Owing to the extravagant admiration professed by Byron for
the author of the _Rape of the Lock_, and his repeated assurances of
his literary indebtedness to him, we are apt to overlook the fact that
the noble lord was under obligations to Dryden of a character quite as
weighty as those he was so ready to acknowledge to Pope. But the
latter, like Shakespeare, so improved all he borrowed that he has in
some instances actually received credit for inventing what he only took
from his great master. Pope was more of a refiner and polisher of
telling satiric forms which Dryden had in the first instance employed,
than an original inventor.

To mention all the types of satire affected by this marvellously acute
and variously cultured poet would be a task of some difficulty. There
are few amongst the principal forms which he has not essayed. In spirit
he is more pungent and sarcastic, more acidulous and malicious, than
the large-hearted and generous-souled Dryden. Into his satire,
therefore, enters a greater amount of the element of personal dislike
and contempt than in the case of the other. While satire is present
more or less in nearly all Pope's verse, there are certain compositions
where it may be said to be the outstanding quality. These are his
_Satires_, among which should of course be included "The Prologue" and
"The Epilogue" to them, as well as the _Moral Essays_, and finally the
_Dunciad_. These comprise the best of his professed satires. His
_Satires and Epistles of Horace Imitated_ are just what they claim to
be--an adaptation to English scenes, sympathies, sentiments, and
surroundings of the Roman poet's characteristic style. Though Pope has
quite as many points of affinity with Juvenal as with Horace, the
adaptation and transference of the local atmosphere from Tiber to
Thames is managed with extraordinary skill. The historic parallels,
too, of the personages in the respective poems are made to accord and
harmonize with the spirit of the time. The _Satires_ are written from
the point of view of opposition to Sir Robert Walpole, the great Whig
minister. They display the concentrated essence of bitterness towards
the ministerial policy. As Minto tersely puts it, we see gathered up in
them the worst that was thought and said about the government and court
party when men's minds were heated almost to the point of civil war.[17]
In the "Prologue" and the "Epilogue" are contained some of the most
finished satiric portra