English 3450-001: Dryden, Swift, and Pope
Final Examination: December 20, 2004.
1. Please identify the IDs in the SAME ORDER that they appear in the examination. Use ONE side of your blue books for your answers. You should identify the work and the author (only two may be really tricky, but they will invite ingenuity) including a page number where feasible. In your comments on the poetry you should reflect upon the verse styles (Pindaric odes, heroic couplets, and hudibrastics) that we have encountered during the semester. You should also keep in mind satire and panegyric, railing and raillery, wit, dullness, sense, nature, the new science, religion, kingship, succession, and other topics we have discussed. Some of the passages are thematically related, and you should, where possible, point out the connections. Comments on the specific styles of each passage will be welcomed.
I have provided longish extracts to give you fuller contexts and a freedom to exercise your intelligence and your imaginations. The IDs are less daunting than they may at first appear.
2. Compare an engraving (or series of engravings by Hogarth) with a literary work that we have read together: possible themes include Bedlam, fanaticism, the Civil Wars, London society, the world of women, doctors, medical experiments (but this is by no means an exhaustive list).
3. In a brief essay, explain what Pears’s An Instance of the Fingerpost has taught you about the period. You might reflect on the social, political, and religious details or you might explore the different effects Pears creates by using four different narrators (the period did not have a unified voice).
1. They have been most rigorous in putting in execution the only Remedy that can be found for this extravagance, and that has been a constant Resolution to reject all amplifications, digressions, and swellings of style; to return back to the primitive purity and shortness, when men deliver’d so many things almost in an equal number of words. They have exacted from their members a close naked natural, way of speaking positive expressions, clear senses, a native easiness, bringing all things as near the Mathematical plainness as they can, and preferring the language of Artizans, Countrymen, and Merchants, before that of Wits and Scholars. [Offer a conjecture on the relevance of this passage to Newton.]
2. And ne’er did fortune better yet
Th’ historian to the story fit:
As you from all old errors free,
And purge the body of philosophy,
So from all modern follies he
Has vindicated eloquence and wit.
His candid style like a clean stream doth slide
And his bright fancy all the way
Does like the sunshine in it play;
It does like Thames, the best of rivers, glide
Where the god does not rudely overturn
But gently pour the crystal urn
And with judicious hand does the whole current guide:
‘T has all the beauties nature can impart,
And all the comely dress of art.
3 When civil fury first grew high,
And men fell out, they knew not why;
When hard words, jealousies and fears
Set folks together by the ears
And made them fight, like mad or drunk,
For Dame Religion as for punk,
Whose honesty they all durst swear for,
Though not a man of them knew wherefore,
When gospel-trumpeter, surrounded
With long-eared rout, to battle sounded,
And pulpit, drum ecclesiastic,
Was beat with drum instead of a stick,
Then did Sir Knight abandon dwelling,
And out he rode a coloneling.
4 Corinna wakes. A dreadful Sight!
Behold the Ruins of the Night!
A wicked Rat her Plaister stole,
Half eat, and dragged it to his Hole.
The Crystal Eye, alas, was miss’t
And Puss had on her Plumpers p - - - st.
A Pigeon pick’d her Issue-Peas.
And Shock her Tresses fill’d with Fleas.
The Nymph, tho’ in this mangled Plight,
Must every Morn her Limbs unite.
5 In the Isle of Britain, famous grown . . .
There now does live–ah let him long survive–
The easiest king and best bred man alive.
Him no ambition moves to get renown,
Like the French fool who wanders up and down
Starving his soldiers, hazarding his crown.
Peace is his aim, his gentleness is such,
And love he loves . . .
6 a king and all that belong to him are just are as others are.
7. All human things are subject to decay,
And when fate summons, monarchs must obey.
8 In pious times, ere priestcraft did begin,
Before polygamy was made a sin;
When man on many multiplied his kind,
Ere one to one was cursedly confined;
When nature prompted and no law denied
Promiscuous use of concubine and bride;
Then Israel’s monarch after Heaven’s own heart,
His vigorous warmth did variously impart
To wives and slaves; and, wide as his command,
Scattered his Maker’s image through the land . . .
