It is the most amusing of his prose writings,
consisting essentially of a collection of absurdities from various
authors, with some apparently invented for the occasion, such as the
familiar
Ye gods, annihilate but space and time,
And make two lovers happy!
and ending with the ingenious receipt to make an epic poem. Most of the
passages ridiculed--and, it must be said, very deservedly--were selected
from some of the various writers to whom, for one reason or another, he
owed a grudge. Ambrose Philips and Dennis, his old enemies, and
Theobald, who had criticised his edition of Shakespeare, supply several
illustrations. Blackmore had spoken very strongly of the immorality of
the wits in some prose essays; Swift's Tale of a Tub, and a parody of
the first psalm, anonymously circulated, but known to be Pope's, had
been severely condemned; and Pope took a cutting revenge by plentiful
citations from Blackmore's most ludicrous bombast; and even Broome, his
colleague in Homer, came in for a passing stroke, for Broome and Pope
were now at enmity. Finally, Pope fired a general volley into the whole
crowd of bad authors by grouping them under the head of various
animals--tortoises, parrots, frogs, and so forth--and adding under each
head the initials of the persons described. He had the audacity to
declare that the initials were selected at random. If so, a marvellous
coincidence made nearly every pair of letters correspond to the name and
surname of some contemporary poetaster.
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