MAC-FLECK NOE; OR, A SATIRE ON THE
TRUE BLUE PROTESTANT POET, T. S.1
(1682)

All human things are subject to decay,
And, when fate summons, monarchs must obey.
This Flecknoe found, who, like Augustus,
young

Was called to empire, and had governed long; In prose and verse was owned, without dispute,

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Through all the realms of Nonsense, absolute.
This aged prince, now flourishing in peace,
And blest with issue of a large increase,
Worn out with business, did at length debate
To settle the succession of the state;
And, pondering which of all his sons was fit
To reign, and wage immortal war with wit,
Cried, "Tis resolved! for Nature pleads, that he
Should only rule, who most resembles me.
Shadwell alone my perfect image bears,
Mature in dulness from his tender years;
Shadwell alone, of all my sons, is he,

Who stands confirmed in full stupidity.

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The rest to some faint meaning make pretence,
But Shadwell never deviates into sense;
Some beams of wit on other souls may fall,
Strike through, and make a lucid interval;
But Shadwell's genuine night admits no ray,
His rising fogs prevail upon the day.
Besides, his goodly fabric fills the eye,
And seems designed for thoughtless majesty;
Thoughtless as monarch oaks, that shade the
plain,

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And, spread in solemn state, supinely reign.
Heywood and Shirley were but types of thee,
Thou last great prophet of tautology!
Even I, a dunce of more renown than they,
Was sent before but to prepare thy way;
And, coarsely clad in Norwich drugget,2 came
To teach the nations in thy greater name.

25 Advowson meant originally the obligation to protect a religious office or institution; hence the passage would seem to mean that hypocrisy and nonsense had come to defend and excuse his conscience.

1 Mac-Flecknoe is a satire directed against Thomas Shadwell," T. S.," (1640-1692), a minor poet and dramatist of the Restoration. Dryden's poem, The Medal, drew from Shadwell a venomous counter attack, The Medal of John Bayes (i. e. Dryden). This Dryden answered in Mac-Flecknoe. Shadwell is represented in the poem as the son or poetic successor of Richard Flecknoe, an Irish poet, wit, and playwright, and the poem opens with the abdication of Flecknoe as absolute monarch of the kingdom of Nonsense, in favor of Shadwell.

2 "This stuff appears to have been sacred to the poorer votaries of Parnassus; and it is somewhat odd that it seems to have been the dress of our poet himself in the entire stages of his fortune." Scott.

My warbling lute,-the lute I whilom strung, 35
When to King John of Portugal3 I sung,-
Was but the prelude to that glorious day,
When thou on silver Thames didst cut thy way,
With well-timed oars, before the royal barge,
Swelled with the pride of thy celestial charge; 40
And big with hymn, commander of an host,-
The like was ne'er in Epsom blankets tost.
Methinks I see the new Arion sail,

The lute still trembling underneath thy nail. At thy well-sharpened thumb, from shore to shore,

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...

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The trebles squeak for fear, the basses roar; .
About thy boat the little fishes throng,
As at the morning toast that floats along.
Sometimes, as prince of thy harmonious band,
Thou wield'st thy papers in thy threshing
hand;

St. Andre's feet ne'er kept more equal time,
Not even the feet of thy own Psyche's rhyme:
Though they in number as in sense excel;

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So just, so like tautology, they fell,
That, pale with envy, Singleton forswore
The lute and sword, which he in triumph bore,
And vowed he ne'er would act Villerius more.'
Here stopt the good old sire and wept for
joy,

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In silent raptures of the hopeful boy.
All arguments, but most his plays, persuade,
That for anointed dulness he was made.

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Close to the walls which fair Augusta bind, (The fair Augusta much to fears inclined), An ancient fabric raised to inform the sight, There stood of yore, and Barbicans it hight," A watch-tower once, but now, so fate ordains, Of all the pile an empty name remains; . . . .69 Near it a Nursery 10 erects its head, Where queens are formed and future heroes bred,

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Where unfledged actors learn to laugh and

Ambitiously designed his Shadwell's throne. For ancient Decker prophesied long since,

3 An allusion to some work of Flecknoe's of which, it seems, nothing is now known.

Apparently the bread and toast thrown into the Thames from the boats in order to attract the fishes. 5 A fashionable dancing master of the time.

