pe's poems a mass of biographical anecdote
such as surrounds the writings of no other English author,' and not a
little knowledge of this kind is to be gleaned from his correspondence.

In the years spent at Twickenham Pope produced his most characteristic
work. It is as a satirist that he, with one exception, excels all
English poets, and Pope's careful workmanship often makes his satirical
touches more attractive than Dryden's.

'To attack vices in the abstract,' he said to Arbuthnot, 'without
touching persons, may be safe fighting indeed, but it is fighting with
shadows;' and Pope, under the plea of a detestation of vice, generally
betrayed his contempt or hatred of the men whom he assailed. No doubt
the critics and Grub Street hacks of the day gave him provocation. Pope,
however, was frequently the first to take the field, and so eager was he
to meet his foes that it would seem as if he enjoyed the conflict. Yet
there were times when he felt acutely the assaults made upon him. 'These
things are my diversion,' he once said, with a ghastly smile, and it was
observed that he writhed in agony like a man undergoing an operation.
The attacks made with these paper bullets, not only on the side of Grub
Street but on his own, show very vividly the coarseness of London
society. Courtesy was disregarded by men who claimed to be wits and
scholars. Pope held, perhaps, a higher place in literature in his own
day than Lord Tennyson has held in ours, for the best beloved of
Laureates had noble rivals and friends who came near to him in fame,
while Pope, until the publication of Thomson's _Seasons_, in 1730, stood
alone in poetical reputation. Yet he was reviled in the language of
Billingsgate, and had no scruple in using that language himself. Late in
life Pope collected the libels made upon him and bound them in four
volumes, but he omitted to mention the provocation which gave rise to
many of them. Eusden, Colley Cibber, Dennis, Theobald, Blackmore, Smyth,
and Lord Hervey are among the prominent criminals placed in Pope's
pillory, and the student of the age may find an idle entertainment in
tracking the poet's thorny course, while he gives an unenviable
notoriety to names of which the larger number were 'born to be forgot.'

In 1725 Swift had written to Pope advising him not to immortalize the
names of bad poets by putting them in his verse, and Pope replied to
this advice by saying, 'I am much the happier for finding (a better