There was a time when scholars, and educated people in general, tended to think of the first half of the eighteenth century as the "Age of Pope." Now the period is more commonly termed the "Augustan Age" or the "Neoclassical Period." Yet the earlier denomination, no matter its simplistic emphasis on the poetic art of one man at the expense of great achievements by others in prose fiction, accurately reflects the fact that Alexander Pope , both in his superbly crafted verse and in his equally crafted public persona, seemed, in the eyes of many gifted literary contemporaries if not of everyone else, to be the presiding artistic genius of his time.

Some degree of the esteem, and even awe, aroused by his poetic powers and by his reputation for an exalted ethical rectitude is reflected in the words of two of his most eminent contemporaries. Jonathan Swift, one...