ins, is,
perhaps, the first to publish injuries or misfortunes, which had never
been known unless related by himself, and at which those that hear them
will only laugh; for no man sympathizes with the sorrows of vanity.

The history of the Dunciad is very minutely related by Pope himself, in
a dedication which he wrote to lord Middlesex in the name of Savage.

"I will relate the war of the _dunces_, (for so it has been commonly
called,) which began in the year 1727, and ended in 1730."

"When Dr. Swift and Mr. Pope thought it proper, for reasons specified
in the preface to their Miscellanies, to publish such little pieces of
theirs as had casually got abroad, there was added to them the treatise
of the Bathos, or the Art of Sinking in Poetry. It happened that, in one
chapter of this piece, the several species of bad poets were ranged in
classes, to which were prefixed almost all the letters of the alphabet;
(the greatest part of them at random;) but such was the number of poets
eminent in that art, that some one or other took every letter to
himself: all fell into so violent a fury, that, for half a year or more,
the common newspapers (in most of which they had some property, as being
hired writers) were filled with the most abusive falsehoods and
scurrilities they could possibly devise; a liberty no way to be wondered
at in those people, and in those papers, that, for many years, during
the uncontrouled license of the press, had aspersed almost all the great
characters of the age, and this with impunity, their own persons and
names being utterly secret and obscure.

"This gave Mr. Pope the thought that he had now some opportunity of
doing good, by detecting and dragging into light these common enemies of
mankind; since to invalidate this universal slander, it sufficed to show
what contemptible men were the authors of it. He was not without hopes
that, by manifesting the dulness of those who had only malice to
recommend them, either the booksellers would not find their account in
employing them, or the men themselves, when discovered, want courage to
proceed in so unlawful an occupation. This it was that gave birth to the
Dunciad; and he thought it an happiness, that, by the late flood of
slander on himself, he had acquired such a peculiar right over their
names as was necessary to this design.

"On the 12th of March, 1729, at St. James's, that poem was presented to
the king and queen (who had before been pleased to