"She form'd this image of well-bodied air, / With pert flat eyes she window'd well its head, / A brain of feathers, and a heart of lead, / And empty words she gave, and sounding strain, / But senseless, lifeless! idol void and vain!"
— Pope, Alexander (1688-1744)
Author
Place of Publication
London
Date
1728, 1729, 1736
Metaphor
"She form'd this image of well-bodied air, / With pert flat eyes she window'd well its head, / A brain of feathers, and a heart of lead, / And empty words she gave, and sounding strain, / But senseless, lifeless! idol void and vain!"
Metaphor in Context
With authors, Sationers obey'd the call,
The field of glory is a field for all;
Glory, and gain, th'industrious tribe provoke;
And gentle Dulness ever loves a joke.
A Poet's form she plac'd before their eyes,
And bad the nimblest racer seize the prize;
No meagre, muse-rid mope, adust and thin,
In a dun night-gown of his own loose skin,
But such a bulk as no twelve bards could raise,
Twelve starveling bards of these degen'rate days.
All as a partridge plump, full-fed, and fair,
She form'd this image of well-bodied air,
With pert flat eyes she window'd well its head,
A brain of feathers, and a heart of lead,
And empty words she gave, and sounding strain,
But senseless, lifeless! idol void and vain!
Never was dash'd out, at one lucky hit,
A fool, so just a copy of a wit;
So like, that critics said, and courtiers swore,
A Wit it was, and call'd the phantom More.
The field of glory is a field for all;
Glory, and gain, th'industrious tribe provoke;
And gentle Dulness ever loves a joke.
A Poet's form she plac'd before their eyes,
And bad the nimblest racer seize the prize;
No meagre, muse-rid mope, adust and thin,
In a dun night-gown of his own loose skin,
But such a bulk as no twelve bards could raise,
Twelve starveling bards of these degen'rate days.
All as a partridge plump, full-fed, and fair,
She form'd this image of well-bodied air,
With pert flat eyes she window'd well its head,
A brain of feathers, and a heart of lead,
And empty words she gave, and sounding strain,
But senseless, lifeless! idol void and vain!
Never was dash'd out, at one lucky hit,
A fool, so just a copy of a wit;
So like, that critics said, and courtiers swore,
A Wit it was, and call'd the phantom More.
Categories
Provenance
Searching in HDIS (Poetry). Found again reading. See also Sean Silver, The Mind is a Collection: Case Studies in Eighteenth-Century Thought (Philadelphia: Penn Press, 2015), 275n.
Citation
Searching in text from The Works of Alexander Pope (London: Printed for B. Lintot ... Lawton Gilliver ... H. Lintot ... L. Gilliver, and J. Clarke, 1736). <Link to Lion>
Compare The Dunciad. An Heroic Poem. In Three Books. ([London]: Dublin, printed, London re-printed for A. Dodd, 1728).
And The Dunciad. With Notes Variorum, and the Prolegomena of Scriblerus. (London: Printed for Lawton Gilliver at Homer’s Head, against St. Dunstan’s Church, Fleetstreet, 1729). <Link to 2nd edition, ESTC>
Reading David Vander Meulen, Pope’s Dunciad of 1728, facs. ed. (Charlottesville and London: Bibliographical Society, 1991).
Compare The Dunciad. An Heroic Poem. In Three Books. ([London]: Dublin, printed, London re-printed for A. Dodd, 1728).
And The Dunciad. With Notes Variorum, and the Prolegomena of Scriblerus. (London: Printed for Lawton Gilliver at Homer’s Head, against St. Dunstan’s Church, Fleetstreet, 1729). <Link to 2nd edition, ESTC>
Reading David Vander Meulen, Pope’s Dunciad of 1728, facs. ed. (Charlottesville and London: Bibliographical Society, 1991).
Date of Entry
09/08/2005
Date of Review
07/31/2009
