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KEY TO THE LOCK;

OR A

TREATISE,

PROVING BEYOND ALL CONTRADICTION

THE DANGEROUS TENDENCY OF A LATE POEM,

ENTITLED

THE RAPE OF THE LOCK,

TO

GOVERNMENT AND RELIGION.

BY ESDRAS BARNIVELT, APOTHECARY.

WRITTEN IN 1714.

A KEY TO THE LOCK.

DENNIS, who early distinguished himself as the enemy of Pope's reputation, and might be therefore said to have drawn upon himself the severity with which the satirist uniformly treated him, was desirous, as is not unusual for such critics, to involve the author's religious and political opinions in the discussion of his literary merits. Being himself a strenuous Protestant and whig, the ancient Aristarch was unwilling that the world should be seduced by the strains of an acknowleged Catholic and presumed Jacobite. In his remarks on the Rape of the Lock, and particularly in the preface, p. xii., Dennis treats Pope as an open and mortal enemy to his country and the commonwealth of learning. In order to expose the absurdity of accusations, which connected the religious principles of the author with his lightest attempts in literature, Pope published this little piece, in which the art of extracting wire-drawn allusions to politics and controversy, from the most remote and slightest coincidences, is ridiculed with admirable effect.

The raillery had not, however, the effect of shaming dulness and malignity out of a resource so easy and so popular; in 1715, one Griffin a player published a Key to the What d'ye call it, in which he proved it to be a parody upon Addison's Cato, by arguments pretty similar to those adduced in the following piece.

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