The Dunciad’s third book is a portrait of Alexander Pope’s attitude towards the battle of the ancients and the moderns. He satirizes the growing popularity of common booksellers and the pulp, mass producing publishers of Grubstreet. He launches his attacks in the mock-heroic form in which he uses satirical praise to highlight the lowly opinion he has of the current trends of growing ‘literature.’ Pope, moreover, reminiscent of his work in An Essay on Criticism, also contributes blame to the authors of the modern movement of his times for the proliferation of what he sees as poor, unacceptable writing.
Where Brown and Mears unbar the gates of Light,
Demand new bodies, and in calf’s array,
Rush to the world, impatient for the day.
Millions and Millions on these banks he views,
Thick as the stars of night, or morning dews,
As thick as bees o’er vernal blossoms fly,
As thick as eggs at Ward in Pillory.
(Dunciad, Book III, 28-34)
Brown and Mears, a popular bookseller in Pope’s time, is laid blame for a torrent of the bad works released by modern writers. As Pope claims in line 28, they “unbar the gates of Light.” We learn in An Essay on Criticism that ‘Light’ is the inspirational muse given to an artist through Divine intervention. Pope praises the booksellers for their prodigious release of “Millions and Millions” of titles that “Demand new bodies.” If the reader, however, applies Pope’s ideas of the superiority of the ancients over the moderns, one can discern the parody in Pope’s narrative voice. Here the ‘[unbarring] of the gates of Light’ is not, in Pope’s opinion, a contribution to literature but a fallacious foisting of writing upon a taste deprived public ruled by the Queen of Dulness.
Shall take thro’ Grub-street her triumphant round;
And her Parnassus glancing o’er at once,
Behold an hundred sons, and each a Dunce.
(Dunciad, Book III, 130-138)
As the sheer numbers of books arise from Wits and the presses of Grubstreet, critics, we can assume from earlier readings of Pope’s canon, apply the Divinity of their inspiration upon each of the ‘hundreds of sons.’ Each son, as Pope suggests in the nature of inspiration from An Essay on Criticism, is a God since the writer has drawn his inspiration from a holy beyond. Yet, as Queen Dulness makes her rounds extolling her glory amongst the Grubstreet crowd, the narrator of The Dunciad claims each son/God a ‘Dunce.’
Pope, however, not only to apply blame on the authors and publishers, satirizes the readers that purchase the output. Once again, reminiscent of An Essay on Criticism where Pope delineates the weakness of a poet’s inspiration and talents as “In Poets as true Genius is but rare” against that of the lowly critic as he witnesses as to have “True Taste as seldom is the Critick’s share.” (Criticism, 11-14) He attacks the readers of the modern canon as those
The modern reader Pope proposes, although well read in this example, is only storing a ‘Lumberhouse’ of books within his knowledge base; however, by ignoring the classics, or ancients, he is forever reading yet, not reading the correct subjects and authors and thusly perusing ‘true’art.
Pope, however, not to single the point and dread of his satire upon Grubstreet and Brown and Mears and expose himself to libel uses the strength of Mock-Heroic Epic to labor home his point.
Grubstreet! thy fall should men and Gods conspire,
Thy stage shall stand, ensure it but from Fire.
Another Aeschylus appears, prepare
For new abortions, all ye pregnant fair!
(Dunciad, Book III, 311-316)
Opening the couplets with the off-handed complement by allowing the narrator to voice the protection and survival of Grubstreet Pope continues and switches to the satirical mock by introducing the attic tragedy poet, Aeschylus, to the conversation. When Aeschylus presented his tragedies of the Furies, it is reported children fell into fits and big-bellied women miscarried. (Dunciad, Book III, pp. 351) Pope switches the complement to a parody of Grubstreet writing. He likens the output to the fear produced by the attic tragedies of Aeschylus and warns the pregnant to beware.
Through An Essay on Criticism and The Dunciad, Pope makes it clear on which side of the battle of the ancients and the moderns he rests. Pope, entrenched in the classical education of a man of privilege, was a conservative for his time. He relied upon the ancients as a working model of furthering and creating true art through their “methodized Nature” and denounced the modern writers through the aegis of his works’ clear approbation of the ancients over the moderns. (Criticism, 89)
