It is styled Heroic, as being doubly so; not only with respect to its nature, which according to the best rules of the ancients, and strictest ideas of the moderns, is critically such; but also with regard to the heroical disposition and high courage of the writer, who dar'd to stir up such a formidable, irritable, and implacable race of mortals.
There may arise some obscurity in chronology from the Names in the poem, by the inevitable removal of some authors, and insertion of others, in their niches. For whoever will consider the unity of the whole design, will be sensible, that the poem was not made for these authors, but these authors for the poem. I should judge that they were clapp'd in as they rose, fresh and fresh, and chang'd from day to day; in like manner as when the old boughs wither, we thrust new ones into a chimney.
I would not have the reader too much troubled or anxious, if he cannot decypher them; since when he shall have found them out, he will probably know no more of the persons than before.
Yet we judg'd it better to preserve them as they are, than to change them for fictitious names; by which the satire would only be multiplied, and applied to many instead of one. Had the hero, for instance, been called Codrus, how many would have affirm'd him to have been Mr. T. Mr. E. Sir R. B. &c. but now all that unjust scandal is saved by calling him by a name, which by good luck happens to be that of a real person.
II.
A LIST of
BOOKS, PAPERS, and VERSES,
In which our Author was abused, before the Publication of the
Dunciad; with the true Names of the Authors.
Reflections critical and satyrical on a late Rhapsody, called An Essay on Criticism. By Mr. Dennis, printed by B. Lintot, price 6d.
A New Rehearsal, or Bays the younger; containing an Examen of Mr. Row's plays, and a word or two on Mr. Pope's Rape of the Lock. Anon. [by Charles Gildon] printed for J. Roberts, 1714. price Is.
Homerides, or a Letter to Mr. Pope, occasioned by his intended translation of Homer. By Sir Iliad Dogrel. [Tho. Burnet and G. Ducket esquires] printed for W. Wilkins, 1715. price 9d.
