# An Epistle from Mr. Pope to Dr. Arbuthnot

First published 2nd January 1735 (Gregorian calendar), this transcription is of a slightly later reprint from the same year. It contains additional footnotes compared to the 1st edition. The line numbering is incorrect, the work containing 408 lines rather than the 401 suggested. [Based on Alexander Pope: A Bibliography Volume 1, Part 2 (1927), by Reginald Harvey Griffith, pp. 269-271.]
AN
EPISTLE
FROM
Mr. POPE,
TO
Dr. ARBUTHNOT.
ADVERTISEMENT.
This Paper is a Sort of Bill of Complaint, begun many Years since, and drawn up by snatches, as the several Occasions offer'd. I had no thoughts of publishing it, till it pleas'd some Persons of Rank and Fortune [the Authors of Verses to the Imitator of Horace, and of an Epistle to a Doctor of Divinity from a Nobleman at Hampton Court,] to attack in a very extraordinary Manner, not only my Writings (of which being publick the Publick judge) but my Person, Morals and Family, whereof to those who know me not, a truer Information may be requisite. Being divided between the Necessity to say Something of Myself, and my own Laziness to undertake so awkward a Task, I thought it the shortest way to put the last hand to this Epistle. If it have any thing pleasing, it will be That by which I am most desirous to please, the Truth and the Sentiment; and if any thing offensive, it will be only to those I am least sorry to offend, the Vicious or the Ungenerous.
​Many will know their own Pictures in it, there being not a Circumstance but what is true; but I have, for the most part spar'd their Names, and they may escape being laugh'd at, if they please.
I would have some of them know, it was owing to the Request of the learned and candid Friend to whom it is inscribed, that I make not as free use of theirs as they have done of mine. However I shall have this Advantage, and Honour, on my side, that whereas by their proceeding, any Abuse may be directed at any man, no Injury can possibly be done by mine, since a Nameless Character can never be found out, but by its Truth and Likeness.
AN
EPISTLE
TO
Dr. ARBUTHNOT.
FINIS.
* ↑ A——— M———, Esq;
* ↑ The same Gentleman.
* ↑ The Author of Timoleas.
* ↑ The story is told by some of his Barber, but by Chaucer of his Queen. See Wife of Bath's Tale in Dryden's Fables.
* ↑ Colly Cibber, a Player.
* ↑ One Henly, a Clergyman, a vile Pretender to Oratory.
* ↑ Lord Lansdown.
* ↑ All these were Patrons or Admirers of Mr. Dryden, tho' a scandalous Libel against him, entitled Dryden’s Satyr to his Muse, has been printed in the Name of the Lord Somers, of which he was wholly ignorant.
* ↑ Authors of secret and scandalous History.
* ↑ Supposed to be the late E. of S—rl—d Minister of State to K. G. I. Others think Mr. D———.
* ↑ See the Epistle to the Earl of Burlington.
* ↑ Lord H———rv———y.
* ↑ In the fourth Book of Milton, the Devil is represented in this Posture. It is but justice to own, that the Hint of Eve and the Serpent was taken from the Verses on the Imitator of Horace.
* ↑ Lies so oft o'erthrown.] Such as those in relation to Mr. A—, that Mr. P. writ his Character after his death, &c. that he set his Name to Mr. Broom's Verses, that he receiv'd Subscriptions for Shakespear, &c. which tho' publickly disprov'd by the Testimonies prefix'd to the Dunciad, were nevertheless shamelesly repeated in the Libels, and even in the Paper called, The Nobleman's Epistle.
* ↑ Th' imputed Trash] Profane Psalms, Court Poems, and many Libellous Things in his Name, printed by Curl, &c.
* ↑ Abuse on all he lov'd, or lov'd him spread.] Namely on the Duke of Buckingham, Earl of Burlington, Bishop Atterbury, Dr. Swift, Mr. Gay, Dr. Arbuthnot, his Friends, his Parents, and his very Nurse, aspers'd in printed Papers.
* ↑ Ten Years.] It was so long, before the Author of the Dunciad published that Poem, till when, he never writ a word of the many Scurrilities and Falsehoods concerning him.
* ↑ Welsted's Lye.] This Man had the Impudence to tell in print, that Mr. P. had occasion'd a Lady's Death, and to name a person he never heard of. He also publish'd that he had libell'd the Duke of Chandos; with whom (it was added) that he had liv'd in familiarity and receiv'd from him a Present of five hundred pounds: The falsehood of which is known to his Grace, whom Mr. P. never had the honour to see but twice, and never receiv'd any Present farther than the the subscription for Homer, from him, or from Any Great Man whatsoever. Budgel in a Weekly Pamphlet call'd the Bee, bestow'd much abuse on him, in the imagination that he writ some things about the Last Will of Dr. Tindal, in the Grubstreet Journal; a Paper wherein he never had the least Hand, Direction, er Supervisal, nor the least knowledge of its Authors. He took no notice of so frantick an Abuse; and expected that any man that knew him self Author of what he was slander'd for, would have justify'd him on that Article.
* ↑ His Father, Mother, &c] In some of Curl's and other Pamphlets, Mr. Pope's Father was said to he a Mechanic, a Hatter, a Farmer, nay a Bankrupt. But what is stranger, a Nobleman (if such a Reflection can he thought to come from a Noblemen) has dropt an Allusion to this pitiful Untruth, in his Epistle to a Doctor of Divinity; And the following Line, Hard as thy Heart, and as thy Birth obscure, had fallen from or a like Courtly pen, in the Verses to the Imitator of Horace. Mr. Pope's Father was of a Gentleman's Family in Oxfordshire, the Head of which was the Earl of Downe, whose sole Heiress married the Earl of Lindsey.—His Mother was the Daughter of William Turnor, Esq; of York: She had three Brothers, one of whom was kill'd, another died in the Service of King Charles, the eldest following his Fortunes, and becoming a General Officer in Spain, left her what Estate remain'd after the Sequestrations and Forfeiture of her Family.—Mr. Pope died in 1717, aged 75; She in 1733, aged 93, a very few Weeks after this Poem was finished.
This work was published before January 1, 1929, and is in the public domain worldwide because the author died at least 100 years ago.
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