ABSTRACT
On 29 January 1728, Alexander Pope went to the Lincoln's Inn Fields Theatre for the first night of the Beggar's Opera. When Alexander Pope was twenty-one, he gave Longinus pride of place among the critics he commended in the Essay. Now, at the age of forty he took the author of On the Sublime as his chief mentor, The Art of Sinking being an upside down version of the Greek treatise. Alexander Pope continued to be politic rather than political. Well before the Dunciad appeared, he instructed Richard Savage, to spread rumours about it in Grub Street. Alexander Pope rarely humiliated anyone to the extent he humiliated Mrs Thomas, nor was he always so obdurate. Mrs Thomas had touched a raw place in Alexander Pope who had made himself accepted as a gentleman. Alexander Pope was unconcerned when the public decided that the mock epic was his response to individuals who had attacked him.
