Pope Alexander’s Supremacy and Infallibility examin’d

First edition, very scarce in commerce, of an exhilaratingly spiteful attack on Pope in the wake of the publication of the Dunciad variorum, comprising seven different satirical texts, three in verse, issued in quarto to match 'the least pompous Edition of the Dunciad'. Its authorship remains uncertain. Pope wrote to Lord Oxford on 16 May 1726: 'I see a Book with a Curious Cutt calld Pope Alexrs Supremacy &c. 4o. In it are 3 or 4 things so false & scandalous that I think I know the Authors, and they are of a Rank to merit Detection … The book is writ by Burnet, & a Person who has great obligations to me, & the Cut is done by Ducket'. He later ascribed it to Duckett and John Dennis. Among the various charges laid at Pope's feet are his deformity ('Be his Crown Picked, to One Side reclin'd / Be to his Neck his Buttocks closely join'd')' his ingratitude to Wycherley; that he is a spy for the Tories ('he listed openly in the Tory Service'); and that he avoided facing his critics after the publication of the 1728 Dunciad and 'skulk'd behind a Northern Lout / Of Shoulders broad'. The pamphlet opens with 'Inscriptions graven on four Sides of the Pedestal, whereon is erected the Busto of Martinus Scriblerus' (i.e. that in the frontispiece), in Greek, Latin, Spanish, and English: 'Artist, no longer let thy Skill be shown / In forming Monsters from the Parian Stone; Chuse for this Work a Stump of crooked Thorn, / Or Log of Poison Tree, from India born'. The following two pieces are, in Popean mode, 'A Letter to the Writer of a Letter to my Lord ---- occasion'd by a Letter to the Publisher of the present Edition of the Dunciad Variorum' [the prefatory letter to the Dunciad variorum], and 'A Letter to a Noble Lord …', caustic missals, the second feigning horror that Pope could be accused of writing the Dunciad. The 'Letter to the Publisher' was signed by Pope's friend William Cleland, though probably not by him, but here Dennis denies Cleland's very existence and brands him a 'little bouncing mock Emperor'. The comic epic itself is Pope's 'Illustrious brat', a 'mishapen Lump of Malice and Ill-nature' in Pope's own mould. There follows the parodic Martiniad (the six-page sequence), a poem in forty-six lines 'With Notes' in the manner of the Dunciad: At Twickenham, Chronicles remark There dwelt a little Parish Clerk, A peevish Wight, full fond of Fame, and Martin Scribler was his name … His shrivel'd Skin, of dusky Grain, A Cricket's Voice, and Monkey's Brain … Continuing the elaborate satirical apparatus is an Appendix of three texts: 'A Curious Receipt, wherein is disclosed, the Art of writing Poetry with a small Genius, taken from Martinus Scriblerus's Writings' (accusing Pope of the farcical overuse of alliteration), 'A Parody on the Verses written on Mrs. Biddy L---, by an ingenious Divine', and 'A Dialogue between Hurlothfumbo and Death', in scurrilous verse (Death travels to Twick'nam – 'A Pigmy Poet is my Prey'). Duckett, friend of Addison and patron of John Oldmixon, had attacked Pope's Homer in Homerides … by Sir Iliad Doggrel (1715), with Thomas Burnet, with whom he is bracketed in book three of the Dunciad. Pope had made his first swipe at John Dennis in An Essay on Criticism (1711), and larded him with further obloquy in numerous subsequent publications, a bespattering that has much affected his lasting reputation. 'In his own replies … Dennis let indignation get the better of him; acute close readings of individual lines … often give way to abuse of his adversary's physique and disabilities, his religion, politics, and commercial success' (ODNB), the present work being no exception. ESTC T44064; apparently not in Foxon; see Guerinot, Pamphlet Attacks on Alexander Pope 1711-1714, pp. 166-170. Large 4to, pp. vi, 18, 6, 8, [2 (facetious advertisements, blank)], with engraved frontispiece by Herman van Kruys after 'G.D.' [likely George Duckett]; a little dusty in the margins, otherwise a very good copy; uncut in modern drab wrappers (splitting at upper joint), with evidence of earlier stab-stitching.