Anonymous

“ Both in the comprehensiveness of their charges and in the slashing hatred which informs them (however feeble the verse) , One Epistle and The Blatant Beast offer as fair a sample as any two such pamphlets can of the calumny, detraction, and critical misunderstanding Pope endured, for the most part patiently, from the publication of his Essay on Criticism to the year of his death. “Welcome for thee, fair Virtue! all the past,” (Epistle to Arbuthnot, l. 358) he exclaimed in his role as Satirist. ”

“ Yet Pope had succeeded in doing what they could not do--he had made himself a moderately rich man entirely by writing poetry. No theme recurs more insistently and suggestively in Popiana than Pope’s wealth. ”

“ I doubt it myself. The eighteenth century was probably a coarser and more outspoken age than ours, but scurrilous attacks on the physical appearance of distinguished poets do not otherwise seem to have been a prominent feature of the Augustan literary scene.
It is hoped that both these pamphlets will prove useful to those who have little first-hand knowledge of what his enemies said of Pope and will help to warn the novice of the fatal ease with which we can read “with but a Lust to mis-apply,/ Make Satire a Lampoon, and Fiction, Lye” (Epistle to Arbuthnot, ll. 301-302) . ”

“ Several Gentlemen, who are there ranked with the dullest Men, or dullest Beasts, never did appear in Print against him, or say any thing in Conversation which might affect his Character: Some Replies, which were made to the Profund, occasioned the Publication of the Dunciad, which was first of all begun with a general Malice to all Mankind, and now appears under an Excuse of Provocations, which he had received, after he himself had struck the first Blow in the above-mentioned Miscellanies. ”

“ In February 1732 Welsted published his last attack on Pope, Of False Fame, in which he attacks Windsor Forest, The Rape of the Lock, Pope’s edition of Shakespeare, The Dunciad, and the Epistle to Burlington. Pope then mentioned him in the Epistle to Arbuthnot, at first in l. 49, although he altered this to “Pitholeon,” and then in l. 375, where most twentieth-century college students first meet his name.
- vi -
The charges in One Epistle are unusually comprehensive, but almost none of them is original. To help the reader to evaluate the more important, the following notes may be helpful. ”

“ Some were critics of worth, such as Dennis and Gildon; some were not despicable minor poets, such as Welsted and Cooke. But if we leave these aside, as well as his aristocratic enemies, Lady Mary and Lord Hervey, some valid generalizations emerge. The very persistency of the Dunces’ attacks on Pope (I have located over one hundred and fifty published during Pope’s lifetime) and the large number of anonymous pamphlets that we cannot definitely ascribe to anyone Pope ever mentioned suggest that the Battle of the Dunces is best seen economically and sociologically. ”

“ It is surely allowable to treat a Man after this manner who abuses all others, and to make this just Reflexion, since in his new Dunciad he not only calls Mummius a Fool, but uses this filthy Expression—who stinks above the Ground. ”

“ A Militia, in Case of publick Invasion, may perhaps be thought necessary, but yet one could always wish for an Army of regular Troops: I should not have touched upon this Circumstance, but to obviate some Imputations, which he had suggested, of my Writing several Pieces, which I never heard of, till I saw them with the rest of the Town: But these Suggestions shall be considered in the Preface to the next Epistle, in which, among other Things, I intend to state several Matters of Fact, in Contradiction to the Notes of the Dunciad, particularly as they concern the Writers of the following Poem. ”

“ A letter from Welsted to Dodington, however, shows that though the poem was a collaborative effort and though others may have made suggestions and additions, Welsted felt himself responsible for the poem.9 In 1735 Pope attributed One Epistle finally to Welsted, with Moore Smythe as publisher, and in 1737 The Memoirs of Grub-Street said of Moore Smythe that he “reported himself author” of One Epistle, “but was only a publisher; it being written by Mr. Welsted and others.”10
As to the “others” we should remember Mallet’s caution that it would be vain ”

