who have themselves not always shown the exactest regard
to the laws of subordination in their writings, and who have often
satirized those that at least thought themselves their superiours, as
they were eminent for their hereditary rank, and employed in the highest
offices of the kingdom. But this is only an instance of that partiality
which almost every man indulges with regard to himself: the liberty of
the press is a blessing when we are inclined to write against others,
and a calamity when we find ourselves overborne by the multitude of our
assailants; as the power of the crown is always thought too great by
those who suffer by its influence, and too little by those in whose
favour it is exerted; and a standing army is generally accounted
necessary by those who command, and dangerous and oppressive by those
who support it.

Mr. Savage was, likewise, very far from believing, that the letters
annexed to each species of bad poets in the Bathos were, as he was
directed to assert, "set down at random;" for when he was charged by one
of his friends with putting his name to such an improbability, he had no
other answer to make than that "he did not think of it;" and his friend
had too much tenderness to reply, that next to the crime of writing
contrary to what he thought, was that of writing without thinking.

After having remarked what is false in this dedication, it is proper
that I observe the impartiality which I recommend, by declaring what
Savage asserted; that the account of the circumstances which attended
the publication of the Dunciad, however strange and improbable, was
exactly true.

The publication of this piece, at this time, raised Mr. Savage a great
number of enemies among those that were attacked by Mr. Pope, with whom
he was considered as a kind of confederate, and whom he was suspected of
supplying with private intelligence and secret incidents: so that the
ignominy of an informer was added to the terrour of a satirist.

That he was not altogether free from literary hypocrisy, and that he
sometimes spoke one thing and wrote another, cannot be denied; because
he himself confessed, that, when he lived in great familiarity with
Dennis, he wrote an epigram[77] against him.

Mr. Savage, however, set all the malice of all the pygmy writers at
defiance, and thought the friendship of Mr. Pope cheaply purchased by
being exposed to their censure and their hatred; nor had he any reason
to repent of the prefe