An opera singer and musician. He acted the part of Villerius, in Sir William Davenant's opera, The Siege of Rhodes.

7 The title given by the Romans to London, Londinium Augusta.

8 A round tower near the junction of Barbican and Aldersgate Streets.

Was called.

10 A school of acting established in 1665 by the king.

11 Maximin was the hero of Dryden's Tyrannic Love. 12 A cobbler, in an Interlude of the day.

13 Puns.

14 A noted punster.

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Of Shadwell's coronation through the town.
Roused by report of fame, the nations meet,
From near Bunhill,16 and distant Watling
Street.17

No Persian carpets spread the imperial way,
But scattered limbs of mangled poets lay.
Much Heywood, Shirley, Ogleby's there lay, 102
But loads of Shadwell almost choked the way;
Bilked 19 stationers for yeomen stood prepared,
And Herringman 20 was captain of the guard. 105
The hoary prince in majesty appeared,
High on a throne of his own labours reared.
At his right hand our young Ascanius sate,
Rome's other hope, and pillar of the state.
His brows thick fogs, instead of glorics, grace,
And lambent dulness played around his face.111
As Hannibal did to the altars come,
Sworn by his sire, a mortal foe to Rome,

So Shadwell swore, nor should his vow be vain, That he till death true dulness would maintain;

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And from whose loins recorded 21 Psyche22 sprung.

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His temples, last, with poppies were o'erspread,
That nodding seemed to consecrate his head.
Just at the point of time, if fame not lie,
On his left hand twelve reverend owls did fly;
So Romulus, 'tis sung, by Tiber's brook,
Presage of sway from twice six vultures took.
The admiring throng loud acclamations make,
And omens of his future empire take.
The sire then shook the honours of his head,
And from his brows damps of oblivion shed 135
Full on the filial dulness: long he stood,
Repelling from his breast the raging god;

15 The reference here is to The Miser and The Humorists, plays by Shadwell. Raymond is a character in The Humorists, while Bruce appears in another of Shadwell's plays.

16-17 Two sections of London. The sense is that they come from north and south.

18 John Ogleby, 1600-1676, a Scotch versifier.

19 Defrauded.

20 A leading publisher of the day.

21-22 The opera of Psyche which was recorded, i. e.,

sung.

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Yet not one thought accuse thy toil of wit.
Let gentle George23 in triumph tread the stage,
Make Dormiant betray, and Loveit rage;
Let Cully, Cockwood, Fopling, charm the pit,
And in their folly show the writer's wit;
Yet still thy fools shall stand in thy defence, 155
And justify their author's want of sense.
Let them be all by thy own model made
Of dulness, and desire no foreign aid,
That they to future ages may be known,
Not copies drawn, but issue of thy own:
Nay, let thy men of wit too be the same,
All full of thee, and differing but in name,
But let no alien Sedley24 interpose,
To lard with wit thy hungry Epsom prose.
And when false flowers of rhetoric thou wouldst
cull,
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(From Absalom and Achitophel, 1681)
Of these the false Achitophel was first;
A name to all succeeding ages curst:
For close designs, and crooked counsels fit;
Sagacious, bold, and turbulent of wit;
Restless, unfixed in principles and place;

In power unpleased, impatient of disgrace; 155
A fiery soul, which, working out its way,
Fretted the pigmy-body to decay,

And o'er-informed the tenement of clay.
A daring pilot in extremity,

Pleased with the danger, when the waves went high,

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He sought the storms; but for a calm unfit,
Would steer too nigh the sands, to boast his wit.
Great wits are sure to madness near allied,
And thin partitions do their bounds divide;
Else, why should he, with wealth and honour

blest,

Refuse his age the needful hours of rest? Punish a body which he could not please;

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Bankrupt of life, yet prodigal of ease?
And all to leave what with his toil he won,
To that unfeathered two-legged thing, a son;170
Got, while his soul did huddled notions try;
And born a shapeless lump, like anarchy.
In friendship false, implacable in hate;
Resolved to ruin, or to rule the state.

