Sawney (poem)

Sawney: An Heroic Poem. Occasion’d by the Dunciad is an anonymous satirical poem of about 300 lines in blank verse, issued in London on 26 June 1728 and generally attributed to James Ralph. Written as a counter to Alexander Pope’s Dunciad, it recasts Pope as “Sawney” and levels charges of plagiarism and social pretension, opening with a long dedication “To the Gentlemen Scandaliz’d in the Dunciad.”

The pamphlet drew a swift response from Pope, who named Ralph in the 1729 Dunciad Variorum and returned to the attack in later notes. Contemporary and later commentators reported that the episode damaged Ralph’s reputation; writers associated with the Scriblerian circle mocked him in print, and he soon shifted his efforts from verse to prose criticism, journalism, and the stage.