Voltaire, who was then in England, sent him a letter of consolation. He had been entertained by Pope at his table, where he talked with so much grossness, that Mrs. Pope was driven from the room. Pope discovered, by a trick, that he was a spy for the court, and never considered him as a man worthy of confidence. He soon afterwards, 1727, joined with Swift, who was then in England, to publish three volumes of Miscellanies, in which, amongst other things, he inserted the Memoirs of a Parish Clerk, in ridicule of Burnet's importance in his own history, and a Debate upon Black and White Horses, written in all the formalities of a legal process by the assistance, as is said, of Mr. Fortescue, afterwards master of the Rolls. Before these Miscellanies is a preface signed by Swift and Pope, but apparently written by Pope; in which he makes a ridiculous and romantick complaint of the robberies committed upon authors by the clandestine seizure and sale of their papers. He tells, in tragick strains, how "the cabinets of the sick and the closets of the dead have been broke open and ransacked;" as if those violences were often committed for papers of uncertain and accidental value, which are rarely provoked by real treasures; as if epigrams and essays were in danger, where gold and diamonds are safe. A cat hunted for his musk is, according to Pope's account, but the emblem of a wit winded by booksellers. His complaint, however, received some attestation; for, the same year, the letters written by him, to Mr. Cromwell, in his youth, were sold by Mrs. Thomas to Curll, who printed them. In these Miscellanies was first published the Art of Sinking in Poetry, which, by such a train of consequences as usually passes in literary quarrels, gave, in a short time, according to Pope's account, occasion to the Dunciad. In the following year, 1728, he began to put Atterbury's advice in practice; and showed his satirical powers by publishing the Dunciad, one of his greatest and most elaborate performances, in which he endeavoured to sink into contempt all the writers by whom he had been attacked, and some others whom he thought unable to defend themselves. At the head of the _dunces_ he placed poor Theobald, whom he accused of ingratitude; but whose real crime was supposed to be that of having revised Shakespeare more happily than himself. This satire had the effect which he intended, by blasting the characters which it touched. Ralph[129], who, unnecessarily interposing in the quarrel, got a place in a subsequent edition, complained that, for a time, he was in danger of starving, as the booksellers had no longer any confidence in his capacity.