Page:The English humourists of the eighteenth century. A series of lectures, delivered in England, Scotland, and the United States of America (IA englishhumourist00thacrich).pdf/228

 from that shabby and boisterous crew which formed the rank and file of literature in his time: and he was as unjust to these men as they to him. The delicate little creature sickened at habits and com- pany which were quite tolerable to robuster men: and in the famous feud between Pope and the Dunces, and without attributing any peculiar wrong to either, one can quite understand how the two parties should so hate each other. As I fancy, it was a sort of necessity that when Pope’s triumph passed, Mr. Addison and his men should look rather contemptuously down on it from their balcony; so it was natural for Dennis and Tibbald, and Webster and Cibber, and the worn and hungry press-men in the crowd below, to howl at him and assail him. And Pope was more savage to Grub-street, than Grub-street was to Pope. The thong with which he lashed them was dreadful; he fired upon that howling crew such shafts of flame, and poison, he slew and wounded so fiercely, that in reading the “Dunciad” and the prose lampoons of Pope, one feels disposed to side against the ruthless little tyrant, at least to pity those wretched folks upon whom he was so unmerciful. It was Pope, and Swift to aid him, who established among us the Grub-street tradition. He revels in base descriptions of poor men’s want; he gloats over poor Dennis’s garret, and flannel night-cap, and red stockings; he gives instructions how to find Curll’s authors, the historian at the tallow-chandler’s under the