198 



NOTES AND QUEKIES. 



[No. 254. 



return, without regard to exact dates, — Boling- 

 broke's letter emphatically, " Pope's ' Dulness ' 

 grows, and it will be a noble work," — Pope's own 

 letter, wherein he announces that he has resolved 

 to give his "Dulness" the more pompous name, 

 The Dunciad, — and Swift's reply, " You talk of 

 this Dunciad, but I am impatient to have it volare 

 per ora^ 



Now began a mystification, as usual with Pope, 

 ■which troubled and perplexed even Swift. I have 

 hazarded an opinion that the whole scheme, " verse 

 and prose," had been agreed on before Swift left 

 London : but in May, 1728, Swift had been ap- 

 prised of some contemplated change. In a letter 

 to Pope, he says : 



" Your long letter was the last 1 received till this by 

 Mr. Delany, altliough you mention another since. The 

 Dr. told me your secret about The Dunciad, which does not 

 please me, because it defers gratifying my vanity in the 

 most tender point, and perhaps may wholly disappoint it." 



What was this secret about The Dunciad — this 

 change which deferred gratifying the Dean's vaiiity ? 

 Why, the publication of the poem without the Com- 

 mentary of Scriblerus ; without the honourable 

 mention of " Dean, Draper, BickerstafF, or Gulli- 

 ver : " to which description, or inscription, Pope had 

 made flattering additions since Swift left London, 

 and of which he had apprised him. In proof, the 

 publication of the poem, without the Commentary, 

 immediately followed. IBut publication was pre- 

 ceded, as usual with Pope -on like occasions, with 

 some preliminary abuse, just to awaken public 

 attention. Thus, on May 11, there appeared a 

 letter in The Daily Journal, signed A. B., wherein 

 the public were informed that " notwithstanding 

 his ignorance and his stupidity, this animalculum 

 of an author is forsooth ! at this very juncture 

 writing ' The Progress of Dulness.' " 



On May 18, appeared the following advertise- 

 ment : 



"This day is published The Dunciad, an Heroick 

 Poem, in 3 Books. Dublin Printed, London Reprinted 

 for A. Dodd, 1728." 



When I remember how short a time had elapsed 

 since Bolingbroke had reported that Pope was 

 still laboring and polishing — how very short a 

 time since Pope himself announced the change of 

 name — I cannot but believe that the resolution 

 to alter the proposed course of action and to 

 bring out an edition of the poem only was taken 

 hurriedly ; and this opinion is strengthened by 

 the Address prefixed, from " the publisher to the 

 reader," which must, I think, have been written 

 to introduce the work as originally designed, and 

 as it subsequently appeared in the quarto, with the 

 Prologomena and notes. What else could be 

 referred to in the following paragraph ? 



" That he [the author] was in his [Pope's] peculiar 

 intimacy, appears from the knowledge he manifests of the 

 most private authors of all the anonymous pieces against him," 



The knowledge — the precise knowledge — 

 which Pope obtained on this subject, was indeed 

 so remarkable as to have excited the attention 

 and speculation of the commentators ; but it is 

 precisely the knowledge which did not appear in 

 this edition — did not appear until the publication 

 of the quarto. Pope then enlarged his canvass, and 

 sketched in the commentators on The Dunciad, but 

 he registered their works under a separate heading. 



Appended to this edition, is an announcement 

 that "Speedily will be published, 'The Progress 

 of Dulness, an Historicid Poem, by an eminent 

 Hand ;' " and on the 25th, the public appetite was 

 stimulated by a paragraph affixed to an advertise- 

 ment of The Dunciad, the " ' Progress of Dulness' 

 will serve for an explanation of this poem." 

 Whether this announcement suggested the work, 

 subsequently published under that title, we cannot 

 know : enough, that it was not Pope's "Dulness" 

 which is here announced. Yet the juxtaposition 

 suggests to me that the person who drew up the 

 advertisement had a more intimate knowledge of 

 Pope, and Pope's friends, their feelings and inten- 

 tions, than could have been gleaned from a stolen 

 copy or a pirated edition of The Dunciad. In fact, 

 that he had been instructed how to advertise ; as 

 Curll was subsequently instructed how to adver- 

 tise the " pirated" edition of the Letters. It will 

 indeed be found, that the proceedings in respect 

 to the pirated edition of The Dunciad were the 

 model of those pursued in respect to the "pi- 

 rated" Letters. 



I cannot doubt that this was the first edition of 

 The Dunciad, and other circumstances tend to 

 strengthen that opinion. Smedley, who was sub- 

 stituted for Eusden in the later editions, won for 

 himself a place in The Dunciad by the publication 

 of " Gulliveriana, or a Fourth Volume of the Miscel- 

 lanies, being a seijuel to the three volumes pub- 

 lished by Pope and Swift." Now, the two first 

 volumes of the Miscellanies, Scott says, were 

 published in the middle of March, 1727, and the 

 success was so rapid that they were speedily fol- 

 lowed by a third. It was avowedly the unwar- 

 rantable liberties taken with the character of 

 others in this third volume, that suggested the 

 Gulliveriana, which is a substantial octavo of 350 

 pages, and bears date on the title-page 1728. It 

 is reasonably certain, I think, that, if The Dunciad 

 had been published before the Gulliveriana, Smed- 

 ley would not have lost the opportunity of strength- 

 ening his charges of "unwarrantable liberties" and 

 personalities by some reference to it, even though 

 it were but in a paragraph or a note to the dedi- 

 cation or preface. 



On May 27 the advertisement of Tfie Dunciad 

 appeared, with the following quotation from Mil- 

 ton: 



" He as an Herd 

 Of Goats and timorous flocks together thronjed 



