rneath. They did. A libel was published against Pope, with
such a frontispiece. This kind of rude jesting was an evidence not only of
an ill nature, but a dull one. When a child makes a pun, or a lout breaks
out into a laugh, it is some very obvious combination of words, or
discrepancy of objects, which provokes the infantine satirist, or tickles
the boorish wag; and many of Pope's revilers laughed, not so much because
they were wicked, as because they knew no better.

Without the utmost sensibility, Pope could not have been the poet he was;
and through his life, however much he protested that he disregarded their
abuse, the coarse ridicule of his opponents stung and tore him. One of
Cibber's pamphlets coming into Pope's hands, whilst Richardson the painter
was with him, Pope turned round and said, "These things are my
diversions;" and Richardson, sitting by whilst Pope perused the libel,
said he saw his features "writhing with anguish". How little human nature
changes! Can't one see that little figure? Can't one fancy one is reading
Horace? Can't one fancy one is speaking of to-day?

The tastes and sensibilities of Pope, which led him to cultivate the
society of persons of fine manners, or wit, or taste, or beauty, caused
him to shrink equally from that shabby and boisterous crew which formed
the rank and file of literature in his time: and he was as unjust to these
men as they to him. The delicate little creature sickened at habits and
company which were quite tolerable to robuster men: and in the famous feud
between Pope and the Dunces, and without attributing any peculiar wrong to
either, one can quite understand how the two parties should so hate each
other. As I fancy, it was a sort of necessity that when Pope's triumph
passed, Mr. Addison and his men should look rather contemptuously down on
it from their balcony; so it was natural for Dennis and Tibbald, and
Welsted, and Cibber, and the worn and hungry pressmen in the crowd below,
to howl at him and assail him. And Pope was more savage to Grub Street
than Grub Street was to Pope. The thong with which he lashed them was
dreadful; he fired upon that howling crew such shafts of flame and poison,
he slew and wounded so fiercely, that in reading the _Dunciad_ and the
prose lampoons of Pope, one feels disposed to side against the ruthless
little tyrant, at least to pity those wretched folks upon whom he was so
unmerciful. It was Pope, and Swift to aid him, who establis