The scourge of dunces had, as we have seen, a legitimate cause to resent the licentious attack upon certain court ladies, especially his friend Mrs. Howard, in a scandalous fiction of which Eliza Haywood was the reputed author.  Besides she had allied herself with Bond, Defoe, and other inelegant pretenders in the domain of letters, and was known to be the friend of Aaron Hill, Esq., who stood not high in Pope Alexander’s good graces.  And finally Pope may have honestly believed that she was responsible for a lampoon upon him in person.  In “A List of Books, Papers, and Verses, in which our Author was Abused, Before the Publication of the Dunciad; with the True Names of the Authors,” appended to “The Dunciad, Variorum” of 1729, Mrs. Haywood was credited with an anonymous “Memoirs of Lilliput, octavo, printed in 1727."[4] The full title of the work in question reads, “Memoirs of the Court of Lilliput.  Written by Captain Gulliver.  Containing an Account of the Intrigues, and some other particular Transactions of that Nation, omitted in the two Volumes of his Travels.  Published by Lucas Bennet, with a Preface, shewing how these Papers fell into his hands.”  The title, indeed, is suggestive of such productions as “The Court of Carimania.”  In the Preface Mr. Lucas Bennet describes himself as a schoolfellow and friend of Captain Gulliver, which is reason enough to make us doubt his own actuality.  But whether a real personage or a pseudonym for some other author, he was probably not Mrs. Haywood, for the style of the book is unlike that of her known works, and the historian of Lilliput indulges in some mild sarcasms at the expense of women who “set up for Writers, before they have well learned their Alphabet,” Either before or after composing his lines on Eliza, however, Pope chose to attribute the volume to her.  The passage which doubtless provoked his noble rage against shameless scribblers was part of a debate between Lilliputian Court ladies who were anxious lest their having been seen by Gulliver in a delicate situation should reflect on their reputations.  The speaker undertakes to reassure her companions.

“And besides, the inequality of our Stature rightly consider’d, ought to be for us as full a Security from Slander, as that between Mr. P—­pe, and those great Ladies who do nothing without him; admit him to their Closets, their Bed-sides, consult him in the choice of their Servents, their Garments, and make no scruple of putting them on or off before him:  Every body knows they are Women of strict Virtue, and he a Harmless Creature, who has neither the Will, nor Power of doing any farther Mischief than with his Pen, and that he seldom draws, but in defense of their Beauty; or to second their Revenge against some presuming Prude, who boasts a Superiority of Charms:  or in privately transcribing and passing for his own, the elaborate Studies of some more learned Genius."[5]

Such an attack upon the sensitive poet’s person and pride did not go unnoticed.  More than a year later he returned the slur with interest upon the head of the supposed author.  The lines on Eliza, which still remain the coarsest in the satire, were in the original “Dunciad” even more brutal.[6] Nothing short of childish personal animus could account for the filthy malignity of Pope’s revenge.