28 A small barrel.

29-30 Two characters in Shadwell's Virtuoso.

1 The earliest of Dryden's satires. It was directed against the versatile, able, but unscrupulous politician, Anthony Ashley Cooper, Lord Shaftsbury, who appears under the name of Achitophel.

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Unbribed, unsought, the wretched to redress;
Swift of despatch, and easy of access.
Oh! had he been content to serve the crown,
With virtue only proper to the gown;

Or had the rankness of the soil been freed
From cockle, that oppressed the noble seed; 195
David for him his tuneful harp had strung,
And heaven had wanted one immortal song.
But wild ambition loves to slide, not stand,
And fortune's ice prefers to virtue's land.
Achitophel, grown weary to possess
A lawful fame, and lazy happiness,
Disdained the golden fruit to gather free,
And lent the crowd his arm to shake the tree.

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A SONG FOR ST. CECILIA'S1 DAY, 22ND NOVEMBER 1687

I

From harmony, from heavenly harmony,
This universal frame began:
When nature underneath a heap

Of jarring atoms lay,

And could not heave her head,

The tuneful voice was heard from high,
"Arise, ye more than dead."

Then cold, and hot, and moist, and dry,
In order to their stations leap,

And Music's power obey.

From harmony, from heavenly harmony,
This universal frame began;
From harmony to harmony

Through all the compass of the notes it ran,
The diapason closing full in man.

II

What passion cannot music raise and quell? When Jubal struck the chorded shell,

His listening brethren stood around,

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2 A "Triple Alliance" between Holland, Sweden, and England in 1668. It was broken by an infamous secret treaty with France. Shaftsbury was one of its signers. 3 A Hebrew word meaning "father of the Nation;" i. e., the judges. As Lord Chancellor, Shaftsbury had a well deserved reputation for uprightness and ability.

1 St. Cecilia, virgin martyr of the third century, became patron saint of music, and was supposed to have invented the organ.

He chose a mournful muse,

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Changed his hand, and checked his pride.

Soft pity to infuse,

He sung Darius great and good
By too severe a fate,
Fallen, fallen, fallen, fallen,
Fallen from his high estate,

And weltering in his blood:
Deserted, at his utmost need,
By those his former bounty fed;
On the bare earth exposed he lies,
With not a friend to close his eyes.

With downcast looks the joyless victor sate,
Revolving, in his altered soul,

The various turns of chance below; And, now and then, a sigh he stole, And tears began to flow.

CHORUS

Revolving, in his altered soul,

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The various turns of chance below; And, now and then, a sigh he stole; And tears began to flow.

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At length, with love and wine at once oppressed, The vanquished victor sunk upon her breast.

And the sparkles that flash from their eyes!135 Behold a ghastly band,

Each a torch in his hand!

Those are Grecian ghosts, that in battle were

slain,

And, unburied, remain
Inglorious on the plain:
Give the vengeance due
To the valiant crew.

Behold how they toss their torches on high,

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How they point to the Persian abodes, And glittering temples of their hostile gods.The princes applaud, with a furious joy, And the king seized a flambeau with zeal to destroy;

Thais led the way,

To light him to his prey,

And, like another Helen, fired another Troy. 150

CHORUS

And the King seized a flambeau with zeal to destroy;

Thais led the way,

To light him to his prey,

And, like another Helen, fired another Troy.

VII

Thus, long ago,

Ere heaving bellows learned to blow,
While organs yet were mute,

Timotheus, to his breathing flute,

And sounding lyre,

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Could swell the soul to rage, or kindle soft

The sweet enthusiast, from her sacred store,
Enlarged the former narrow bounds,
And added length to solemn sounds,
With nature's mother-wit, and arts unknown

before.

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