In Tot'nam fields, the brethren with amaze
Prick all their ears up, and forget to graze;[I 1]
Long Chanc'ry-lane[R 1] retentive rolls the sound,
And courts to courts return it round and round;
Thames wafts it thence to Rufus' roaring hall, 265
And Hungerford re-echoes bawl for bawl.
All hail him victor in both gifts of song,
Who sings so loudly, and who sings so long.[R 2]
Remarks
- ↑ Ver. 263. Long Chanc'ry-lane] The place where the offices of Chancery are kept. The long detention of Clients in that Court, and the difficulty of getting out, is humorously allegorized in these lines.
- ↑ Ver. 268. Who sings so loudly, and who sings so long.] A just character of Sir Richard Blackmore knight, who (as Mr. Dryden expresseth it)
Writ to the rumbling of his coach's wheels.
and whose indefatigable Muse produced no less than six Epic poems: Prince and King Arthur, twenty books; Eliza, ten; Alfred, twelve; the Redeemer, six; besides Job, in folio; the whole Book of Psalms; the Creation, seven books; Nature of Man, three books; and many more. 'Tis in this sense he is styled af-
means of advancing Christianity was by the New-birth of religious madness; That, by the old death of tire and faggot: And therefore they agreed in this, though in no other earthly thing, to abuse all the sober Clergy. From the small success of these two extraordinary persons, we may learn how little hurtful Bigotry and Enthusiasm are, while the Civil Magistrate prudently forbears to lend his power to the one, in order to the employing it against the other.
Imitations
- ↑ Ver. 262. Prick all their ears up, and forget to graze;
Immemor herbarum ques est mirata juvenca.Virg. Ecl. viii.
The progress of the sound from place to place, and the scenery here of the bordering regions, Tottenham-fields, Chancery-lane, the Thames, Westminster-hall, and Hungerford-stairs, are imitated from Virgil, Æn. vii. on the sounding the horn of Alecto:
Audiit & Triviæ longe lacus, audiit amnis
Sulphurea Nar albus aqua, fontesque Velini, &c.
