n or their
responses to _The Dunciad_ as inconsequential; they had the weight of
numbers on their side and, more important, the authority of
long-established attitudes toward satire.

Although it is frequently impossible to determine exactly which
critics Harte was answering in his _Essay_, brief illustration of two
prominent types of attack can indicate what he had to vindicate _The
Dunciad_ against. One of those types resembled Blackmore's objection
to a mixing of genres. If satire should be barred from heroic poetry,
the reverse, for some critics, was also true, and Pope should not have
used epic allusions and devices in _The Dunciad_. Edward Ward, for
one, thought the poem an incongruous mixture "against all rule."[13]
Pope's violation of "rule" seemed almost a desecration of epic to
Thomas Cooke; of the mock-heroic games in Book II of _The Dunciad_, he
complained that "to imitate _Virgil_ is not to have Games, and those
beastly and unnatural, because _Virgil_ has noble and reasonable
Games, but to preserve a Purity of Manners, Propriety of Conduct
founded on Nature, a Beauty and Exactness of Stile, and continued
Harmony of Verse concording with the Sense."[14]

The other kind of attack accused Pope of wasting his talents in _The
Dunciad_, but palliated blame by reminding him of his demonstrated
ability in more worthy poetical pursuits. This was one of Ward's
resources; perhaps disingenuously, he professed amazement that a poet
with Pope's "_sublime Genius_," born for "an Epick Muse," "sacred
Hymns," and "heav'nly Anthems," would lower himself to mock at
"_trifling Foibles_" or "the Starvlings of _Apollo's_ Train."[15] More
concerned with Pope's potentialities than with his recent ignominy,
George Lyttelton nevertheless made essentially the same point: Pope
could never become the English Virgil if he "let meaner Satire ...
stain the Glory" of his "nobler Lays."[16] And Aaron Hill wrote an
allegorical poem to show Pope the error of _The Dunciad_ and to
suggest means of escape from entombment "in his _own_ PROFUND."[17] In
such censure we perhaps glimpse an opinion attributable to the still
influential genres theories: a poet of "_sublime Genius_" should work
in a more sublime poetic genre than satire.

In opposing this low view of satire, Harte drew upon ideas more
congenial to his purposes and far more congenial to _The Dunciad_.
Originating with the Renaissance commentaries on the formal verse
satire of the Rom