, and sent it to press almost immediately (1733). The
poem had a brilliant success. It contained, amongst other things, the
couplet which provoked his war with Lady Mary and Lord Hervey. This,
again, led to his putting together the epistle to Arbuthnot, which
includes the bitter attack upon Hervey, as part of a general _apologia
pro vita sua_. It was afterwards called the Prologue to the Satires. Of
his other imitations of Horace, one appeared in 1734 (the second satire
of the second book), and four more (the first and sixth epistles of the
first book and the first and second of the second book) in 1738.
Finally, in 1737, he published two dialogues, first called "1738" and
afterwards "The Epilogue to the Satires," which are in the same vein as
the epistle to Arbuthnot. These epistles and imitations of Horace, with
the so-called prologue and epilogue, took up the greatest part of Pope's
energy during the years in which his intellect was at its best, and show
his finest technical qualities. The Essay on Man was on hand during the
early part of this period, the epistles and satires representing a
ramification from the same inquiry. But the essay shows the weak side of
Pope, whilst his most remarkable qualities are best represented by these
subsidiary writings. The reason will be sufficiently apparent after a
brief examination, which will also give occasion for saying what still
remains to be said in regard to Pope as a literary artist.

The weakness already conspicuous in the Essay on Man mars the effect of
the Ethic Epistles. His work tends to be rather an aggregation than an
organic whole. He was (if I may borrow a phrase from the philologists)
an agglutinative writer, and composed by sticking together independent
fragments. His mode of composition was natural to a mind incapable of
sustained and continuous thought. In the epistles, he professes to be
working on a plan. The first expounds his favourite theory (also treated
in the essay) of a "ruling passion." Each man has such a passion, if
only you can find it, which explains the apparent inconsistency of his
conduct. This theory, which has exposed him to a charge of fatalism
(especially from people who did not very well know what fatalism
means), is sufficiently striking for his purpose; but it rather turns up
at intervals than really binds the epistle into a whole. But the
arrangement of his portrait gallery is really unsystematic; the
affectation of system is rather i