The engraving of The Distrest Poet in its third state was issued on 15 December 1741 as a companion piece to The Enraged Musician, a comic scene of a violinist driven to distraction by the noise from the street outside his practice room.

Starved of inspiration and suffering writer's block, the poet sits on the end of his bed in his night gown, quill in hand, scratching his head.

The poem he is attempting to write is entitled "Upon Riches", which suggests that the poet lives in a fantasy world, while his wife and child go hungry.

The poet's dreams of riches are further suggested by the map that hangs over his head, entitled "A View of the Gold Mines of Peru", replacing the image of Pope that appears in the earlier states of the print.

The poet's self-interest is hinted by the presence of his pipe and tobacco on the window sill, the mug of beer sitting on the chair in the back of the room, the lace cuffs drying by the fire, his ill-fitting wig, and gentleman's sword lying at his feet; it may be that despite his family's circumstances, he refuses to forgo his own personal pleasures and effects.

Ned Ward, the author of The London Spy was a strong contender,[6] as was Lewis Theobald, to whom the lines quoted from Pope in Hogarth's original print referred.

The lines by Pope, though referring to Theobald, the hero of The Dunciad, are a characterisation of a Grub Street hack, a stereotype popular in the 1730s denoting a man of limited writing ability who lived in poverty but nevertheless determinedly pursued a career in literature;[11] therefore, the particular scribbler depicted in the painting would be one of this fraternity of "witlings" who banded together to protest Pope's poem.

In this context it would make sense, therefore, for the poet to have the scabrous anti-Pope print, or an emblem of Pope's fight with the hack writers' patron, above him.

Hogarth was well acquainted with the struggles of the Grub Street hack though, through the travails of his own father, Richard, who had been unable to make a living as writer and had eventually ended up at the Fleet Prison as a bankrupt.