This, in the form of the lines as quoted above, is quite
true, but in the first edition of the Dunciad the first verse had been
H-- tried the next, but hardly snatch'd from sight.
Hill did not detect this specimen of what Pope somewhere calls "pretty
genteel equivocation." He was reconciled to Pope, and taught the poor
poet by experience that his friendship was worse than his enmity. He
wrote him letters of criticism; he forced poor Pope to negotiate for him
with managers and to bring distinguished friends to the performances of
his dreary plays; nay, to read through, or to say that he had read
through, one of them in manuscript four times, and make corrections
mixed with elaborate eulogy. No doubt Pope came to regard a letter from
Hill with terror, though Hill compared him to Horace and Juvenal, and
hoped that he would live till the virtues which his spirit would
propagate became as general as the esteem of his genius. In short, Hill,
who was a florid flatterer, is so complimentary that we are not
surprised to find him telling Richardson, after Pope's death, that the
poet's popularity was due to a certain "bladdery swell of management."
"But," he concludes, "rest his memory in in peace! It will very rarely
be disturbed by that time he himself is ashes."
The war raged for some time. Dennis, Smedley, Moore-Smythe, Welsted, and
others, retorted by various pamphlets, the names of which were published
by Pope in an appendix to future editions of the "Dunciad," by way of
proving that his own blows had told.
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