In his ‘Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot’ written in 1734 and published the year after was Pope’s response to the news from his friend Arbuthnot, doctor and wit, was terminally ill. Pope saw this work as memorial and homage to the friendship and an opportunity to capture and defend his role as poet and satirist.
The section above captures how Pope saw those roles and the real feelings that underpinned how he saw himself as aiming for a successful withstanding of the attacks of his enemies for a higher ideal of work. This copy comes from a 1960s school textbook and an enthusiastic pupil has caught the message and written it alongside.
Just a final note on the epistle – it also gives us the phrase ‘damn with faint praise’ and the memorable ‘who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel?’
The Solitary Reader 