In the article “A Mock-Biblical Controversy: Sir Richard Blackmore in the Dunciad”, Thomas Jemielity calls Blackmore “the eternal Blackmore” for two reasons: one, because the Blackmore's favorite form was the epic (he wrote at least four epic poems between 1695 and 1723), and two, because Alexander Pope's mockery of Blackmore in Peri Bathous immortalizes him as a leading figure in eighteenth-century poetry (265). Unlike most poets who first perfected the lyrical and pastoral, Blackmore ambitiously began his poetic career with an epic poem entitled Prince Arthur: An Heroick Poem in Ten Books (1695), and this decision, as Samuel Johnson indicates, it left him “much more open to criticism” (Solomon 43). Johnson's prediction was unequivocally accurate, and no one criticized Blackmore more than Pope, who included Blackmore's poetry in Peri Bathous, Or the Art of Sinking in Poetry (1727), a "how to" manual on how to write bad poetry. This essay will begin with a discussion of the possible causes behind Blackmore's Pope, followed by an analysis of Peri Bathous, a comparison between Prince Arthur and the Creation, and finally a brief look at Pope's Essay on Man (1734) and the Creation by Blackmore. . Ultimately, this essay will show how Pope's derision of Blackmore in Peri Bathous was not fully justified as Pope initiated their feud, unfairly chose Blackmore's early work instead of his best work to criticize, and did not recognize Blackmore for his contributions to An Essay on Man., Pope's greatest work. The cause of the Pope-Blackmore feud is not at all easy to explain, especially with so much speculation as to why their antagonism began. One possible explanation comes from Abigail Williams who argues that Pope and Blackmore c......middle of paper......re if they knew how they would respond? After all, Pope decided to write a poem making fun of a biblical text, so he understood the reaction he would receive from critics like Blackmore. By writing such a blasphemous poem, whether he intended to publish it or not, Pope was asking for trouble, which places all the blame on his shoulders. Peri Bathous is a mock Ars Poetica, or Art of Poetry, a parodic treatise on how not to write poetry. This is a humorous inversion of Longinus' classical treatise, Peri Hupsous: or The Art of the Sublime (1st century AD). Pope takes up Longinus' description of the five sources of the sublime – greatness of thought; inspired passion; the effective use of rhetorical figures; nobility of diction; and the dignity of the overall composition – and ironically holds their opposites as a guide in the modern poet's quest to achieve true depth.