The classification was rather
vague, but seems to have given special offence.
Meanwhile Pope was planning a more elaborate campaign against his
adversaries. He now appeared for the first time as a formal satirist,
and the Dunciad, in which he came forward as the champion of Wit, taken
in its broad sense, against its natural antithesis, Dulness, is in some
respect his masterpiece. It is addressed to Swift, who probably assisted
at some of its early stages. O thou, exclaims the poet,--
O thou, whatever title please thine ear,
Dean, Drapier, Bickerstaff, or Gulliver!
Whether thou choose Cervantes' serious air,
Or laugh and shake in Rabelais's easy chair,--
And we feel that Swift is present in spirit throughout the composition.
"The great fault of the Dunciad," says Warton, an intelligent and
certainly not an over-severe critic, "is the excessive vehemence of the
satire. It has been compared," he adds, "to the geysers propelling a
vast column of boiling water by the force of subterranean fire;" and he
speaks of some one who after reading a book of the Dunciad, always
soothes himself by a canto of the Faery Queen. Certainly a greater
contrast could not easily be suggested; and yet, I think, that the
remark requires at least modification. The Dunciad, indeed, is beyond
all question full of coarse abuse. The second book, in particular,
illustrates that strange delight in the physically disgusting which
Johnson notices as characteristic of Pope and his master, Swift.
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