Epistle to Arbuthnot
which we see that Pope was working over at the date of this letter, August 25, 1734, was, in the old-fashioned phrase, his
Apologia
, his defense of his life and work.
As usual, Pope's account of his work cannot be taken literally. A comparison of dates shows that the
Epistle
instead of having been "written by piecemeal many years" is essentially the work of one impulse, the desire to vindicate his character, his parents, and his work from the aspersions cast upon them by Lord Hervey and Lady Mary. The exceptions to this statement are two, or possibly three, passages which we know to have been written earlier and worked into the poem with infinite art.
The first of these is the famous portrait of Addison as Atticus. I have already spoken of the reasons that led to Pope's breach with Addison (Introduction); and there is good reason to believe that this portrait sprang directly from Pope's bitter feeling toward the elder writer for his preference of Tickell's translation. The lines were certainly written in Addison's lifetime, though we may be permitted to doubt whether Pope really did send them to him, as he once asserted. They did not appear in print, however, till four years after Addison's death, when they were printed apparently without Pope's consent in a volume of miscellanies. It is interesting to note that in this form the full name "Addison" appeared in the last line. Some time later Pope acknowledged the verses and printed them with a few changes in his
Miscellany
of 1727, substituting the more decorous "A — -n" for the "Addison" of the first text. Finally he worked over the passage again and inserted it, for a purpose that will be shown later, in the