nonliterate world celebrated by Mircea Eliade in The Sacred and  
the Profane .

     Martinus Scriblerus in his notes to The Dunciad  reflects on 
how much more difficult it is to write an epic about the 
numerous scribblers and industrious hacks of the press than 
about a Charlemagne, a Brute, or a Godfrey. He then mentions 
the need for a satirist “to dissuade the dull and punish the 
wicked,” and looks at the general situation that has brought on 
the crisis:

          We shall next declare the occasion and the cause 
     which moved our Poet to this particular work. He lived in 
     those days when (after providence had permitted the 
     Invention of Printing as a scourge for the Sins of the 
     learned) Paper also became so cheap, and printers so