dive where Fleet Ditch

Rolls the large tribute of dead dogs to Thames;

and most certainly we must deny the present applicability of the note
upon 'Magazines' compiled by Pope, or rather by Warburton, for the
episcopal bludgeon is perceptible in the prose description. They are not
at present 'the eruption of every miserable scribbler, the scum of every
dirty newspaper, or fragments of fragments picked up from every dirty
dunghill ... equally the disgrace of human wit, morality, decency, and
common sense.' But if the translator of the 'Dunciad' into modern
phraseology would have some difficulty in finding a head for every cap,
there are perhaps some satirical stings which have not quite lost their
point. The legitimate drama, so theatrical critics tell us, has not
quite shaken off the rivalry of sensational scenery and idiotic
burlesque, though possibly we do not produce absurdities equal to that
which, as Pope tells us, was actually introduced by Theobald, in which

Nile rises, Heaven descends, and dance on earth
Gods, imps, and monsters, music, rage, and mirth,
A fire, a jig, a battle and a ball,
Till one wide conflagration swallows all.

There is still facetiousness which reminds us too forcibly that

Gentle Dulness ever loves a joke,

and even sermons, for which we may apologise on the ground that

Dulness is sacred in a sound divine.

Here and there, too, if we may trust certain stern reviewers, there are
writers who have learnt the principle that

Index learning turns no student pale,
Yet holds the eel of Science by the tail.

And the first four lines, at least, of the great prophecy at the
conclusion of the third book is thought by the enemies of muscular
Christianity to be possibly approaching its fulfilment:

Proceed, great days! till learning fly the shore,
Till birch shall blush with noble blood no more,
Till Thames see Eton's sons for ever play,
Till Westminster's whole year be holiday,
Till Isis' elders reel, their pupils sport,
And Alma Mater lies dissolved in Port!

No! So far as we can see, it is still true that

Born a goddess, Dulness never dies.

Men, we know it on high authority, are still mostly fools. If Pope be in
error, it is not so much that his adversary is beneath him, as that she
is unassailable by wit or poetry. Weapons of the most ethereal temper
spend their keenness in vain against the 'anarch old' whose powe