read it) by the right
honourable sir Robert Walpole; and, some days after, the whole
impression was taken and dispersed by several noblemen, and persons of
the first distinction.

"It is, certainly, a true observation, that no people are so impatient
of censure as those who are the greatest slanderers, which was
wonderfully exemplified on this occasion. On the day the book was first
vended, a crowd of authors besieged the shop; entreaties, advices,
threats of law and battery, nay, cries of treason, were all employed to
hinder the coming out of the Dunciad; on the other side, the booksellers
and hawkers made as great efforts to procure it. What could a few poor
authors do against so great a majority as the publick? There was no
stopping a torrent with a finger; so out it came.

"Many ludicrous circumstances attended it. The _dunces_ (for by this
name they were called) held weekly clubs, to consult of hostilities
against the author; one wrote a letter to a great minister, assuring him
Mr. Pope was the greatest enemy the government had; and another bought
his image in clay, to execute him in effigy; with which sad sort of
satisfaction the gentlemen were a little comforted.

"Some false editions of the book having an owl in their frontispiece,
the true one, to distinguish it, fixed in its stead an ass laden with
authors. Then another surreptitious one being printed with the same ass,
the new edition in octavo returned, for distinction, to the owl again.
Hence arose a great contest of booksellers against booksellers, and
advertisements against advertisements; some recommending the edition of
the owl, and others the edition of the ass; by which names they came to
be distinguished, to the great honour also of the gentlemen of the
Dunciad."

Pope appears, by this narrative, to have contemplated his victory over
the _dunces_ with great exultation; and such was his delight in the
tumult which he had raised, that for awhile his natural sensibility was
suspended, and he read reproaches and invectives without emotion,
considering them only as the necessary effects of that pain which he
rejoiced in having given.

It cannot, however, be concealed that, by his own confession, he was the
aggressor; for nobody believes that the letters in the Bathos were
placed at random; and it may be discovered that, when he thinks himself
concealed, he indulges the common vanity of common men, and triumphs in
those distinctions which he had aff