sonal sufferings of Pope when, one
day, in taking up Cibber's letter, while his face was writhing with
agony, he feebly declared that "these things were as good as
hartshorn to him;" but he appeared at that moment rather to want a
little. And it is probably true, what Cibber facetiously says of
Pope, in his second letter:--"Everybody tells me that I have made you
as uneasy as a rat in a hot kettle, for a twelvemonth together."[204]

Pope was pursued through life by the insatiable vengeance of Dennis.
The young poet, who had got introduced to him, among his first
literary acquaintances, could not fail, when the occasion presented
itself, of ridiculing this uncouth son of Aristotle. The blow was
given in the character of Appius, in the "Art of Criticism;" and it is
known Appius was instantaneously recognised by the fierce shriek of
the agonised critic himself. From that moment Dennis resolved to write
down every work of Pope's. How dangerous to offend certain tempers,
verging on madness![205] Dennis, too, called on every one to join him
in the common cause; and once he retaliated on Pope in his own way.
Accused by Pope of being the writer of an account of himself, in
Jacob's "Lives of the Poets," Dennis procured a letter from Jacob,
which he published, and in which it appears that Pope's own character
in this collection, if not written by him, was by him very carefully
corrected on the proof-sheet; so that he stood in the same ridiculous
attitude into which he had thrown Dennis, as his own trumpeter.
Dennis, whose brutal energy remained unsubdued, was a rhinoceros of a
critic, shelled up against the arrows of wit. This monster of
criticism awed the poet; and Dennis proved to be a Python, whom the
golden shaft of Apollo could not pierce.

The political prudence of Pope was further discovered in the
"Collection of all the Pieces relative to the _Dunciad_," on which
he employed Savage: these exemplified the justness of the satire,
or defended it from all attacks. The precursor of the _Dunciad_
was a single chapter in "The Bathos; or, the Art of Sinking in
Poetry;" where the humorous satirist discovers an analogy between
flying-fishes, parrots, tortoises, &c., and certain writers, whose
names are designated by initial letters. In this unlucky alphabet of
dunces, not one of them but was applied to some writer of the day;
and the loud clamours these excited could not be appeased by the
simplicity of our poet's declaration, th