thing than our wits) our judgments jump in the notion that all
scribblers should be passed by in silence.' How entirely his inclination
got the better of his judgment was seen three years later in the
_Dunciad_. The first three books of this famous satire were published in
1728. It is generally regarded as Pope's masterpiece, but the accuracy
of such an estimate is doubtful. So heavily weighted is the poem with
notes, prefaces, and introductions that the text appears to be smothered
by them. It was Pope's aim to mystify his readers, and in this he has
succeeded, for the mystifications of the poem even confound the
commentators. The personalities of the satire excited a keen interest,
and much amusement to readers who were not included in Pope's black list
of dunces. At the same time it roused a number of authors to fury, as it
well might. His satire is often unjust, and he includes among the dunces
men wholly undeserving of the name, who had had the misfortune to offend
him. To place a great scholar like Bentley, an eloquent and earnest
preacher like Whitefield, and a man of genius like Defoe among the
dunces was to stultify himself, and if Pope in his spite against
Theobald found some justification for giving the commentator
pre-eminence for dulness in three books of the _Dunciad_, his anger got
the better of his wit when in Book IV. he dethroned Theobald to exalt
Colley Cibber. For Cibber, with a thousand faults, so far from being
dull had a buoyancy of heart and a sprightliness of intellect wholly out
of harmony with the character he is made to assume.

That he might have some excuse for his dashing assaults in the
_Dunciad_, Pope had published in the third volume of the _Miscellanies_,
of which he and Swift, Arbuthnot and Gay were the joint authors, an
_Essay on Bathos_ in which several writers of the day were sneered at.
The assault provoked the counter-attack for which Pope was looking, and
he then produced the satire which was already prepared for the press. In
its publication the poet, as usual, made use of trickery and deception.
At first he issued an imperfect edition with initial letters instead of
names, but on seeing his way to act more openly, the poem appeared in a
large edition with names and notes.

'In order to lessen the danger of prosecution for libel,' Mr. Courthope
writes, 'he prevailed on three peers, with whom he was on the most
intimate terms, the good-natured Lord Bathurst, the easy-going Earl