Who was Martinus Scriblerus?

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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.

Martinus Scriblerus was a fictitious literary hack created by the Scriblerus Club, an 18th-century group of British Tory wits that included Alexander Pope, Jonathan Swift, John Gay, Thomas Parnell, and John Arbuthnot.1

The character served as a vehicle for the club to ridicule pretentious erudition and scholarly jargon. His name was derived from two sources: "Martin," taken from a comic character in John Dryden’s work, and "Scriblerus," a reference to scribler, a contemporary term of contempt for a talentless writer.1

Although Pope is credited with originating the character, the members collaborated on the Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus, which was eventually published in 1741. The influence of this collaborative project extended to other famous works, including Swift's Gulliver’s Travels and Gay's The Beggar’s Opera.1