The Effect of "The Dunciad "-Visit to Bath— The Dean and Martha Blount "THE HE Dunciad" fell like a bomb-shell among the denizens of Grub Street: or perhaps it might more accurately be described as a boomerang. The Dunces were not disposed to take their punishment lying down, and when it came to mud-slinging, pure and simple, there were some who were a match for Pope, though their mud was of a less sticking quality than his. The amount of damage, moral and material, wrought by "The Dunciad seems, however, to have been exaggerated. The story of the authors' besieging the booksellers' shops is probably fictitious, and it is doubtful whether any of the victims were a penny the worse for the satire, which has rendered their names immortal. The statement that they were unable thenceforth to obtain employment from the booksellers, and therefore were in danger of starving, is certainly inaccurate. The Grub Street hacks con VOL. II 365 I tinued to live and write in exactly the same fashion as before. An attempt has recently been made to rehabilitate the Dunces, and prove that the majority of them were men of marked ability; but this is going rather too far. It is impossible to wade through the counterblasts to "The Dunciad" without being convinced that Pope had not maligned his victims. In the whole of anti-Dunciad literature there is not one production which rises above dull and peevish mediocrity. Theobald refused to retaliate except by working all the more conscientiously at the edition of Shakespeare, which was presently to supersede the work of his rival. Curll, Welsted, Moore-Smythe, and Dennis were the leading champions of the Grub Street cause. Among the retaliatory pamphlets put forth by the Dunces were "The Key to 'The Dunciad,"" by Curll, "The Female Dunciad," an "Essay on Criticism," by Oldmixon," Sawney," by Ralph, "The Metamorphosis of Scriblerus into Snarlerus," by Dean Smedley, "Durgen," by Ned Ward, an "Essay on the Taste and Writings of the Confederates," the belated "Remarks on The Rape of the Lock,'" by Dennis, and "A Pop upon Pope." The lastnamed was attributed by the poet to his quondam friend, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. The rupture between the pair must have occurred at least a year before, for there is an insulting allusion to the lady in "The Capon's Tale" which appeared 1 Jonathan Smedley, Dean of Clogher, who wrote in the Whig interest. After the appearance of the volume of “Miscellanies containing "The Bathos," he wrote a satire against Pope and Swift called "Gulliveriana and Alexandriana." in the "Miscellanies." In "The Dunciad" there is a couplet which is generally believed to apply to Lady Mary Wortley: Whence hapless Monsieur much complains at Paris This was obviously an allusion to Rémond and his losses, through the agency of Lady Mary, in the South Sea Bubble. In the complete edition of "The Dunciad" the satire is accentuated by the insulting note.1 The author of the "Pop upon Pope professes to give a "True and Faithful Account of a late horrid and barbarous Whipping committed on the body of Sawney Pope, a poet, as he was innocently walking in Ham Walk, near the river Thames, meditating verses for the good of the public. Supposed to have been done by two evil-disposed persons, out of spite and revenge for a harmless lampoon which the said poet had writ upon them." The statement was contradicted in another advertisement, but some of the poet's friends took the matter seriously, knowing that threats of personal chastisement had been uttered against him. On June 13 Dr. Stratford wrote wrote to Lord Oxford: "I have read Mr. Pope's 'Dunciad ' with a great deal of pleasure. I am sure it must be his, because no one else could write it. . . 1 The note is as follows: "This passage was thought to allude to a famous lady who cheated a French wit of £5,000 in the South Sea year. But the author meant it generally of all bragging travellers, and of all whores and cheats under the name of ladies." There is no good reason for thinking that Lady Mary wrote "A Pop upon Pope." I should be glad to know whether he has been insulted lately, as a late advertisement seemed to insinuate. If it was so, it was very barbarous to attack so weak and little a man in a manner in which he was so unequal a match for them." In "The Key to the Dunciad," rushed out by Curll, the full names of the persons satirised are for the most part correctly given. There is an allusion to Pope's complaint (in his Publisher's Preface) that of the hundred thousand readers who had enjoyed his poetry, not one had stood up in his defence. "What man that lays the best claim either to honour or conscience," asks Curll, "can stand up in the defence of a scoundrel and a blockhead, who has, at one time or another, betrayed or abused almost every one he has conversed with? Yet now he kicks and winces because his arrogance and insolence have been exposed by Theobald." The most damaging accusation brought against Pope was to the effect that he, basking in comfortable prosperity, had sneered at poverty, and ridiculed the hardships suffered by men of letters in nearly every age. Thus Smedley, in "The New Metamorphosis," asks: Could not the great wit, the prime bard of the nation, A thousand caresses for different causes? Sure he might have rested, and let down his anchor, But further, it raises resentment and wonder |