| GENERAL EDITORS |
| Earl R. Miner, University of California, Los Angeles |
| Maximillian E. Novak, University of California, Los Angeles |
| Lawrence Clark Powell, Wm. Andrews Clark Memorial Library |
| |
| ADVISORY EDITORS |
| John Butt, University of Edinburgh |
| James L. Clifford, Columbia University |
| Ralph Cohen, University of California, Los Angeles |
| Vinton A. Dearing, University of California, Los Angeles |
| Arthur Friedman, University of Chicago |
| Louis A. Landa, Princeton University |
| Samuel H. Monk, University of Minnesota |
| Everett T. Moore, University of California, Los Angeles |
| James Sutherland, University College, London |
| H. T. Swedenberg, Jr., University of California, Los Angeles |
| |
| CORRESPONDING SECRETARY |
| Edna C. Davis, Clark Memorial Library |
- i -
When John Tutchin died on September 23, 1707, he had alreadycreated the image of himself which Alexander Pope has transmitted toposterity. There, in Book II of The Dunciad (1728), the Whig journalistappears as one of two figures in a "shaggy Tap'stry":
Pope, in his variorum notes on the passage, identified Tutchin as the"author of some vile verses, and of a weekly paper call'd the Observator,"and revived the fiction of his sentence "to be whipp'd thro' severaltowns in the west of England, upon which he petition'd King JamesII. to be hanged." The "invective" against James II's memory, whichPope mentions, has now been identified in the Twickenham Edition asThe British Muse: or Tyranny Expos'd (1701).[1] By 1728, this was allthe reputation that remained for Mr. John Tutchin, Gentleman—irasciblejournalist, pamphleteer, and writer of verses.
The truth of the matter is that Pope was no more accurate aboutTutchin's being whipped than about Defoe's losing his ears. From thesparse reliable information concerning Tutchin's early years, one consistentpattern emerges: he tended to depict himself as a hero and amartyr. Born i