In ‘The Augustan Age’ or ‘The Age of Pope’ in London, the coffeehouses replaced the court as the meeting place for men of culture. The journalist makes his appearance. Gossip and tittle-tattle make their way into print. Poetry becomes social and familiar. In this background Alexander Pope flourishes and nourishes poetry with his intellect and skill.

Pope’s first work was Pastorals that appeared in Tonson’s Poetical Miscellanies. Then, later in 1711, An Essay on Criticism was published. Its brilliantly polished epigrams were,

A little learning is a dangerous thing.
To err is human, to forgive, divine,
For fools rush in where angels fear to tread

which were later to become the integral part of the proverbial heritage of the English language and spread all over the world. It has now become part of our speech in everyday life. This work shows how Pope mingled art and life together in one thread.

Pope’s well-deserved success of the Essay on Criticism widened his circle of friends. They were Richard Steele and Joseph Addison who were collaborating on The Spectator. To this journal, Pope contributed the most original of his pastorals, The Messiah (1712) and other papers in prose. He was influenced by The Spectator policy of correcting public morals by witty admonishment, and in this vein he wrote the first version of his mock-heroic epic The Rape of the Lock (two cantos in 1712, five cantos in 1714). This work is the masterpiece of Pope’s and perhaps the best of his whole career. This mock-heroic poem, brought out in Pope a combination of qualities that he never again displayed together. Delicate imagination, subtle ironic wit, mock-heroic extravagance, the most perfect control over cunningly manipulated verse - these qualities go together with an almost tenderly affectionate humor. In a criticism of female vanity at once indulgent and penetrating, had the faintest breath of underlying melancholy at the inevitable disparity between human professions and the realities of social life. He has made a trivial drawing room episode into an epic theme and to treat the social customs of the Age of Queen Anne with an assumed epic seriousness, was to set about creating certain tensions and ironies which the early 18^th century was especially fit to appreciate. The Rape of the Lock is more than a jest. The more important thing – the tone of the poem, is original. The blend of burlesque, wit, humor, irony and morality being a distillation we find nowhere else in English poetry. Something of the irony can be seen in the opening statement :

Say what strange motive, Goddess ! could compel
A well bred Lordt’ assault a gentle Belle ?

The irony of the epic appeals to the goddess in the manner of Homer is surpassed by the subtler irony of expressing surprise that a lord should assault a belle. Further, he specifies a well bred Lord and a gentle belle – thus suggesting that not all lords were well bred nor all belles gentle. Here, Pope is not condemning any specific society, but being gently ironical about the social surface of life in general. The description of Belinda’s dressing table,

Here files of Pins extends their shining rows,
Puffs, Powders, Patches, Bibles, billet-doux….

is humorously indulgent, but at the same time the confusions between real and pretended interests are not only Belinda’s. But the manner, fashions and the conventions of any society bound to produce in some degree, are artfully ticked off in this poem. Perhaps the greatest skill of all is displayed in using mock-heroic diction to provide healthy atmosphere, both ritualistic and cheerfully social, in describing the activities of a high brow society.

The Dunciad, 1728, had made him very unpopular. His literary enemies found a rich vein in the relative obscurity of his birth. They argued that Pope had no right to sneer at the poverty of others. The Dunciad had dismissed so contemptuously influenced members of the court circle; who had the ear of the monarch and the higher echelons of government seemed to be conspiring against him. Lady Mary’s attack was launched in March (1733), almost certainly with the collaboration of poets John Gay, Lord Hervey and Lord Chamberlain in August. Pope’s verses to the mechanical efforts of a mere tradesman, and in an obscure allusion to the latter’s trade, reminded Pope of the old slander on his parentage. Before his Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot was published, which was written partly for revenge on Lady Mary and Lord Hervey, because this poet criticized Pope’s satire. Pope’s violent attack on the minor writers of the day was mostly an expression of his personal enmity with several persons who had dared to say anything against him. Pope had printed an open letter in prose to Lord Hervey. A letter to a noble lord, in which all of his insecurities about his physical deformity and his class position were brought out in the open and ingeniously converted into powerful bids for attracting Lord Hervey’s sympathy.

Pope’s immediate reply to Lady Mary and Lord Hervey was the Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot, published on January 2, 1735. The Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot supplies a list of illustrious friends that are generously sprinkled throughout. Pope’s poem and Epistle To Dr. Arbuthnot are substantially accurate on reportings of the times.