Scriblerus Takes a London Walk: or, The Pedantic Perambulations of Gay's Trivia

– Da facilem cursum –
(– Grant me a smooth course –)

– Virgil, Georgics I.40

The 1742 edition of The Memoirs of the Extraordinary Life, Works, and Discoveries of Martinus Scriblerus closes with a catalogue of the 'pieces of Scriblerus (written in his Youth) already published' (Memoirs, 171). The list includes numerous works that exemplify the characteristic Scriblerian jeu d'esprit: 'An Essay on the Origin of Sciences, written from the Deserts of Nubia,' which adopts and hyperbolically adapts loose authorities in order to arrive at an exorbitant conclusion; 'Annus Mirabilis, or The wonderful Effect of the Conjunction of Jupiter, Mars, and Saturn,' which extravagantly projects the sudden transposition of male and female as a result of celestial phenomena; 'ΙΙεpι ΒΑΘΟΥΣ: or, Of the Art of Sinking in Poetry,' which compiles and classifies the poetry of poetasters so as to compose an inverted Longinian Ars; as well as 'VIRGILIUS RESTAURATUS' and the 'Notes and Prolegomena to the Dunciad,' which parody pedantic criticism and scholarly apparatus in order to expose the absurdity of 'learning but to trifle.' Because each of these works treats Scriblerian matter in a Scriblerian manner, the catalogue provides a kind of synopsis of the Scriblerian mandate: to ridicule 'all the false tastes in learning' (Spence, 1:56). Inconspicuously absent from this catalogue, however, is John Gay's Trivia: or, The Art of Walking the Streets of London (1716) – a poem that likewise exploits authorities, offers outrageous theories of origin, provides parodic exemplars of bathetic culture, and examines this culture with a mock-pedantic and pseudo-scholarly thoroughness. Though written, according to Charles Kirby-Miller, during a hiatus in Scriblerian activity (Memoirs, 45 and n122), Trivia appears to be as much a Scriblerian exercise as any of the 'PIECES' listed in the catalogue. The poem purports to be a vade mecum for urban walkers; the officious proem begins:

Through Winter Street to steer your Course aright,
How to walk clean by Day, and safe by Night,
How jostling Crouds, with Prudence, to decline,
When to assert the Wall, and when resign,
I sing ...

(I.1–5)

As an 'Art of Walking,' Trivia is necessarily replete with pedestrian instruction: utilize the 'strong Cane' to 'support thy walking Hand'; be wary of both rain-showers, and 'Show'rs' of 'Mortar, and crumbled lime'; avoid Bakers when 'cloath'd in Black'; and, when poring upon a 'Damsel's Face,' be cautious not to strike 'against the Post.' Yet the very 'pedestrian' – that is to say, dull, banal, and, relatively speaking, unimportant – nature of this instruction suggests that the intent is, perhaps, more playful than practical. The title Trivia implies more than just Diana as worshipped where the three ways meet; it equally implies the triviālis of a poem composed of three books. Surtout coats, pippin-cryers, and oysters-wenches are taken as the earnest subject of Gay's poem. And any time a Scriblerian takes the trivial as his earnest subject, the reader must be mindful that 'there is such a Figure as the Irony' (Gay, The What D'Ye Call It, 337). When a surtout coat is padded to a superlative degree, when a drowning pippin-cryer rises to the sublime, and when the call of an oyster-wench becomes the song of 'brown Ostrea,' the incongruous loftiness of Scriblerian form belies the actual lowness of Scriblerian content. It was a most 'peculiar Talent' in Scriblerus to 'convert every Trifle into a serious...