Dunciads
? Arbuthnot warns him against the danger of making foes (ll. 101- 104), but Pope replies that his flatterers are even more intolerable than his open enemies. And with a little outburst of impatience, such as we may well imagine him to have indulged in during his later years, he cries:
Why did I write? What sin to me unknown
Dipt me in ink, my parents' or my own?
and begins with l. 125 his poetical autobiography. He tells of his first childish efforts, of poetry taken up "to help me thro' this long disease my life," and then goes on to speak of the noble and famous friends who had praised his early work and urged him to try his fortune in the open field of letters. He speaks of his first poems, the
Pastorals
and
Windsor Forest
, harmless as Hervey's own verses, and tells how even then critics like Dennis fell foul of him. Rival authors hated him, too, especially such pilfering bards as Philips. This he could endure, but the coldness and even jealousy of such a man as Addison — and here appears the famous portrait of Atticus — was another matter, serious enough to draw tears from all lovers of mankind.
Passing on (l. 213) to the days of his great success when his
Homer