Whether, inspired by some diviner lust,
His father got him with a greater gust . . .
9 It is true indeed that these were frequently managed and directed by Female Officers, whose Organs were understood to be better disposed for the Admission of those Oracular Gusts . . . this Custom of Female Priests is kept up still in certain refined Colleges of our Modern Aeolists [Quakers who suffer their Women to preach and pray.]
10 Our virtue is like the statesman’s religion, the Quaker’s word, the gamester’s oath, and the great man’s honour–but to cheat those that trust us.
11. Why should a foolish marriage vow,
Which long ago was made,
Oblige us to each other now,
When passion is decayed.
We loved, and we loved, as long as we could
Till our love was loved out in us both;
But our marriage is dead when the pleasure is fled:
‘Twas pleasure first made it an oath.
12 Ay, your arrantest cheat is your trustee or executor; your jealous man, the greatest cuckold. Your churchman, the greatest atheist; and noisy, pert rogue of a wit, the greatest fop, dullest ass, and worst company; as you shall see for here he comes.
13. Well, sir, ‘tis granted I said Dryden’s rhymes
Were stolen, unequal, nay dull many times.
14. Oh! If to dance all night, and dress all day,
Charmed the smallpox, or chased old age away,
Who would not scorn what housewife’s cares produce,
Or who would learn one earthly thing of use?
Nay patch, nay ogle, might become a saint,
Nor could it sure be such a sin to paint.
But since, alas! Frail beauty must decay
Curled or uncurled, since locks will turn to gray;
Since painted, or not painted, all shall fade,
And she who scorns a man must die a maid;
What then remains but well our power to use,
And keep good humor still what e’er we lose?
15 Rash Mortals, e’er you take a Wife,
Contrive your Pile to last for Life;
Since Beauty scarce endures a Day,
And Youth so swiftly glides away;
What will you make yourself a Bubble,
To build on Sand with Hay and Stubble?
On Sense and Wit your Passion found,
By Decency cemented round;
Let Prudence with Good Nature strive,
To keep Esteem and Love alive;
Then come old Age whene’er it will,
Your Friendship shall continue still:
And thus a mutual gentle Fire
Shall never but with Life expire.
16. Then to Gresham College and there did see a kitlin [kitten] killed, almost quite (but that we could not quite kill her) with sucking the ayre out of a receiver wherein she was put–and then the ayre being let in upon her, revives her immediately.
17 I was complaining of a small Fit of the Cholick . . . [the great Physician] had a large pair of Bellows, with a long slender Muzzle of Ivory. This he conveyed eight inches up the Anus, and drawing in the Wind, he affirmed he could make the Guts as lank as a dried Bladder. But when the Disease was more stubborn and violent, he let in the Muzzle while the Bellows was out of Wind, which he discharged into the Body of the Patient. I saw him try both Experiments upon a Dog but could not discern any Effect from the former. After the latter, the Animal was ready to burst . . . The Dog died on the Spot, and we left the Doctor endeavouring to recover him by the same Operation.
18. The Doctor in a clean starched band,
His golden snuff box in his hand,
With care his diamond ring displays
And artful shows its various rays,
While grave he stalks down ----- Street,
His dearest Betty ------- for to meet.
19 I cannot but conclude the Bulk of your Natives, to be most pernicious Race of little odious Vermin that Nature ever suffered to crawl upon the Surface of the Earth.
20. Yet let me flap this bug with gilded wings,
This painted child of dirt, that stinks and stings;
Whose buzz the witty and the fair annoys,
Yet wit ne’er tastes, and beauty ne’er enjoys;
So well-bred spaniels civilly delight
In mumbling of the game they dare not bite.
Eternal smiles his emptiness betray,
As shallow streams run dimpling all the way.
21. 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.