first Satire of the second book, which begins Sunt quibus in satira, &c. He observed how well that would hit my case, if I were to imitate it in English. After he was gone, I read it over; translated it in a morning or two, and sent it to the press in a week or a fortnight after. And this was the occasion of my imitating some other of the Satires and Epistles afterwards."1

In the above-mentioned Dialogue is a very indelicate couplet concerning Sappho, under which name (if his asseverations may be credited) Pope intended to satirize such ladies as Mrs. Haywood, Mrs. Centlivre, and Mrs. Manly, who were as notorious in the annals of gallantry as of literature. The public, however, chose to think that the poet alluded to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu; and that she herself was of the same opinion was manifested by the appearance soon after of Verses to the Imitator of the First Satire of the Second Book of Horace, the joint production of her Ladyship and Lord Harvey. Pope having treated with silent contempt this piece of coarse wit and violent abuse, Lord Harvey followed up the attack by a very dull Epistle to a Doctor of Divinity, [Dr. Sherwin] from a Nobleman at Hampton Court. To it Pope immediately wrote and printed an answer entitled A Letter to a Noble Lord, on occasion of some Libels written and propagated at court, in the year 1732-3; but that he suppressed it for a time appears by a passage of a letter from him to Swift, January 6, 1734;

1 Spence's Anecdotes, ed. Singer, p. 297.

There is a woman's war declared against me by a certain Lord. His weapons are the same which women and children use, a pin to scratch, and a squirt to bespatter; I writ a sort of answer, but was ashamed to enter the lists with him, and after shewing it to some people, suppressed it otherwise it was such as was worthy of him, and worthy of me." In this keenly ironical reply to Lord Harvey, Pope observes; "In regard to the Right Honourable Lady, your Lordship's friend, I was far from designing a person of her condition by a name so derogatory to her as that of Sappho; a name prostituted to every infamous creature that ever wrote verse or novels. I protest I never applied that name to her in any verse of mine, public or private; and, I firmly believe, not in any letter or conversation. Whoever could invent a falsehood to support an accusation I pity; and whoever can believe such a character to be theirs, I pity still more." To the same effect were the assurances of Pope to Lord Peterborough, who expostulated with him on the subject, at the request of Lady Mary.

One of our author's most finished productions, the Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot (now printed as the Prologue to the Satires) was published in 1734. In an advertisement originally prefixed to it he tells the reader: "This Paper is a sort of bill of complaint, begun many years since, and drawn up by snatches, as the several occasions offered. I had no thoughts of publishing it, till it pleased

some persons of rank and fortune (the authors of Verses to the Imitator of Horace, and of an Epistle to a Doctor of Divinity from a Nobleman at Hampton Court) to attack, in a very extraordinary manner, not only my writings (of which, being public, the public judge), but my person, morals, and family, whereof to those who know me not, a truer information may be requisite. Being divided between the necessity to say something of myself, and my own laziness to undertake so awkward a task, I thought it the shortest way to put the last hand to this Epistle. If it have any thing pleasing, it will be that by which I am most desirous to please, the truth and the sentiment; and if any thing offensive, it will be only to those I am least sorry to offend, the vicious or the ungenerous." In this piece we find the famous character of Addison, composed many years before, and first printed in a volume of Pope's Miscellanies. The following tender lines at the conclusion of the Epistle, are a copy of verses, altered and improved, which he had written in 1731, by the bed-side of his mother;1

"O friend! may each domestic bliss be thine;
Be no unpleasing melancholy mine!

Me, let the tender office long engage,

To rock the cradle of reposing age,

With lenient arts extend a mother's breath,

Make languor smile, and smoothe the bed of death,
Explore the thought, explain the asking eye,

And keep awhile one parent from the sky!

1 See a letter from Pope to Aaron Hill, Sept. 3, 1731.

From Hampstead, where he was languishing under an illness, without hopes of recovery, Arbuthnot addressed a letter to Pope, July 17, 1734, in which he says; "As for you, my good friend, I think, since our first acquaintance, there have not been any of those little suspicions or jealousies that often affect the sincerest friendships; I am sure, not on my side. I must be so sincere as to own, that though I could not help valuing you for those talents which the world prizes, yet they were not the foundations of my friendship; they were quite of another sort; nor shall I at present offend you by enumerating them: and I make it my last request, that you will continue that noble disdain and abhorrence of vice, which you seem naturally endued with; but still with a due regard to your own safety; and study more to reform than chastise, though the one cannot be effected without the other. A recovery, in my

case,1 and at my age, is impossible; the kindest wish of my friends is Euthanasia. Living or dying, I shall always be your, &c." On the 26th of the month Pope replies: "What you recommend to me, with the solemnity of a last request, shall have its due weight with me. That disdain and indignation against vice is (I thank God) the only disdain and indignation I have: it is sincere, and it will be a lasting one. But sure it is as impossible to have a just abhorrence of vice, without hating the vicious, as to bear a true love for virtue, without loving the good. To reform and

1 Arbuthnot died, February, 1735.

not to chastise, I am afraid, is impossible; and that the best precepts, as well as the best laws, would prove of small use, if there were no examples to enforce them. To attack vices in the abstract, without touching persons, may be safe fighting indeed, but it is fighting with shadows. General propositions are obscure, misty, and uncertain, compared with plain, full, and home examples: precepts only apply to our reason, which in most men is but weak: examples are pictures, and strike the senses; nay, raise the passions, and call in those (the strongest and most general of all motives) to the aid of reformation. Every vicious man makes the case his own; and that is the only way by which such men can be affected, much less deterred. So that to chastise is to reform. The only sign by which I found my writings ever did any good, or had any weight, has been that they raised the anger of bad men. And my greatest comfort, and encouragement to proceed, has been to see that those who have no shame, and no fear of any thing else, have appeared touched by my Satires. As to your kind concern for my safety, I can guess what occasions it at this time. Some characters I have drawn are such, that if there be any who deserve them, it is evidently a service to mankind to point those men out; yet such as, if all the world gave them, none, I think, will own they take to themselves. But if they should, those of whom all the world think in such a manner, must be men I cannot