Page:The Dunciad - Alexander Pope (1743).djvu/72

Book I. The Mighty Mother, and her Son, &c.] The Reader ought here to be cautioned, that the Mother, and not the Son, is the principal Agent of this Poem: The latter of them is only chosen as her Collegue (as was anciently the custom in Rome before some great Expedition) the main action of the Poem being by no means the Coronation of the Laureate, which is performed in the very first book, but the Restoration of the Empire of Dulness in Britain, which is not accomplished 'till the last. Ibid.—her Son who brings, &c.] Wonderful is the stupidity of all the former Critics and Commentators on this work! It breaks forth at the very first line. The author of the Critique prefixed to Sawney, a Poem, p. 5. hath been so dull as to explain the Man who brings, &c. not of the Hero of the piece, but of our Poet himself, as if he vaunted that Kings were to be his readers; an honour which this Poem hath had, yet knoweth he how to receive it with more modesty. We remit this Ignorant to the first lines of the Æneid, assuring him that Virgil there speaketh not of himself, but of Æneas: Arma virumque cano, Trojæ qui primus ab oris Italiam, fato profugus, Lavinaque venit Littora: multum ille & terris jacatus & alto, &c. I cite the whole three verses, that I may by the way offer a Conjectural Emendation, purely my own, upon each: First, oris should be read aris, it being, as we see Æn. ii. 513. from the altar of Jupiter Hereæus that Æneas fled as soon as he saw Priam slain. In the second line I would read flatu for fato, since it is most clear it was by Winds that he arrived at the shore of Italy. Jactatus, in the third, is surely as improperly applied to terris, as proper to alto; to say a man is tost on land, is much at one with saying he walks at sea; Risum teneatis, amici? Correct it, as I doubt not it ought to be, vexatus.