Page:The Dunciad - Alexander Pope (1743).djvu/76

Book I.  Sunt quibus in plures jus est transire figuras: Ut tibi, complexi terram maris incola, Proteu; Nunc violentus aper, nunc quem tetigisse timerent, Anguis eras, medo te faciebant cornua Taurum, Sæpe Lapis poteras.Ovid. Met. viii. Neither Palæphatus, Phurnutus, nor Heraclides give us any steddy light into the mythology of this mysterious fable. If I be not deceived in a part of learning which has so long exercised my pen, by Proteus must certainly be meant a hacknied Town scribler; and by his Transformations, the various disguises such a one assumes, to elude the pursuit of his irreconcilable enemy, the Bailiff. Proteus is represented as one bred of the mud and slime of Ægypt, the original soil of Arts and Letters: And what is a Town-scribler, but a creature made up of the excrements of luxurious Science? By the change then into a Boar is meant his character of a furious and dirty Party-writer; the Snake signifies a Libellor; and the Horns of the Bull, the Dilemmas of a Polemical Answerer. These are the three great parts he acts under; and when he has completed his circle, he sinks back again, as the last change into a Stone denotes, into his natural state of immoveable Stupidity. If I may expect thanks of the learned world for this discovery, I would by no means deprive that excellent Critic of his share, who discovered before me, that in the character of Proteus was designed Sophistam, Magum, Politicum, præsertim rebus omnibus sese accommodantem. Which in English is, A Political writer, a Libeller, and a Disputer, writing indifferently for or against every party in the State, every seat in Religion, and every character in private life. See my Fables of Ovid explained.