esponsible for
the preface, but we can only conclude that a Dunce collaborating with
other Dunces produced the poem. Four days after its publication Pope
wrote to Broome that it was "by James Moore and others," and a few weeks
later wrote to Bethel that "James Moore own'd it but was made by three
others, and he will disown it whenever any man takes him for it."[7] It
was Moore Smythe who was attacked in _The Grub-Street Journal_ for
several months as the poem's chief author.[8]

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,

To guess, ere _One Epistle_ saw the light,
How many brother-dunces club'd their mite.[11]

Welsted himself had begun his quarrel with Pope with an attack on _Three
Hours after Marriage_, that amusing and much-abused play, in _Palaemon
To Caelia at Bath; Or, The Triumvirate_ (1717). Pope is said to have
collaborated with Gay not only in _Three Hours_, a play "so lewd,/ Ev'n
Bullies blush'd, and Beaux astonish'd stood" (Second Edition, p. 11),
but in _The Wife of Bath_ and _The What D'Ye Call It_. Welsted also hits
at _God's Revenge Against Punning_, the _First Psalm_, praises Tickell,
and finds Pope's versification flat. All of these charges (except the
one that Pope collaborated in _The Wife of Bath_) had appeared in print
before, but Pope was to remember _Palaemon To Caelia_ and include it in
a note to _The Dunciad A_ II.293, where it is neatly described as "meant
for a Satire on Mr. P. and some of his friends."

In 1721 Welsted's name appears in the title of a pamphlet containing an
attack on Pope's Homer, _An Epistle To Mr. Welsted; And A Satyre on the
English Translations of Homer_, by that engagingly inept Dunce, Bezaleel
Morrice. In 1724 in the "Dissertation concerning the Perfection of the
English Language" prefixed to his _Epistles, Odes, &c._, Welsted quoted
(not quite correctly) and criticized Pope's "And such as _Chaucer_ is,
shall _Dryden_ be" (p. x). The anonymous au