To appreciate the full moral and poetical significance of the 'Dunciad,' we ought to compare Pope's account of its origin with its real history, as revealed partly in the poet's correspondence with Swift and others, and partly in the various alterations which the satire underwent before it assumed its final shape. In the year 1732 Savage published a volume containing the different pieces in verse and prose which had been written on Pope's side during the war with the Dunces, and dedicated it to the Earl of Middlesex, with a preface which, Johnson says, was generally considered to be the work of Pope himself. The history of the quarrel is given in this preface as follows;

"When Dr. Swift and Mr. Pope thought it proper, for reasons specified in the preface to their 'Miscellanies,' to publish such little pieces of theirs as had casually got abroad, there was added to them the treatise of the 'Bathos, or the Art of Sinking in Poetry.' It happened, that in one chapter of this piece, the several species of bad poets were ranged in classes, to which were prefixed almost all the letters of the

1 That it was so is hardly doubtful, as a great part of Savage's Preface had already appeared in Pope's notes to the Preface to the First Edition of the 'Dunciad,' appended to the quarto edition of 1729. See Appendix I., p. 229.

alphabet (the greatest part of them at random) but such was the number of poets eminent in that art, that some one or other took every letter to himself: all fell into so violent a fury, that for half a year or more, the common newspapers (in most of which they had some property, as being hired writers) were filled with the most abusive falsehoods and scurrilities they could possibly devise. A liberty no way to be wondered at in those people, and in those papers, that, for many years during the uncontrolled license of the press, had aspersed almost all the great characters of the age; and this with impunity, their own persons and names being utterly secret and obscure.

"This gave Mr. Pope the thought, that he had now some opportunity of doing good, by detecting and dragging into light these common enemies of mankind; since to invalidate this universal slander, it sufficed to show what contemptible men were the authors of it. He was not without hopes, that by manifesting the dulness of those who had only malice to recommend them, either the booksellers would not find their account in employing them, or the men themselves, when discovered, want courage to proceed in so unlawful an occupation. This it was that gave birth to the Dunciad,' and he thought it a happiness, that by the late flood of slander on himself, he had acquired such a peculiar right over their names as was necessary to this design.

"On the 12th of March, 1729, at St. James's, that poem was presented to the King and Queen (who had before been pleased to read it) by the Right Honourable Sir Robert Walpole and some days after, the whole impression was taken and dispersed by several noblemen and persons of the first distinction.

"It is certainly a true observation, that no people are so impatient of censure as those who are the greatest slanderers : which was wonderfully exemplified on this occasion. On the day the book was first vended, a crowd of authors besieged the shop; entreaties, advices, threats of law, and battery, nay, cries

of treason were all employed, to hinder the coming out of the 'Dunciad:' on the other side, the booksellers and hawkers made as great efforts to procure it: what could a few poor authors do against so great a majority as the public? There was no stopping a torrent with a finger, so out it came.

"Some false editions of the book having an owl in their frontispiece, the true one, to distinguish it, fixed in its stead an ass laden with authors. Then another surreptitious one being printed with the same ass, the new edition in octavo returned for distinction to the owl again. Hence arose a great contest of booksellers against booksellers, and advertisements against advertisements; some recommending the 'Edition of the Owl,' and others the 'Edition of the Ass;' by which names they came to be distinguished, to the great honour also of the gentlemen of the 'Dunciad." "

From this narrative it would appear that the 'Dunciad' was the immediate offspring of the attacks made upon Pope in retaliation for his 'Bathos;' that it was ushered into the world with pomp and ceremony; and that it was not published till the 12th of March, 1729. But this authoritative version of the story-which is evidently what Pope wished the public to receive is by no means consistent with the account of the origin of the satire which he gave to his friends, or with the actual circumstances under which the 'Dunciad' made its first appearance.

