might be, if they _could_ be 'immortalized,' then we have Schlosser
himself confessing to the possibility that poetic splendor should create a
secondary interest where originally there had been none. Secondly, the
question of merit does not arise from the object of the archer, but from
the style of his archery. Not the choice of victims, but the execution
done is what counts. Even for continued failures it would plead
advantageously, much more for continued and brilliant successes, that Pope
fired at an object offering no sufficient breadth of mark. Thirdly, it is
the grossest of blunders to say that Pope's objects of satire were obscure
by comparison with Voltaire's. True, the Frenchman's example of a scholar,
viz., the French Salmasius, was most accomplished. But so was the
Englishman's scholar, viz., the English Bentley. Each was absolutely
without a rival in his own day. But the day of Bentley was the very day of
Pope. Pope's man had not even faded; whereas the day of Salmasius, as
respected Voltaire had gone by for more than half a century. As to Dacier,
'_which_ Dacier, Bezonian?' The husband was a passable scholar--but
madame was a poor sneaking fellow, fit only for the usher of a boarding-
school. All this, however, argues Schlosser's two-fold ignorance--first,
of English authors; second, of the 'Dunciad;'--else he would have known
that even Dennis, mad John Dennis, was a much cleverer man than most of
those alluded to by Voltaire. Cibber, though slightly a coxcomb, was born
a brilliant man. Aaron Hill was so lustrous, that even Pope's venom fell
off spontaneously, like rain from the plumage of a pheasant, leaving him
to 'mount far upwards with the swans of Thanes'--and, finally, let it not
be forgotten, that Samuel Clarke Burnet, of the Charterhouse, and Sir
Isaac Newton, did not wholly escape tasting the knout; if _that_ rather
impeaches the equity, and sometimes the judgment of Pope, at least it
contributes to show the groundlessness of Schlosser's objection--that the
population of the Dunciad, the characters that filled its stage, were
inconsiderable.