‘HALF MAN, HALF MONKEY, OWN’D BY NEITHER RACE’
[DENNIS, John, and George DUCKETT?]
Pope Alexander’s Supremacy and Infallibility examin’d, and the Errors of Scriblerus and his Man William detected, with the Effigies of His Holiness and his Prime Minister, curiously engrav’d on Copper.
London, J. Roberts, 1729.
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.
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Pope Alexander’s Supremacy and Infallibility examin’d, and the Errors of Scriblerus and his Man William detected, with the Effigies of His Holiness and his Prime Minister, curiously engrav’d on Copper.
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.
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.
