Sept. 9. 1854.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



199 



Drove them before him, Thunderstruck pursued 

 Into the vast Abyss." 



On the 29th was advertised A Compleat Key to 

 the Dunciad; with a Character of Mr. Pope and 

 his profane Writings, by Sir Richard Blackmore, 

 Knight, M.D. : printed for A. Dodi], without 

 Temple Bar, and sold by E. Curll, in the 

 Strand. 



These proceedings were so rapid as to suggest 

 a foregone conclusion. Farther, be it observed, 

 these advertisements were of a character to give 

 force and point to Pope's satire. Sir Richard 

 Blackmore, for example, who was satirised in the 

 poem, and whose works figure in the engraved 

 title-page, is the announced compiler of the Key ; 

 and throughout the Key there is a manifest in- 

 tention to justify the satirist : indeed the Key 

 serves the purpose of the more elaborate notes, 

 previously prepared, and which subsequently ap- 

 peared in the quarto. 



Again, and the fact deserves to be noticed, the 

 first edition of the Key, as no doubt the reader 

 will have observed, was " printed for [this same] 

 A. Dodd," the publisher of The Dunciad, and 

 "sold by E. Curll, in the Strand." From the 

 second edition Dodd's name was omitted, and no- 

 tice given, " A Dodd is forbid selling any more 

 Key, on pain of Mr. Pope's displeasure." Not a 

 word as to Pope's being displeased with Dodd 

 for having pirated, or printed, or sold the poem 

 itself! 



So soon as printed, and probably before it was 

 published, Pope had, I think, sentacopy tothe Dean, 

 for the express purpose of having it "piratically " 

 published in Dublin ; and it may be that the Dean 

 referred to this copy of Dodd's " Dublin printed," 

 when he said that he had run over The Dunciad 

 in an Irish edition which a gentleman sent me." 

 Be this as it may, a piratical edition was imme- 

 diately published in Dublin by Faulkner, who, as 

 is well known, was a protege of Swift's. This 

 Dublin edition is an exact reprint of the London 

 edition, diiFering only in this, — that in the London 

 edition initials are given, which were explained in 

 a _ Key simultaneously published, or published 

 within a few days, whereas in the Dublin edition 

 the names are printed. 



Your correspondent C. asks, as I understand 

 him, " for information about any edition published 

 m Dublin and London prior to one in 12mo. pub- 

 lished in London by ' Lawton Gulliver ' without 

 date.'' Both these editions by Dodd, and this 

 Dublin reprint, preceded the quarto, and the 

 quarto preceded the Gilliver, as is proved by 

 notes and references (pp. 66. and 68.) in Gilli- 

 ver. As this Dublin edition has never been re- 

 ferred to by your correspondents, and for other 

 obvious reasons, I will copy the title-page after its 

 own typographical form : 



"THE 



DUNCIAD. 



AN 



HEROIC POE] 



THREE BOOKS. 



WRITTEN BY MR. POPE. 



Printed, and Dublin Eeprinted by and for G. Faulkner, 

 J. Hoe}', J. Leathlev, E. Hamilton, P. Crampton, and T. 

 Benson. 1728." 



The reader will, no doubt, observe, that as 

 Dodd's edition was announced as " Dublin Printed, 

 London Reprinted," so this of Faulkner's is stated 

 to be " London Printed, Dublin Reprinted ; " all 

 the arguments, therefore, which rest on the avowed 

 republication by Dodd from a Dublin edition 

 lose their force and significance. 



Swift still continued dissatisfied with this imper- 

 fect publication ; his " vanity " was mortified, and 

 Pope hurried to announce " that The Dunciad is 

 going to be printed in all pomp, with the inscrip- 

 tion [to the Dean] which makes me proudest. It 

 will be attended with Proeme, Prologomena, Tes- 

 timonia Scriptorum, Index Authorum, and Notes 

 variorum ; " in brief, printed as originally designed 

 and prepared for. But Swift could see nothing, 

 think of nothing, but the actual edition before 

 him, and suggests that the quarto should contain 

 precisely what Pope had told him it would con- 

 tain ; as he himself subsequently remarks, " I am 

 now reading your preceding letter of June 28, 

 and find that all I have advised above is men- 

 tioned there." Still he is not quite clear on the 

 subject, and asks, among other questions, one that 

 bears curiously on the subject under discussion : 

 " Is the quarto to come out, &c., with all his pomp 

 of prefaces, &c., and among many complaints of 

 spurious editions ? " From which it is obvious, I 

 think, that " a complaint of spurious editions " 

 was the original intention — agreed on from the 

 first — as a sort of apology for the contemplated 

 Commentary ; but Pope had decided that real 

 editions of the Poem — of the poem only, and to 

 be denounced as spurious — would be more 

 efi'ective, and he had acted accordingly. 



In the autumn Pope reports progress ; informs 

 the Dean that " the inscription to The Dunciad is 

 now printed and inserted in the poem." The 

 quarto was probably not published until April, 

 1729, not until after it had been presented to the 

 king by Sir Robert Walpole, a fact referred to in 

 the notes to Gilliver's dateless edition, and men- 

 tioned by Arbuthnot in a letter to Swift, dated 

 19th March, 1728-9. 



" The king upon the perusal of the last edition of Th» 

 Dunciad declared he [Pope] was a very honest man." 