In a letter addressed to Sheridan, October 12, 1728, Pope ascribes the existence of the poem to Swift. "It had never been writ," says he, "but at his request, and for his deafness, for had he been able to converse with me, do you think I had amused my time so ill?" This is only saying in prose what Swift himself says in verse, in his address to Pope on the publication of the 'Dunciad,' where he humorously gives half the credit of the poem to his own unsociability:

For had this deaf divine
Been for your conversation fit,
You had not writ a line.

And again, writing to Sir C. Wogan in September, 1732, the Dean says: "I had reason to put Mr. P. on writing the poem called 'The Dunciad."" His letter and his poem alike must refer to one of the two visits which he paid to Pope at Twickenham, in 1726, and in the early part of 1727; so that, by the concurrent evidence of Swift and Pope, the design of the Dunciad' must have been formed some time before the appearance of the Bathos;' for the Miscellanies,' in which that piece was first printed, were not published till the latter part of 1727. And this evidence is further confirmed by Pope's statement in his note to Book I. ver. 1: "This poem was written in 1726."

But the idea of the satire had doubtless a yet earlier date. Pope tells us, in the preface to the first authorised edition of the 'Dunciad' (1729), "that the first sketch of the poem was snatched from the fire by Dr. Swift, who persuaded his friend to proceed in it, and to him therefore it was inscribed." Hence it would appear that, when Swift says he "put Mr. P. on writing the 'Dunciad,'" he only meant that he encouraged him to proceed with a design which was already partly executed. Now the Dean had not always been so eager for a poetical war with the Dunces. In October, 1725, Pope had written to him: "I am sorry poor Philips is not promoted in this age, for certainly if his reward be of the next, he is of all poets the most miserable. I am also sorry for another reason; if they do not promote him, they will spoil a very good conclusion of one of my satires, where, having endeavoured to correct the taste of the town in wit and criticism, I end thus: But what avails to lay down rules for sense? In [George's] reign these fruitless lines were writ, When Ambrose Philips was preferred for wit.

Swift wrote back warning Pope against attaching too much. importance to bad writers by mentioning them in his verse, and Pope answered in a way that showed he acquiesced in the justice of his friend's opinions. "Let Gildon and Philips," said he, "sleep in peace." Nevertheless the third of the

lines quoted above is preserved towards the end of the Third Book of the Dunciad.' It is possible, therefore, that Pope, when he affected to burn "the sketch" of the Dunciad,' was making a show of executing the sentence which Swift and he had previously pronounced against the "satire" containing the allusion to Ambrose Philips; while Swift, on the other hand, by "snatching it from the fire," practically reversed his former judgment.

However this may be, the Dunciad' was commonly said ' to be a metamorphosis of an earlier satire, entitled 'The Progress of Dulness,' and many circumstances in the poem itself seem to confirm the truth of the rumour. In the first edition the Publisher says, in an Advertisement to the Reader: "I have been well informed that this labour was the work of full six years of his (the author's) life." This sentence the Dunces laid hold of, and ridiculed the pains which had been spent for so trivial a result, whereupon Pope reproached them for their dulness in not perceiving that the Advertisement was ironical. One or two circumstances, however, point to the conclusion that the statement in question may have been at first seriously intended. The action of the poem begins when Thorold was Lord Mayor, that is to say in 1720, two years after Eusden had been made Poet Laureate; and many, indeed most, of the libels recited in the 'Testimonies of Authors,' date from before the year 1720. Again, in a note to the line in the first authorised edition, "But chief in Tibbald's monster-breeding breast," Pope hints that the idea at least of the 'Dunciad' had been conceived before Theobald made his attack upon him in the pamphlet called 'Shakespeare Restored.' "Probably," he says, "that proceeding elevated Tibbald to the dignity he holds in this poem, which he seems to deserve no other way better than his brethren." The line in Book I. (first edition), "But what can I my Flaccus cast aside," though applied to Theobald, raises a suspicion that some other person,

1 Preface to "One Epistle," by Welsted and Smyth.