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A LETTER TO THE PUBLISHER.
Occafioned by the first correct Edition of

THE DUNCIAD.

IT is with pleafure I hear that you have procured a correct copy of the Dunciad, which the many furreptitious ones have rendered so neceffary; and it is yet with more that I am informed it will be attended with a Commentary; a work so requifite, that I cannot think the Author himself would have omitted it, had he approved of the first appearance of this Poem.

Such Notes as have occurred to me I herewith fend you you will oblige me by inferting them amongst those which are, or will be, tranfmitted to you by others; fince not only the Author's friends, but even strangers, appear engaged, by humanity, to take some care of an Orphan of fo much genius and spirit, which its Parent feems to have abandoned from the very beginning, and fuffered to step into the world, naked, unguarded, and unattended.

was upon reading some of the abusive papers lately published, that my great regard to a perfon whose friendship I esteem as one of the chief honours of my life, and a much greater respect to truth than to him or any man living, engaged me in enquiries of which the enclosed Notes are the fruit.

I perceive that most of these authors had been (doubtless very wifely) the first aggreffors. They had tried, till they were weary, what was to be got by railing at each other: nobody was either concerned or furprised if this or that scribbler was proved a dunce, but every one was curious to read what could be faid to prove Mr. Pope one, and was ready to pay fomething for fuch a discovery; a stratagem which, would they fairly own it, might not only reconcile them to me, but fcreen them from the resentment of their lawful fuperiors, whom they daily abuse, only (as I charitably

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ritably hope) to get that by them, which they cannot get from them.

I found this was not all: ill fuccess in that had transported them to perfonal abuse, either of himfeif, or (what I think he could less forgive) of his friends. They had called men of virtue and honour bad men, long before he had either leisure or inclination to call them bad writers; and some of them had been fuch old offenders, that he had quite forgotten their perfons, as well as their flanders, till they were pleased to revive them.

Now, what had Mr. Pope done before to incenfe them? He had published those Works which are in the hands of every body, in which not the leaft mention is made of any of them. And what has he done fince? He has laughed, and written the Dunciad. What has that faid of them? A very ferious truth, which the Public had faid before, that they were dull; and what it had no fooner said, but they themselves were at great pains to procure, or even purchase, room in the prints to testify under their hands to the truth of it.

I should still have been filent, if either I had feen any inclination in my friend to be ferious with fuch accufers, or if they had only meddled with his writings; fince whoever publishes puts himself on his trial by his country: but when his moral character was attacked, and in a manner from which neither truth nor virtue can secure the most innocent; in a manner which, though it annihilates the credit of the accufation with the just and impartial, yet aggravates very much the guilt of the accufers, I mean by authors without names; then I thought, fince the danger was common to all, the concern ought to be so; and that it was an act of justice to detect the authors, not only on this account, but as many of them are the fame who, for several years past, have made free with the greatest names in Church and State, expofing to the world the private misfortunes of families, abused all, even to women, and whose prostituted papers (for one or VOL. II. other

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other party in the unhappy divisions of their country) have infulted the fallen, the friendless, the exiled, and the dead.

Befides this, which I take to be a public concern, I am I have already confeffed I had a private one. one of that number who have long loved and esteemed Mr. Pope: and had often declared it was not his capacity or writings, (which we ever thought the least valuable part of his character,) but the honest, open, and beneficent man, that we most esteemed and loved in him. Now, if what these people fay were believed, I must appear to all my friends either a fool or a knave; either imposed on myfelf, or impofing on them; fo that I am as much interested in the confutation of these calumnies as he is himself.

I am no author, and confequently not to be sufpected either of jealousy or resentment against any of the men, of whom scarce one is known to me by fight; and as for their writings, I have fought them (on this one occafion) in vain, in the closets and libraries of all my acquaintance. I had still been in the dark, if a gentleman had not procured me (I suppose from fome of themfelves, for they are generally much more dangerous friends than enemies) the passages I fend you. I folemnly protest I have added nothing to the malice or absurdity of them; which it behoves me to declare, fince the vouchers themselves will be fo foon and fo irrecoverably loft. You may, in some measure, prevent it, by preferving at least their titles, and difcovering (as far as you can depend on the truth of your information) the names of the concealed authors.

The first objection I have heard made to the Poem is, that the perfons are too obfcure for fatire. The persons themselves, rather than allow the objection, would forgive the fatire; and if one could be tempted to afford it a ferious answer, were not all assaffinates, popular infurrections, the insolence of the rabble with-. out doors, and of domestics within, most wrongfully chastised, if the meanness of offenders indemnified them from

Which we have done in a Lift hereto subjoined.

From punishment? On the contrary, obfcurity renders them more dangerous, as less thought of: law can pronounce judgment only on open facts: morality alone can pass cenfure on intentions of mischief; fo that for fecret calumny, or the arrow flying in the dark, there is no public punishment left but what a good writer inflicts.

The next objection is, that these fort of authors are poor. That might be pleaded as an excufe at the Old Bailey for leffer crimes than defamation, (for it is the cafe of almost all who are tried there,) but fure it can be none here: for who will pretend that the robbing another of his reputation fupplies the want of it in himfelf? I question not but fuch authors are poor, and heartily with the objection were removed by any honest livelihood; but poverty is here the accident, not the subject. He who defcribes malice and villany to be pale and meagre, expresses not the least anger againft paleness or leanness, but against malice and villany. The Apothecary în Romeo and Juliet is poor; but is he therefore justified in vending poifon? Not but poverty itself becomes a just subject of fatire, when it is the confequence of vice, prodigality, or neglect of one's lawful calling; for then it increases the public burden, fills the streets and highways with robbers, and the garrets with clippers, coiners, and weekly Journalists.

But admitting that two or three of there offend lefs in their morals than in their writings, must poverty make nonsense sacred? if so, the fame of bad authors would be much better confulted than that of all the good ones in the world; and not one of an hundred had ever been called by his right name.

They mistake the whole matter: it is not charity to encourage them in the way they follow, but to get them out of it; for men are not bunglers because they are poor, but they are poor because they are bunglers.

Is it not pleafant enough to hear our authors crying out on the one hand, as if their persons and characters were too facred for fatire; and the Public objecting on the other, that they are to mean even for ridicule ?

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