Note 201 — QUARRELS OF AUTHORS;
Reading edition
In one of these situations, Pope issued a very grave, but very ludicrous, advertisement. They had the impudence to publish an account of Pope having been flagellated by two gentlemen in Ham Walks, during his evening promenade. This was avenging Dennis for what he had undergone from the narrative of his madness. In “The Memoirs of Grub-street,” vol. i. p. 96, this tingling narrative appears to have been the ingenious forgery of Lady Mary! On this occasion, Pope thought it necessary to publish the following advertisement in the Daily Post, June 14, 1728:—
“Whereas, there has been a scandalous paper cried aloud about the streets, under the title of ‘A Pop upon Pope,’ insinuating that I was whipped in Ham Walks on Thursday last:—This is to give notice, that I did not stir out of my house at Twickenham on that day; and the same is a malicious and ill-founded report.—A. P.”
[Spence, on the authority of Pope’s half-sister, says: “When some of the people that he had put into the Dunciad were so enraged against him, and threatened him so highly, he loved to walk alone to Richmond, only he would take a large faithful dog with him, and pistols in his pocket. He used to say to us when we talked to him about it, that ‘with pistols the least man in England was above a match for the largest.’”]
It seems that Phillips hung up a birchen-rod at Button’s. Pope, in one of his letters, congratulates himself that he never attempted to use it. [His half-sister, Mrs. Rackett, testifies to Pope’s courage; she says, “My brother never knew what fear was.”]