Pope's Satires, which still deal with characters of men, followed
immediately, some appearing in a folio in January, 1735. That part of the
epistle to Arbuthnot forming the Prologue, which gives a character of
Addison, as Atticus, had been sketched more than twelve years before, and
earlier sketches of some smaller critics were introduced; but the beginning
and the end, the parts in which Pope spoke of himself and of his father and
mother, and his friend Dr. Arbuthnot, were written in 1733 and 1734. Then
follows an imitation of the first Epistle of the Second Book of the Satires
of Horace, concerning which Pope told a friend, "When I had a fever one
winter in town that confined me to my room for five or six days, Lord
Bolingbroke, who came to see me, happened to take up a Horace that lay on
the table, and, turning it over, dropped on the first satire in the Second
Book, which begins, 'Sunt, quibus in satira.' He observed how well that
would suit 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 press in
a week or a fortnight after" (February, 1733). "And this was the occasion
of my imitating some others of the Satires and Epistles." The two
dialogues finally used as the Epilogue to the Satires were first published
in the year 1738, with the name of the year, "Seventeen Hundred and
Thirty-eight." Samuel Johnson's "London," his first bid for recognition,
appeared in the same week, and excited in Pope not admiration only, but
some active endeavour to be useful to its author.
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