how it came
to pass that so harmless a man should be the butt of so many
hostilities? How could any man be angry with a writer of gentle
pastorals and versified love-letters? The answer of Pope was, that this
was the normal state of things. "The life of a wit," he says, in the
preface to his works, "is a warfare upon earth;" and the warfare results
from the hatred of men of genius natural to the dull. Had any one else
made such a statement, Pope would have seen its resemblance to the
complaint of the one reasonable juryman overpowered by eleven obstinate
fellows. But we may admit that an intensely sensitive nature is a bad
qualification for a public career. A man who ventures into the throng of
competitors without a skin will be tortured by every touch, and suffer
the more if he turns to retaliate.

Pope's first literary performances had not been so harmless as he
suggests. Amongst the minor men of letters of the day was the surly John
Dennis. He was some thirty years Pope's senior; a writer of dreary
tragedies which had gained a certain success by their Whiggish
tendencies, and of ponderous disquisitions upon critical questions, not
much cruder in substance though heavier in form than many utterances of
Addison or Steele. He could, however, snarl out some shrewd things when
provoked, and was known to the most famous wits of the day. He had
corresponded with Dryden, Congreve, and Wycherley, and published some of
their letters. Pope, it seems, had been introduced to him by Cromwell,
but they had met only two or three times. When Pope had become ashamed
of following Wycherley about like a dog, he would soon find out that a
Dennis did not deserve the homage of a rising genius. Possibly Dennis
had said something of Pope's Pastorals, and Pope had probably been a
witness, perhaps more than a mere witness, to some passage of arms in
which Dennis lost his temper. In mere youthful impertinence he
introduced an offensive touch in the _Essay upon Criticism_. It would be
well, he said, if critics could advise authors freely,--

But Appius reddens at each word you speak,
And stares, tremendous, with a threatening eye,
Like some fierce tyrant in old tapestry.

The name Appius referred to Dennis's tragedy of _Appius and Virginia_, a
piece now recollected solely by the fact that poor Dennis had invented
some new thunder for the performance; and by his piteous complaint
against the actors for afterwards "stealing his