Sawney (poem)

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Sawney: An Heroic Poem, Occasion’d by the Dunciad is a short satirical poem of about 300 lines in blank verse. It appeared in London on 26 June 1728 and is generally thought to have been written by James Ralph. It was written as a response to Alexander Pope’s Dunciad, turning Pope into the character “Sawney” and accusing him of plagiarism and social pretension. The piece opens with a long dedication to “the Gentlemen Scandaliz’d in the Dunciad.”

The central figure, Sawney, is a public figure of reputation who appears to plot with others to profit from a fraudulent translation of the Odyssey and a new edition of Shakespeare. The poem insults the Scriblerian circle, naming “Hounslow” (John Gay) and “Shameless” (Jonathan Swift) as supporters of the scheme, and it ends with Sawney’s fall into the “vast Profund.”

Throughout, the poem catalogs alleged plagiarisms in Pope’s earlier works—Essay on Criticism, Windsor Forest, and Rape of the Lock—and attacks his use of rhymed couplets, arguing that Milton would disdain such light, ornamental verse. Ralph has Pope speak mainly in rhyme to preserve the appearance of his sentiments, while praising John Dryden as the preferred authority.

Pope later claimed he had never heard of Ralph until Sawney appeared, but in 1729’s Dunciad Variorum he referenced the anonymous author and even quoted from Sawney. He also called Ralph a “low writer” who sought praise in journals, and he reused parts of Sawney in later notes to the Dunciad.

The attack harmed Ralph’s reputation. He became the subject of heavy mockery from the Scriblerian circle and other writers, and many mocked him as a failed poet. Some critics later said the ridicule pushed him out of serious literary life. Ralph then left verse behind and turned to prose criticism, journalism, drama, and eventually history.

A small but notable publication detail is the imprint: “Printed for the Author, and sold by J. Roberts,” with the price listed as One Shilling.

In the years that followed, the episode left a mark on Ralph’s career. The Grub-Street Journal mocked him, and Horace Walpole called him dull; Paul Whitehead ridiculed him as a minor writer of brief, tuneless rhymes. Some scholars see this ridicule as ending his ambitions as a poet, especially while others of his generation, like James Thomson, found lasting fame.

Ralph later stopped writing verse and turned to prose criticism, drama, and history. He published The Touch-Stone in May 1728, which helped connect him with Henry Fielding, with whom he would later work in the theatre. In 1729 his Miscellaneous Poems reprinted earlier pieces but notably left out Sawney and The Loss of Liberty.