Pope has really stood by too long, watching their tiresome antics and receiving their taunts, and he must once for all speak out and give them a lesson.
Out with it Dunciad! let the secret pass, That secret to each fool--that he's an ass! That is his account of his feelings in the Prologue to the Satires, and he answers the probable remonstrance.
You think this cruel?
Take it for a rule, No creature smarts so little as a fool.
To reconcile us to such laughter, it should have a more genial tone than Pope could find in his nature.

We ought to feel, and we certainly do not feel, that after the joke has been fired off there should be some possibility of reconciliation, or, at least, we should find some recognition of the fact that the victims are not to be hated simply because they were not such clever fellows as Pope.

There is something cruel in Pope's laughter, as in Swift's.

The missiles are not mere filth, but are weighted with hard materials that bruise and mangle.

He professes that his enemies were the first aggressors, a plea which can be only true in part; and he defends himself, feebly enough, against the obvious charge that he has ridiculed men for being obscure, poor, and stupid--faults not to be amended by satire, nor rightfully provocative of enmity.