What was the Scriblerus Club created to satirize?

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Portrait of poet Alexander Pope — Alexander Pope Alexander Pope, portrait by Thomas Hudson, c. 1739; in the National Portrait Gallery, London.

The Scriblerus Club was established by Alexander Pope and his fellow Tory wits to satirize pretentious erudition and the use of dense, scholarly jargon.1

The members aimed to ridicule these intellectual affectations through the creation of a fictitious literary hack named Martinus Scriblerus. The name itself was chosen to mock talentless writers, as "Scriblerus" was derived from "scribler," a contemporary term of contempt, while "Martin" referenced a character known for absurd errors. This collaborative effort resulted in the Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus, a project that influenced major works such as Jonathan Swift's Gulliver’s Travels and John Gay's The Beggar’s Opera.1