition
Randall Martin, Women Writers in Renaissance England
Helen Phillips and Nick Havely, Chaucer’s Dream Poetry
Valerie Rumbold, Alexander Pope: The Dunciad in Four Books
Virginia Blair, Victorian Women Poets
ALEXANDER POPE
THE
D U N C I A D
IN FOUR BOOKS
EDITED BY
VALERIE RUMBOLD
First published 1999 by Pearson Education Limited
Second edition published 2009
Published 2014 by Routledge
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Copyright © 1999, 2009, Taylor & Francis.
The right of Valerie Rumbold to be identified as author
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ISBN 13: 978-1-4082-0416-0 (pbk)
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A CIP catalogue record for this book can be obtained from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Pope, Alexander, 1688–1744.
The Dunciad : in four books / edited by Valerie Rumbold. – 2nd ed.
p. cm. – (Longman annotated texts)
Includes bibliographical references and indexes.
ISBN 978-1-4082-0416-0 (pbk.)
1. Verse satire, English. 2. Literature publishing – Poetry.
3. Authorship – Poetry. I. Rumbold, Valerie. II. Title.
PR3625.A2R86 2008
821′.5–dc22
2008031246
Set by 35 in 9/12pt Stone Serif and 8.75/11pt Amasis
CONTENTS
Acknowledgements vi
Frontispiece viii
Introduction 1
Map: The London area in the 1740s 20
THE DUNCIAD IN FOUR BOOKS (1743) 21
Advertisement to the Reader 25
By Authority 27
Epigraphs 29
A Letter to the Publisher 31
Testimonies of Authors 43
Martinus Scriblerus of the Poem 69
Ricardus Aristarchus of the Hero of the Poem 75
Book I 87
Book II 143
Book III 215
Book IV 265
Appendix 361
I: Prefixed to the first Editions 363
II: A List of Books, Papers, and Verses 367
III: Advertisement to 1729 372
IV: Advertisement to the Fourth Book 374
V: The Guardian on Pastorals 376
VI: Of the Poet Laureate 384
VII: Advertisement, 1730 388
VIII: A Parallel 390
By the Author A Declaration 396
Index of Persons 398
Index of Matters 401
Bibliography 409
Selective index to editorial matter 442
v
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This edition would have been impossible to complete without the generous sup-
port of friends and colleagues. Howard Erskine-Hill and Roger Lonsdale have been
patient in their encouragement of what has seemed at times a very slow project,
and I am particularly grateful to them for their time and care in reading the com-
mentary. I am also grateful to J. Paul Hunter, William Kinsley, Sarah Prescott and
Bruce Redford for allowing me to see and to quote from their unpublished work.
Don Fowler has given invaluable help with classical allusions; and Christine
Gerrard, Isobel Grundy, Brean Hammond, Rosamond McGuinness, Isabel Rivers
and Ruth Smith have been unstinting in sharing knowledge and ideas.
I have been particularly fortunate in the bibliographical expertise I have been
able to draw upon. At the outset of the project James Sutherland responded gen-
erously to my enquiries, and David Vander Meulen shared with me some of the
detailed results of his work on the bibliography of the Dunciads. James McLaverty
has been an unfailing source of information and ideas on typography, bookmak-
ing and the book trade; and his indefatigable and judicious reading of text and
commentary has saved me from many errors. I am also grateful to David Foxon
for arranging for me to examine his fine-paper copy of The Dunciad in Four Books,
since presented to the Bodleian Library.
Research involving the numbers of eighteenth-century books required for a pro-
ject of this kind can only be undertaken in a major library, and I am grateful to
Bill Tydeman and Tom Corns, my successive heads of department in Bangor, for
helping to secure the support of the various bodies whose contributions have made
extended library visits possible: the Research Committee of the University of Wales,
Bangor, helped with start-up funding; the English Department supplied further
financial support and arranged study leave; the British Academy supported the pro-
ject under its Small Personal Research Grants scheme; and St John’s College, Oxford,
provided a Summer Visiting Scholarship. Without such practical support this pro-
ject would not have been feasible.
My bibliography gives some idea of the burdens I have placed on library staff
over the years: the staff of the Upper Reserve in the Bodleian Library have been
patient and helpful throughout, and Ann Illsley and Marion Poulton in the Main
Arts Library in Bangor have contributed invaluable expertise in mobilising re-
sources. In the English Department Office in Bangor I should like to thank Michelle
Harrison, Gail Kincaid and Linda Jones, who have helped in all kinds of practical
ways.
I would like to thank the Longman editorial team for supporting this project
throughout. The enthusiasm of Henry Woudhuysen, academic editor to the series,
vi
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS vii
has been a constant encouragement, and Katy Coutts, my copy-editor, has coped
with the complexities of the typescript with remarkable calmness and thoroughness.
No-one is likely to edit The Dunciad in Four Books without wondering period-
ically why they started and how they can ever hope to finish: the line ‘Call’d to
this work by Dulness, Jove, and Fate’ has, in this context, a discomforting ring. I
have been fortunate to have had so many tolerant listeners, both in my own depart-
ment in Bangor and elsewhere. My deepest debt of gratitude, on this score as on
so many others, is, as always, to Ian.
