Having secured an independent fortune, Pope endeavoured to protect his literary fame from all future attacks, by browbeating every one into silence: this he hoped to accomplish by the poem of the ‘Dunciad,’ which came out in 4to. in the year 1727. He somewhere says, that the life of an author is a state of warfare: he now showed himself a master in literary tactics, a great captain in offensive as well as defensive war. The poem made its first appearance in Ireland, cautiously, as a masked battery; nor was the triumph completed without the co-operation of an Eugene with this satirical Marlborough in the person of Swift, who furnished some of the materials in his own masterly style of sarcasm. The improved edition was printed in London in 1728. Sir Robert Walpole presented it to the King and Queen, and, probably at the same time, offered to procure the author a pension; but Pope refused this, as he had before, in 1714, rejected a similar proposal from Lord Halifax. In a letter to Swift, written about this time, he expresses his feelings thus: “I was once before displeased at you for complaining to Mr. —— of my not having a pension; I am so again at your naming it to a certain lord.” In 1710, Mr. Craggs had given him a subscription for one hundred pounds in the South Sea Fund; but he made no use of it. These favours must be understood to have been proffered for the purpose of estranging him from his personal friends; and this repeated rejection of them is an honourable proof of steadiness to his attachments.