He is supposed to have
initiated Pope into some of the fashionable follies of the town. At this
time, Pope's popularity roused one of his most formidable foes against
him. This was that Cobbett of criticism, old John Dennis,--a man of
strong natural powers, much learning, and a rich, coarse vein of humour;
but irascible, vindictive, vain, and capricious. Pope had provoked him
by an attack in his "Essay on Criticism," and the savage old man
revenged himself by a running fire of fierce diatribes against that
"Essay" and "The Rape of the Lock." Pope waited till Dennis had
committed himself by a powerful but furious assault on Addison's "Cato"
(most of which Johnson has preserved in his Life of Pope); and then,
partly to court Addison, and partly to indulge his spleen at the critic,
wrote a prose satire, entitled, "The Narrative of Dr Robert Norris on
the Frenzy of J.D." In this, however, he overshot the mark; and Addison
signified to him that he was displeased with the spirit of his
narrative,--an intimation which Pope keenly resented. _This_ scornful
dog would not eat the dirty pudding that was graciously flung to him;
and Pope found that, without having conciliated Addison, he had made
Dennis's furnace of hate against himself seven times hotter than before.
In 1712 appeared "The Messiah," "The Dying Christian to his Soul," "The
Temple of Fame," and the "Elegy on the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady.
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