Scriblerus (Hesperus Classics) - Softcover

'this malicious and energetic (and little-known) satire on intellectual pretensions is an important rediscovery: a fugitive text published in 1741 in the great Augustan poet's collected prose works, though written much earlier by Pope, with the help of his crony, physician-wit-bon vivant John Arbuthnot (and possibly with help from their mutual friend Jonathan Swift). It relates the efforts of self-styled philosopher (and egotist) Cornelius Scriblerus to breed and develop a genius: his son Martinus. Thereafter, we're treated to the latter's educative adventures, including an early "disposition to the mathematics . . . [evidenced] by his drawing parallel lines on his bread and butter"; the study of anatomy by observation of a corpse brought home for his edification; complex litigation ensuing from Martinus's love for a beauteous Siamese twin; and the production of such eminent arcana as his "complete digest of the laws of nature." This effervescent lampoon anticipates both Swift's mature satires and Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy. More than a bit arch, but marvelously entertaining. One wonders how it ever drifted out of the canon.' --Kirkus Review

'...a comedy undertaken by the most brilliant and most facetious men of their time' --Peter Ackroyd

'a good-humoured p***-take, happy to mock the more innocuous follies of its time, whether they be the preening self-love of the genteel or the pretensions of the literary world.' --The Guardian

Rich with hilarious episodes, Scriblerus is an ingenious satire of false learning and bad taste that has much to say to the pseudo-intellectual world of today. By taking one ambitious father and his determination to do everything in his power to produce a child of genius, Pope exposes the true folly of the men of his age and their absurd veneration of the ancients. As this hallowed child grows into a man, it becomes clear that instead of being the scholar his father so desired, he is simply the inevitable offspring of a laughable generation of pseudo-intellectuals and literati.