“ If he can transmit them to Posterity under such Imputations, he is a bad Man; if he cannot, he is a bad Writer: I believe, that he would rather suffer under the first Character, than the last: But before I have done with him, I will make a very strict Inquiry into both. ”

“ There is so great a Similitude in the Stile of these Writers, that the Reader, I think, need not doubt their Sincerity in admiring each other.
[22]
’Tis great Delight to laugh at some Mens Ways;
But ’tis much greater to give Merit Praise.
D—— of B——.
Sheffield approves, consenting Phœbus bends,
And I and Malice from this Hour, am Friends.
Pope.
(b) Who G———n’s Dulness———
Charles Gildon, dismiss’d from the D——’s Pension and Favour, on Account of his Obstinacy in refusing to take the Oaths to P—pe’s Supremacy.
(c) Smooth dull Unity of Sound. ”

“ Every Person has a Right to determine upon the Talents of Writers, particularly of one, who appears in Publick only to gratify the two worst Appetites, that disgrace Human Nature, I mean Malice and Avarice; and sure no Man deserves a violent Injury to his Reputation, as a Gentleman, because perhaps at a Distance of several Years since he might have said, that Mr. Pope had nothing in him Original as a Writer, that Mr. ”

“ The charge rests only on Dennis’s authority.16 The obscenity of The Rape of the Lock was an old story.17 So was the notorious First Psalm.18 Welsted’s attacks on the Pastorals, the Homer, the Peri Bathous, and The Dunciad are simply the commonplaces of Popiana. The charge that he libeled Addison only after the great man’s death is also familiar19 (Welsted seems to have been the first, though, to mention the libel on Lady Mary) and long since disproved by Sherburn and Ault. That Pope was a plagiarist is an idea that turns up constantly.20
Welsted’s other charges are more interesting. ”

“ Five other pamphlets attacking Pope appeared in August, obviously capitalizing on the Cibber attack.
The Blatant Beast is pro-Cibber, of course, but it criticizes specifically only a few lines from The New Dunciad. The writer’s chief interest is in a general attack. The criticisms of the Shakespeare, of Three Hours and the Epistle to Burlington, and of Pope’s plagiarism are perfectly conventional. ”

“ One Epistle was reprinted by John Nichols in his edition of The Works in Verse and Prose of Leonard Welsted (London, 1787) . Nichols normalizes the text, spells out several names in full, and adds several unimportant notes. It is here reproduced from the copy in the Sterling Library, Yale University. The Blatant Beast has never been reprinted and is reproduced from the copy in the Huntington Library.
Hunter College
- x - NOTES TO THE INTRODUCTION
1. ”

“ That Mr. Addison or any other but Mr. P. writ, or alter’d, one line of the Prologue to Cato.
Who will name any young Writer, allow’d to have Merit, that hath been personally discourag’d by him; or who hath not received either actual Services, or amicable Treatment from him?
III.
The Blatant Beast appeared in December 1742, according to The London Magazine; its authorship remains unknown. Pope had published The New Dunciad in March 1742, and Cibber had published his famous A Letter From Mr. Cibber, To Mr. Pope in July. ”

“ Pope which had appeared in January 1730 and which praised Pope warmly. See One Epistle, p. 22.
3. The Twickenham Edition of the Poems of Alexander Pope, General Editor, John Butt, 6 vols. (London, 1939-1961) , W, 211-212. Citations from Pope’s poetry in my text are from this edition.
4. Savage in An Author To Be Lett (1729) , which appeared nine days after The Dunciad A, says, “I have extracted curious Hints to assist Welsted in his new Satire against Pope, which was once (he told me) to have been christen’d Labeo. ”

“ He seems clearly to have been Pope’s informant about the unpublished Labeo. See Richard Savage, An Author To be Lett, ed. James Sutherland, The Augustan Reprint Society, Number 84 (Los Angeles, 1960) , p. ii. For Labeo see Persious 1. 4. ”