seem to be more sore now, than at any other time?

As to those dull Fellows, they granted my Silence was right; yet they could not but think Mr. Pope was too eminent an Author to justify my equal Contempt of him; and that a Disgrace, from such a Pen, might stick upon me to Posterity: In fine, that though I could not be rouz’d from my Indifference, in regard to myself, yet for the particular Amusement of my Acquaintance, they desired I would enter the Lists with you; notwithstanding I am under the Disadvantage of having only the blunt and weak weapon of Prose, to oppose you, or defend myself, against the Sharpness of Verse, and that in the Hand of so redoubted an Author as Mr. Pope.

Their spiriting me up to this unequal Engagement, I doubt is but an ill Compliment to my Skill, or my Discretion; or, at best, seems but to put me upon a level with a famous Boxer at the Bear-Garden, called Rugged and Tough, who would stand being drubb’d for Hours together, ’till wearying out his Antagonist by the repeated Labour of laying him on, and by keeping his own Wind (like the Roman Combatant of old, who conquer’d by seeming to fly) honest Rugged sometimes came off victorious. All I can promise therefore, since I am stript for the Combat, is, that I will so far imitate this Iron-headed Hero (as the Turks called the late King of Sweden) as always to keep my Temper, as he did his Wind, and that while I have Life, or am able to set Pen to Paper, I will now, Sir, have the last Word with you: For let the Odds of your Wit be never so great, or its Pen dipt in whatever Venom it may, while I am conscious you can say nothing truly of me, that ought to put an honest Man to the Blush, what, in God’s Name, can I have to fear from you? As to the Reputation of my Attempts, in Poetry, that has taken its Ply long ago, and can now no more be lessened by your coldest Contempt, than it can be raised by your warmest Commendation, were you inclin’d to give it any: Every Man’s Work must and will always speak For, or Against itself, whilst it has a remaining Reader in the World. All I shall say then as to that Point, is, that I wrote more to be Fed, than be Famous, and since my Writings still give me a Dinner, do you rhyme me out of my Stomach if you can. And I own myself so contented a Dunce, that I would not have even your merited Fame in Poetry, if it were to be attended with half the fretful Solicitude you seem to have lain under to maintain it; of which the laborious Rout you make about it, in those Loads of Prose Rubbish, wherewith you have almost smother’d your Dunciad, is so sore a Proof: And though I grant it a better Poem of its Kind, than ever was writ; yet when I read it, with those vain-glorious encumbrances of Notes, and Remarks, upon almost every Line of it, I find myself in the uneasy Condition I was once in at an Opera, where sitting with a silent Desire to hear a favourite Air, by a famous Performer, a Coxcombly Connoisseur, at my Elbow, was so fond of shewing his own Taste, that by his continual Remarks, and prating in Praise of every Grace and Cadence, my Attention and Pleasure in the Song was quite lost and confounded.

It is almost amazing, that you, who have writ with such masterly Spirit, upon the Ruling Passion, should be so blind a Slave to your own, as not to have seen, how far a low Avarice of Praise might prejudice, or debase that valuable Character, which your Works, without your own commendatory Notes upon them, might have maintained. Laus propria sordet, is a Line we learn in our Infancy. How applicable to your self then is what you say of another Person, viz.

Whose Ruling Passion is the lust of Praise;
Born, with whate’er could win it from the Wise,
Women and Fools must like him, or he dies.
Epist. to Ld. Cobham Vers. 183.

How easily now can you see the Folly in another, which you yourself are so fond of? Why, Sir, the very Jealousy of Fame, which (in the best cruel Verses that ever fell from your Pen) you have with so much Asperity reproved in Addison (Atticus I mean) falls still short of yours, for though you impute it to him as a Crime, That he could——

Bear, like the Turk, no Brother near the Throne.
Vers. 190 of the same Epist.

Yet you, like outragious Nero, are for whipping and branding every poor Dunce in your Dominions, that had the stupid Insolence not to like you, or your Musick! If this is not a greater Tyranny than that of your Atticus, at least you must allow it more ridiculous: For what have you gain’d by it? a mighty Matter! a Victory over a parcel of poor Wretches, that were not able to hurt or resist you, so weak, it was almost Cowardice to conquer them; or if they actually did hurt you, how much weaker have you shewn yourself in so openly owning it? Besides, your Conduct seems hardly reconcileable to your own Opinion: For after you have lash’d them (in your Epistle to Dr. Arburthnot, ver. 84.) you excuse the Cruelty of it in the following Line.

———Take it for a Rule,
No Creature smarts so little as a Fool.

Now if this be true, to what purpose did you correct them? For wise Men, without your taking such Pains to tell them, knew what they were before. And that publick-spirited Pretence of your only chastising them, in terrorem to others of the same malicious Disposition, I doubt is but too thin a Disguise of the many restless Hours they have given you. If your Revenge upon them was necessary, we must own you have amply enjoy’d it: But to make that Revenge the chief Motive of writing your Dunciad, seems to me a Weakness, that an Author of your Abilities should rather have chosen to conceal. A Man might as well triumph for his having kill’d so many silly Flies that offended him. Could you have let them alone, by this time, poor Souls, they had been all peaceably buried in Oblivion! But the very Lines, you have so sharply pointed to destroy them, will now remain but so many of their Epitaphs, to transmit their Names to Posterity: Which probably too they may think a more eligible Fate than that of being totally forgotten. Hear what an Author of great Merit, though of less Anxiety for Fame, says upon this Weakness,

Fame is a Bubble, the Reserv’d enjoy,
Who strive to grasp it, as they touch, destroy.
Y— Univers. Passion.

In a word, you seem in your Dunciad, to have been angry at the rain for wetting you, why then would you go into it? You could not but know, that an Author, when he publishes a Work, exposes himself to all Weathers. He then that cannot bear the worst, should stay at home, and not write at all.

But Sir—That Cibber ever murmured at your Fame, or endeavoured to blast it, or that he was not always, to the best of his Judgment, as warm an Admirer of your Writings as any of your nearest Friends could be, is what you cannot, by any one Fact or Instance, disprove. How comes it then, that in your Works you have so often treated him as a Dunce or an Enemy? Did he at all intrench upon your Sovereignty in Verse, because he had now and then written a Comedy that succeeded? Or could not you bear, that any kind of Poetry, but that, to which you chiefly pretended, should meet with Applause? Or was it, that he had an equal Reputation for Acting his own Characters as for Writing them, or that with such inferior Talents he was admitted to as good Company as you, with your superior, could get into; or