Page:The Dunciad - Alexander Pope (1743).djvu/194

Not closer, orb in orb, conglob'd are seen
80 The buzzing Bees about their dusky Queen.
 The gath'ring number, as it moves along,
Involves a vast involuntary throng,
Who gently drawn, and struggling less and less,
Roll in her Vortex, and her pow'r confess.
85 Not those alone who passive own her laws,
But who, weak rebels, more advance her cause.
Whate'er of dunce in College or in Town
Sneers at another, in toupee or gown;
Whate'er of mungril no one class admits,
90 A wit with dunces, and a dunce with wits.
 Nor absent they, no members of her state,
Who pay her homage in her sons, the Great;
Who false to Phœbus,^{[R 1]} bow the knee to Baal;
Or impious, preach his Word without a call.

Remarks

The second tho' within the sphere of her attraction, yet having at the same time a different motion, they are carried, by the composition of these two, in planetary revolutions round her centre, some nearer to it, some further off:

Who gently drawn, and struggling less and less,
Roll in her Vortex, and her pow'r confess.


The third are properly excentrical, and no constant members of her state or system: sometimes at an immense distance from her influence, and sometimes again almost on the surface of her broad effulgence. Their use in their Perihelion, or nearest approach to Dulness, is the same in the moral World, as that of Comets in the natural, namely to refresh and recreate the Dryness and decays of the system; in the manner marked out from ver. 91 to 98.
1. Ver. 93. false to Phœbus,] Spoken of the ancient and true Phœbus, not the French Phœbus, who hath no chosen Priests or Poets, but equally inspires any man that pleaseth to sing or preach. Scribl.