The publishers are grateful to the British Library for the illustration on p. viii, the
spoof royal arms on pp. 27 and 396, and the monograms on p. 28, all taken from
The Dunciad in Four Books(Alexander Pope), 1743 edition. © British Library Board.
All Rights Reserved (shelfmark: 641l 17(1)).
NOTE TO THE SECOND IMPRESSION
For this reimpression, corrections have been made to the following pages: 93, 97,
98, 137, 148, 150, 173, 176, 217, 227, 250, 286, 355, 378, 412, 420, 432. Except
for minor changes to the pagination of the bibliography, the original pagination
has been preserved throughout.
Book II. The DUN C I A D.
With armS' expanded Bernard rows his flate~
And left-Iegg'd Jacob feems to emulate.
Full in the middle way there flood a lake~
70Wliich Curl's"Corinna chanc'd that morn to make:
(Such was her wont, at, early dawn to drop
Her evening cates before his neighbour's (hop,)
Here fortun'd Curl to flide; loud {bout the band,
And Bernard! Bernard! rings thro' all the Strand.
75 Obfcene with filth the mifcreant lies bewray'd,
Fal'n in the plafu his wickednefs had laid:
REM ARK s~,
VEil. 70' Curfs Corinnal This name, ments of men and books, and only excu
it (eems, was taken by one Mrs. T --, fable from the youth and inexperience of
who procured fome private letters of Mr. ·the writer.
Pope's, while almoft a boy, to Mr. Crom VER. 75. Obfcene with filth, &c.]
well, and fold them without the confent Though this incident may feem too low
of either of thofe Gentlemen to Curl, who and bafe for the dignity of an Epic poem,
printed them in 12mo, 1727' He dif the learned very well know it to be but a
covered her to be the publifher, in his copy of Homer and'Virgil ; the very words
Key, p. II. We only take:this oppor ~9<f#' and fimus are ufed by them, though
tunity ofm entioning the manner in which our poet (in compliance to m.odern nice
thefe letters got abroad, which the author ty) has remarkably enriched and coloured
was ailiamed of as very trivial things, full his language, as well as raifed the vedifi
not only of levities, but of wrong judg- catioll, in this Epifode, and in the fol-
I MIT A T ION S.
Vn. 73. Hm jortun'd Curl to jlide;]
Labilur infelix, Clejis ut forte juvencis
FuJus humum virideJque Juper llIadefecera.t herbas_
Concidit, immlmdoque fimo, facrofjue "uore. .
Virgo lEn. v. of Nifus.
VER. 70. And Bernard! Bernard!]
- Ut littUf, Byla, Byla, omne jonaret. Vireo Eel. vi.
Lz
A page from The Dunciad in Four Books (1743), showing the complexity of the original lay-
out and typography.
viii
INTRODUCTION
LEVELS OF COMPLEXITY
Reading The Dunciad in Four Bookscan be a marvellously rewarding experience. As
the culminating achievement of Pope’s career, it engages so memorably with so
many aspects of its time that it is regularly cited in discussions of a whole range
of aesthetic, ideological, cultural and historical issues. To a novice reader, how-
ever, at more than two centuries’ distance from the events, assumptions and con-
troversies involved, it can seem bafflingly complex and offputtingly alien. This
Introduction aims principally to provide a practical approach to a first reading:
once that is achieved, the reader is in a stronger position to explore, evaluate and
contest theoretical and critical approaches – including those implicit in this edi-
tion and commentary. A few particularly helpful books and articles are marked
with asterisks in the Bibliography.
The Dunciad in Four Books is complex both in itself and in its relation to
Pope’s previous Dunciads. The most obvious level of complexity is chronological,
since Pope altered and updated the Dunciads from one edition to the next over a
period of fifteen years. Leaving aside intermediate variants, there were four prin-
cipal versions:
1. The Dunciad of 1728, a poem in three books, with a hero called Tibbald.
2. The Dunciad Variorum of 1729, the same poem in a slightly revised version, but
with commentary and apparatus (i.e. prefaces, appendices, index, etc.).
3. The New Dunciadof 1742, a new book of verse conceived as a sequel to the pre-
vious three, with commentary and apparatus. (The first three books were not
included in this version.)
4. The Dunciad in Four Books of 1743, a revised version of the original three books
and a slightly revised version of the fourth book of 1742 with revised com-
mentary and apparatus. A new character, Bays, replaces Tibbald in the role of
hero.
We therefore need to be careful how we speak of the Dunciads: much that is true
of one version will not be true of another, and even the material they have in
common takes on altered perspectives as surrounding elements change over time.
The present edition gives the text of The Dunciad in Four Books of 1743, the fullest
and arguably the most interesting of the versions. Other versions are mentioned
only as background.1
The second major aspect of the texts’ complexity is that after 1728 the Dunciad
ceased to be simply a poem: succeeding versions were composite texts of verse and
1