Page:The Dunciad - Alexander Pope (1743).djvu/202

 Prompt at the call, around the Goddess roll
190 Broad hats, and hoods, and caps, a sable shoal:
Thick and more thick the black blockade extends,
A hundred head of Aristotle's friends.^{[R 1][R 2]}
Nor wert thou, Isis! wanting to the day,
[Tho' Christ-church^{[R 3]} long kept prudishly away.]

Remarks

1. Ver. 192. A hundred head of Aristotle's friends.] The Philosophy of Aristotle had suffered a long disgrace in this learned University: being first expelled by the Cartesian, which, in its turn, gave place to the Newtonian. But it had all this while some faithful followers in secret, who never bowed the knee to Baal, nor acknowledged any strange God in Philosophy. These, on this new appearance of the Goddess, come out like Confessors, and make an open profession of the ancient faith in the ipse dixit of their Master. Thus far Scriblerus.
   But the learned Mr. Colley Cibber takes the matter quite otherwise; and that this various fortune of Aristotle relates not to his natural, but his moral Philosophy. For speaking of that University in his time, he says, they seemed to have as implicit a Reverence for Shakespear and Johnson, as formerly for the Ethics of Aristotle. See his Life, p. 385. One would think this learned professor had mistaken Ethics for Physics; unless he might imagine the Morals too were grown into disuse, from the relaxation they admitted of during the time he mentions, viz. while He and the Players were at Oxford.
2. Ibid. A hundred head, &c.] It appears by this the Goddess has been careful of keeping up a Succession, according to the rule,
   Semper enim refice: ac ne post amissa requiras,
   Anteveni; & sobolem armento sortire quotannis.
   
   
   It is remarkable with what dignity the Poet here describes the friends of this ancient Philosopher. Horace does not observe the same decorum with regard to those of another sect, when he says Cum ridere voles Epicuri de grege Porcum. But the word Drove, Armentum, here understood, is a word of honour, as the most noble Festus the Grammarian assures us, Armentum id genus pecoris appellatur, quod est idoneum opus armorum. And alluding to the temper of this warlike breed, our poet very appositely calls them a hundred head. Scribl.
3. Ver. 194. [Tho' Christ-church] This line is doubtless spurious, and foisted in by the impertinence of the Editor; and accordingly we have put it between Hooks. For I affirm this College came as early as any other, by its proper Deputies; nor did any College pay homage to Dulness in its whole body. Bentl.