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But he could seldom keep long to one version of any subject, and the truth comes out in his first Imitation of Horace:

His works bear overwhelming testimony to the fact. His mind was like inflamed flesh; the touch which a healthy constitution would have disregarded, tortured and enraged him; his smile was a vindictive jeer; and he used with acrimony the rod he professed to kiss. His soreness at censure was the very cause of his charging the weakness upon Dennis. He was angry at the disparagement of his Pastorals, and because he himself was testy, he ridiculed the testiness of his critic. The accusation, according to Dennis, was a malicious invention. "If a man," he said, "is remarkable for the extraordinary deference which he pays to the opinions and remonstrances of his friends, him he libels for his impatience under reproof."[16] Though docility was not the virtue of Dennis, his failing was probably overcharged in the Essay on Criticism, for unmeasured exaggeration was a usual fault in the satire of Pope.

In retaining a grudge against those who wounded his self-esteem, Pope did not disdain to profit by their spiteful censorship. "I will make my enemy," he said to Caryll, "do me a kindness where he meant an injury, and so serve instead of a friend," and he requested Trumbull to tell him "where Dennis had hit any blots."[17] He cared too much for his works to be influenced by the stubborn pride which cannot stoop to confess an error. Where the criticism has not been inspired by malice, authors in general have not been intolerant of their critics. Coleridge relates that his thankfulness to the reviewers of his juvenile poems was sincere, when they concurred in condemning his obscurity, turgid language, and profusion of double epithets. Of the obscurity he was unconscious, "and my mind," he says, "was not then sufficiently disciplined to receive the authority of others as a substitute for my own conviction." "The glitter both of thought and diction" he pruned with an unsparing hand, "though, in truth," he adds, "these parasite plants of youthful poetry had insinuated themselves into my longer poems with such intricacy of union that I was often obliged to omit disentangling the weed from the fear of snapping the flower."[18] The candour and manliness are charming, but it must not be overlooked that the magnanimity diminishes as the mental capacity increases. Wakefield well remarks that one reason why those who merit praise can best bear reproof is, that the reproof is either counterbalanced by praise, or by the inward consciousness that the merit is great and will prevail.[19] Inferior writers have not the same consolation. The chief advantage after all which authors derive from the enumeration of their defects is, that it teaches them modesty, and the true limits of their powers. They are seldom able to mend. The qualities they lack are not within their reach; for the mind cannot rise above itself, and has little pliancy when once it has taken its bent.

The notice in the Spectator must have been doubly welcome to Pope after the invective and cavils of Dennis. "In our own country," says Addison, "a man seldom sets up for a poet without attacking the reputation of all his brothers in the art. The ignorance of the moderns, the scribblers of the age, the decay of poetry, are the topics of detraction with which he makes his entrance into the world. I am sorry to find that an author, who is very justly esteemed among the best judges, has admitted some strokes of this nature into a very fine poem,—I mean the Art of Criticism, which was published some months since, and is a master-piece of its kind. The observations follow one another like those in Horace's Art of Poetry, without that methodical regularity which would have been requisite in a prose author. They are some of them uncommon, but such as the reader must assent to, when he sees them explained with that elegance and perspicuity in which they are delivered. As for those which are the most known, and the most received, they are placed in so beautiful a light, and illustrated with such apt allusions, that they have in them all the graces of novelty, and make the reader, who was before acquainted with them, still more convinced of their truth and solidity. And here give me leave to mention what Monsieur Boileau has so very well enlarged upon in the preface to his works, that wit and fine writing do not consist so much in advancing things that are new, as in giving things that are known an agreeable turn. It is impossible for us, who live in the later ages of the world, to make observations in criticism, morality, or in any art or science, which have not been touched upon by others. We have little else left us but to represent the common sense of mankind in more strong, more beautiful, or more uncommon lights. If a reader examines Horace's Art of Poetry, he will find but very few precepts in it which he may not meet with in Aristotle, and which were not commonly known by all the poets of the Augustan age. His way of expressing and applying them, not his invention of them, is what we chiefly admire."[20] Pope was delighted. "Moderate praise," he said to Steele, whom he erroneously supposed to have held the pen, "encourages a young writer, but a great deal may injure him; and you have been so lavish in this point that I almost hope,—not to call in question your judgment in the piece—that it was some particular inclination to the author which carried you so far." He accepted in good part the admonition for disparaging his "brother moderns," and expressed his willingness to omit the "strokes" in another edition.[21] He detected none of the "ill-nature" which Warton saw lurking in the phrase "that some of the observations were uncommon." Addison was familiar with the sources from which the Essay was compiled, and could hardly have been ignorant that even the "some" was a generous license. He pleaded more plausibly for the work when he contended that wit consisted in presenting old thoughts in a better dress, and that the "known truths" in the poem were "placed in so beautiful a light, that they had all the graces of novelty." The charge brought later by Pope against Addison, of viewing him with jealous eyes, suggested to Warton his strained imputation, which