thunder," had started a
proverbial expression. Pope's reference stung Dennis to the quick. He
replied by a savage pamphlet, pulling Pope's essay to pieces, and
hitting some real blots, but diverging into the coarsest personal abuse.
Not content with saying in his preface that he was attacked with the
utmost falsehood and calumny by a little affected hypocrite, who had
nothing in his mouth but truth, candour, and good-nature, he reviled
Pope for his personal defects; insinuated that he was a hunch-backed
toad; declared that he was the very shape of the bow of the god of love;
that he might be thankful that he was born a modern, for had he been
born of Greek parents his life would have been no longer than that of
one of his poems, namely, half a day; and that his outward form, however
like a monkey's, could not deviate more from the average of humanity
than his mind. These amenities gave Pope his first taste of good savage
slashing abuse. The revenge was out of all proportion to the offence.
Pope, at first, seemed to take the assault judiciously. He kept silence,
and simply marked some of the faults exposed by Dennis for alteration.
But the wound rankled, and when an opportunity presently offered itself,
Pope struck savagely at his enemy. To show how this came to pass, I must
rise from poor old Dennis to a more exalted literary sphere.

The literary world, in which Dryden had recently been, and Pope was soon
to be, the most conspicuous figure, was for the present under the mild
dictatorship of Addison. We know Addison as one of the most kindly and
delicate of humourists, and we can perceive the gentleness which made
him one of the most charming of companions in a small society. His sense
of the ludicrous saved him from the disagreeable ostentation of powers
which were never applied to express bitterness of feeling or to edge
angry satire. The reserve of his sensitive nature made access difficult,
but he was so transparently modest and unassuming that his shyness was
not, as is too often the case, mistaken for pride. It is easy to
understand the posthumous affection which Macaulay has so eloquently
expressed, and the contemporary popularity which, according to Swift,
would have made people unwilling to refuse him had he asked to be king.
And yet I think that one cannot read Addison's praises without a certain
recalcitration, like that which one feels in the case of the model boy
who wins all the prizes, including that for g