thor of _Characters of The
Times_ (1728) thought that Welsted would have been spared Pope's abuse
if he had not in his "Dissertation" "happen'd to cite a low and false
line from Mr. P[o]pe for the meer Purpose of refuting it, without
seeming to know, or care who was the Author of it" (p. 24).[12]

In the _Peri Bathous_ Pope included Welsted as a didapper and an eel.
Pope then put him into _The Dunciad_ in II.293-300 and, more memorably,
in III.163-166:

Flow Welsted, Flow! like thine inspirer, Beer,
Tho' stale, not ripe; tho' thin, yet never clear;
So sweetly mawkish, and so smoothly dull;
Heady, not strong, and foaming tho' not full.

Unable to leave well enough alone, Welsted continued his attack on Pope
with _One Epistle_ and then again in January 1732 with _Of Dulness and
Scandal_, which ran to three editions. The half-title of _One Epistle_
had promised that it was to be continued, and the writer of the preface
had said that he intended "in the preface to the next Epistle ... to
state several Matters of Fact, in Contradiction to the Notes of the
_Dunciad_" (p. viii). _Of Dulness and Scandal_, however, has no preface
and is an independent attack. Its main charge is Pope's ingratitude to
the Duke of Chandos as shown in the _Epistle to Burlington_, a famous
charge frequently to be repeated,[13] but it claims as well that a lady
named Victoria died as a result of reading Pope's Homer and attacks once
more _The Rape of the Lock_ and the _First Psalm_.

In February 1732 Welsted published his last attack on Pope, _Of False
Fame_, in which he attacks _Windsor Forest_, _The Rape of the Lock_,
Pope's edition of Shakespeare, _The Dunciad_, and the _Epistle to
Burlington_. Pope then mentioned him in the _Epistle to Arbuthnot_, at
first in l. 49, although he altered this to "Pitholeon," and then in
l. 375, where most twentieth-century college students first meet his
name.

The charges in _One Epistle_ are unusually comprehensive, but almost
none of them is original. To help the reader to evaluate the more
important, the following notes may be helpful. The denial in the preface
of Pope's statement that no one is attacked in _The Dunciad_ "who had
not before, either in Print or private Conversation, endeavour'd
something to his Disadvantage" (p. v) is a reference to _The Dunciad_,
p. 203, where, however, conversation is not mentioned. This sentence of
Pope's annoyed many of the Dunces.[14] What the preface says abou