t Swift
and Arbuthnot and the _Peri Bathous_ (p. vii) may well be true.[15]
Welsted's charge that Pope wrote the Prologue to _Cato_ and then "the
Play decried" (p. 12) is simply Dennis's old charge first made in
_A True Character of Mr. Pope (1716)_ and repeated in _Remarks Upon ...
the Dunciad_ (1729) that Pope had teased Lintot into publishing Dennis's
attack on _Cato_. The charge rests only on Dennis's authority.[16] The
obscenity of _The Rape of the Lock_ was an old story.[17] So was the
notorious _First Psalm_.[18] Welsted's attacks on the _Pastorals_, the
Homer, the _Peri Bathous_, and _The Dunciad_ are simply the commonplaces
of Popiana. The charge that he libeled Addison only after the great
man's death is also familiar[19] (Welsted seems to have been the first,
though, to mention the libel on Lady Mary) and long since disproved by
Sherburn and Ault. That Pope was a plagiarist is an idea that turns up
constantly.[20]

Welsted's other charges are more interesting. He seems to be the only
Dunce who objected (p. 12) to Pope's mentioning Bishop Hoadly in _The
Dunciad A_ II.368. It may just possibly be true that Gildon was
dismissed by Buckingham because of Gildon's dislike of Pope (p. 22).[21]

The most curious of the charges is that Pope,

... from the Skies, propitious to the Fair,
Brought down _Caecilia_, and sent _Cloris_ there. (p. 11)

Welsted apparently means that Pope debased St. Cecilia in his _Ode for
Musick on St. Cecilia's Day_ and glorified a suicide in his _Elegy to
the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady_. He is not saying, as did _The Life
of the late Celebrated Mrs. Elizabeth Wisebourn_ (1721), that the
heroine of the _Elegy_ died of her unrequited love for Pope. Pope's
note to l. 375 of the _Epistle to Arbuthnot_ accusing Welsted of having
"had the Impudence to tell in print, that Mr. _P._ had occasion'd a
Lady's death, and to _name_ a person he never heard of" refers not to
Cloris but to Victoria in Welsted's _Of Dulness and Scandal_ who died
from reading Pope's _Illiad_.[22]

The _Grub-Street Journal_ for 21 May 1730 invited "any Person of Credit
and Character to stand forth and attest any of the following Facts...."

That the late Duke of Buckingham paid any Pension to Charles Gildon,
which he took from him since his acquaintance with Mr. P.

That the present Archbishop of Canterbury hath past any Censure on
Mr. P.

That Mr. F[ento]n and he ever were at distance on variance wi