ught ridicule upon its author. Finally, Pope published an
account of the publication in the name of Savage, known by Johnson's
biography, who seems to have been a humble ally of the great man--at
once a convenient source of information and a tool for carrying on this
underground warfare. Pope afterwards incorporated this statement--which
was meant to prove, by some palpable falsehoods, that the dunces had
not been the aggressors--in his own notes, without Savage's name. This
labyrinth of unworthy devices was more or less visible to Pope's
antagonists. It might in some degree be excusable as a huge practical
joke, absurdly elaborate for the purpose, but it led Pope into some
slippery ways, where no such excuse is available.

Pope, says Johnson, contemplated his victory over the dunces with great
exultation. Through his mouthpiece, Savage, he described the scene on
the day of publication; how a crowd of authors besieged the shop and
threatened him with violence; how the booksellers and hawkers struggled
with small success for copies; how the dunces formed clubs to devise
measures of retaliation; how one wrote to ministers to denounce Pope as
a traitor, and another brought an image in clay to execute him in
effigy; and how successive editions, genuine and spurious, followed each
other, distinguished by an owl or an ass on the frontispiece, and
provoking infinite controversy amongst rival vendors. It is unpleasant
to have ugly names hurled at one by the first writer of the day; but the
abuse was for the most part too general to be libellous. Nor would there
be any great interest now in exactly distributing the blame between Pope
and his enemies. A word or two may be said of one of the most
conspicuous quarrels.

Aaron Hill was a fussy and ambitious person, full of literary and other
schemes; devising a plan for extracting oil from beech-nuts, and writing
a Pindaric ode on the occasion; felling forests in the Highlands to
provide timber for the navy; and, as might be inferred, spending instead
of making a fortune. He was a stage-manager, translated Voltaire's
Merope, wrote words for Handel's first composition in England, wrote
unsuccessful plays, a quantity of unreadable poetry, and corresponded
with most of the literary celebrities. Pope put his initials, A. H.,
under the head of "Flying Fishes," in the Bathos, as authors who now and
then rise upon their fins and fly, but soon drop again to the profound.
In the Dunciad, he