50
The Dunciad.
Book I.
(Pomps without guilt, of bloodless swords and maces,
Glad chains,[R. 1] warm furs, broad banners, and broad faces)
Now Night descending, the proud scene was o'er,
90 But liv'd, in Settle's numbers, one day more.[R. 2] [R. 3]
Now May'rs and Shrieves all hush'd and satiate lay,
Yet eat, in dreams, the custard of the day;
While pensive Poets painful vigils keep,
Sleepless themselves, to give their readers sleep.
95 Much to the mindful Queen the feast recalls
What City Swans once sung within the walls;
Glad chains,[R. 1] warm furs, broad banners, and broad faces)
Now Night descending, the proud scene was o'er,
90 But liv'd, in Settle's numbers, one day more.[R. 2] [R. 3]
Now May'rs and Shrieves all hush'd and satiate lay,
Yet eat, in dreams, the custard of the day;
While pensive Poets painful vigils keep,
Sleepless themselves, to give their readers sleep.
95 Much to the mindful Queen the feast recalls
What City Swans once sung within the walls;
Remarks
- ↑ Ver. 88. Glad chains,] The Ignorance of these Moderns! This was altered in one edition to Gold chains, more regard to the metal of which the chains of Aldermen are made, than to the beauty of the Latinism and Græcism, nay of figurative speech itself: Lætas segetes, glad, for making glad, &c. Scribl.
- ↑ Ver. 90. But liv'd, in Settle's numbers, one day more.] A beautiful manner of speaking, usual with poets in praise of poetry, in which kind nothing is finer than those lines of Mr. Addison:
Sometimes, misguided by the tuneful throng,
I look for streams immortaliz'd in song,
That left in silence and oblivion lie,
Dumb are their fountains, and their channels dry;
Yet run for ever by the Muses skill,
And in the smooth description murmur still. - ↑ Ibid. But liv'd, in Settle's numbers, one day more.] Settle was poet to the City of London. His office was to compose yearly panegyrics upon the Lord Mayors, and verses to be spoken in the Pageants: But that part of the shows being at length frugally abolished, the employment of City poet ceased; so that upon Settle's demise there was no successor to that Place.
author had left in blanks, but most certainly could never be that which the Editor foisted in formerly, and which no way agrees with the chronology of the poem.
Bentl.
The Procession of a Lord Mayor is made partly by land, and partly by water.—Cimon, the famous Athenian General, obtained a victory by sea, and another by land, on the same day, over the Persians and Barbarians.
