as for the openness, honesty, and beneficence of his character. He had therefore procured a number of abusive passages from their writings, which he took leave to forward to the publisher.

Turning to the objections that he had heard uttered against "The Dunciad," the only ones worthy of consideration were that the authors attacked were too obscure for satire, and that poverty was not a legitimate subject for satire. With regard to the first, he points out that the obscurity of the rabble did not secure them from punishment in the case of wrong-doing, but that obscurity actually rendered them more dangerous, as less thought of. As for the plea of poverty, that might be put forward at the Old Bailey as an excuse for lesser crimes than defamation. Poverty was here the accident, and not the subject, though even poverty is a just subject for satire when it is the consequence of idleness, vice, or prodigality. Besides, it was not charity to encourage the dunces, because men are not bunglers because they are poor, but poor because they are bunglers.

The letter concludes with a panegyric on Pope, who, it is asserted, "has not been a follower of Fortune or Success; he has lived with the great without flattery; been a friend to men in power without pensions, from whom, as he asked, so he received, no favour, but what was done him in his friends. Though engaged in their friendships, he never espoused their animosities; and can almost singly challenge this honour, not to have written a line of any man which, through guilt, through

shame, or through fear, through variety of fortune or change of interests, he was ever unwilling to

The Letter to the Publisher was followed by the Prolegomena of Martinus Scriblerus, Testimonies of Authors (containing extracts from the praise and blame that had been published against Pope's works), a Dissertation on the Poem, and Dunciados Periocha. Among the Appendices were A List of Books and Papers in which the Author was abused, William Caxton his Proema to Eneidos, Virgil Restored, the article on Pastoral Poetry from The Guardian, and a Parallel of the Characters of Mr. Dryden and Mr. Pope. The frontispiece showed an ass laden with books and papers-the works of the poet's enemies. An owl is perched upon the pile of volumes. The notes to this edition are voluminous, and written in a style of pedantic humour which soon becomes wearisome. The greater number were from the pen of Pope, but a few were contributed by Swift and Arbuthnot. Into the text new epigrams were inserted-Ralph, Welsted and Broome coming in for special punishment.1

1 Silence, ye wolves! while Ralph to Cynthia howls,
And makes night hideous-answer him, ye owls!

(Ralph had written a poem called "Night.")

Flow, Welsted, flow! like thine inspirer, beer,

Though stale, not ripe; though thin, yet never clear;

So sweetly mawkish, and so smoothly dull;

Heady, not strong; o'erflowing, though not full.

(These couplets are a parody of some lines in Denham's

"Cooper's Hill.")

Hibernian politics, O Swift! thy doom

And Pope's, translating three whole years with Broome.

As was only to be expected, the war of retaliation broke out again. There were numerous threats of actions for libel, and as early as April 18 Pope wrote to Lord Oxford:

"The gentlemen of 'The Dunciad' intend to be vexatious to the bookseller, and threaten to bring an action of I cannot tell how many thousands against him. It is judged by the learned in law

that if three or four of those noblemen who honour me with their friendship would avow it so openly as to suffer their names to be set to a certificate of the nature of the enclosed, it would screen the poor man from their insults. If your lordship will let it be transcribed fair, and allow yours to be subscribed with those of Lord Burlington, Lord Bathurst, and one or two more, I need not say it will both oblige and honour me vastly..

The enclosed paper ran as follows: "Whereas a clamour hath been raised by certain persons, and threats uttered against the publisher or publishers of the poem called 'The Dunciad,' with notes, variorum, etc., we, whose names are underwritten, do declare ourselves to have been the publishers and dispersers thereof, and that the same was delivered out and vended and vended by our immediate discretion." 1

One of the earliest counterblasts was a pamphlet called "Pope Alexander's Supremacy and Infallibility Examined," which was generally attributed to John Dennis and George Ducket. The frontispiece was

1 It does not appear that the certificate was ever granted.

• Ducket was member for Calne for a time, and Commissioner of Excise 1722-32. He appears as a didapper in "The Bathos,"

an effective design (which was also sold separately for sixpence) entitled "His Holiness and his Prime Minister. The Phiz and Character of an Alexandrine Hyper-critick and Commentator." This shows

Pope in the form of an ape, crouching on a pedestal, his head on his hand (a favourite attitude) and his elbow resting on a pile of his own works. An ass stands by his side, from whose ear hangs "A Letter to the Publisher." The design is cleverer than the text, which consists of the usual dreary abuse. "The Dunciad" is alluded to as " this insipid poem, the outcome of this pigmy animal's malice, which, if it should endure to be read by posterity, would endure only as a monument of infamy." Again, the reception of "The Dunciad " by the town proved that "the performance was thought as mean as the design, the lines being prosaic, the transitions unnatural, the whole tale loose and unconnected, and the too frequent parodies on the most admired passages of the ancients poorly worked up."

Pope took the skit seriously, and, forgetting the proverb about glass houses, contemplated taking legal action against the authors. On May 16 he wrote to the long-suffering Lord Oxford:

"I see a book with a curious cut, called 'Pope Alexander's Supremacy,' etc., qto. In it are three or four things so false and scandalous that I think I know the authors, and they are of a rank to merit detection. I therefore beg your lordship to send a

and in "The Dunciad" he was satirised in conjunction with Thomas Burnet. He is supposed to have collaborated with Burnet in "Homerides." Pope evidently thought that the same pair were responsible for "Pope Alexander's Supremacy."

careful hand to beg the book of Lintot-who must not be known to come from you-and to enter down the day of the month. The book is writ by Burnet, and a person who has great obligations to me, and the cut is done by Ducket. I would fain come at the proof of this for reasons of a very high nature. Let the same man, after he has the book, go to Roberts the publisher, in Warwick Lane, and threaten him, unless he declares the author, or any other method your lordship can judge best."

Probably Pope was advised to take no action, for nothing came of the threat. If he had attempted to bring into Court all who had replied to his satire he would certainly have had his hands full. Among the new crop of retaliatory letters and skits were "Remarks upon Several Passages in the Preliminaries to The Dunciad '" ( (in a letter addressed by Dennis to Theobald), a letter from Giles Jacob to Dennis, accusing Pope of having written the flattering notice of himself in The Poetical Register, "The Curliad," and letters in Mist's Journal and The Flying Post.

Dennis points out, in the course of his "Remarks," that Pope wrote his own panegyrics in his Prefaces, and declares his conviction that there is "no sich person as William Cleland. He complains that though "The Dunciad" is styled an heroic poem, there is no action in it, and that the hero, in particular, never does anything except sleep. The author of "The Curliad" controverts Pope's statement that men of letters are poor because they are bunglers, and instances the poverty and struggles of Bacon, Milton, Butler, Dryden, and others. He ridicules Pope's habit of calling upon his aristocratic friends to