much “human interest” for the poem. He can thus render the 
plodding industry of Baconian applied knowledge and group toil 
with a dramatic quality that renders, yet irradiates, the very 
Dulness he decries. Williams points out (p. 60) that the reason 
why “the new material attached to the poem has never been 
adequately defined is due, I think, to the assumptions most 
critics and editors have made: that the notes are to be taken 
at the level of history, and that their main purpose is to 
continue the personal satire in a prose commentary.”

The last book of The Dunciad proclaims the metamorphic power 
of mechanically applied knowledge as a stupendous parody of 
the Eucharist.

*     The entire fourth book of The Dunciad  has to do with the 
theme of The Gutenberg Galaxy , the translation or reduction of