Finally, we reach the pair of satirists who, next to Dryden, must be regarded as the writers whose influence has been greatest in determining the character of British satire.  Pope is the disciple of Dryden, and the best qualities of the Drydenic satire, in both form and matter, are reproduced in his works accompanied by special attributes of his own.  Owing to the extravagant admiration professed by Byron for the author of the Rape of the Lock, and his repeated assurances of his literary indebtedness to him, we are apt to overlook the fact that the noble lord was under obligations to Dryden of a character quite as weighty as those he was so ready to acknowledge to Pope.  But the latter, like Shakespeare, so improved all he borrowed that he has in some instances actually received credit for inventing what he only took from his great master.  Pope was more of a refiner and polisher of telling satiric forms which Dryden had in the first instance employed, than an original inventor.

To mention all the types of satire affected by this marvellously acute and variously cultured poet would be a task of some difficulty.  There are few amongst the principal forms which he has not essayed.  In spirit he is more pungent and sarcastic, more acidulous and malicious, than the large-hearted and generous-souled Dryden.  Into his satire, therefore, enters a greater amount of the element of personal dislike and contempt than in the case of the other.  While satire is present more or less in nearly all Pope’s verse, there are certain compositions where it may be said to be the outstanding quality.  These are his Satires, among which should of course be included “The Prologue” and “The Epilogue” to them, as well as the Moral Essays, and finally the Dunciad.  These comprise the best of his professed satires.  His Satires and Epistles of Horace Imitated are just what they claim to be—­an adaptation to English scenes, sympathies, sentiments, and surroundings of the Roman poet’s characteristic style.  Though Pope has quite as many points of affinity with Juvenal as with Horace, the adaptation and transference of the local atmosphere from Tiber to Thames is managed with extraordinary skill.  The historic parallels, too, of the personages in the respective poems are made to accord and harmonize with the spirit of the time.  The Satires are written from the point of view of opposition to Sir Robert Walpole, the great Whig minister.  They display the concentrated essence of bitterness towards the ministerial policy.  As Minto tersely puts it, we see gathered up in them the worst that was thought and said about the government and court party when men’s minds were heated almost to the point of civil war.[17] In the “Prologue” and the “Epilogue” are contained some of the most finished satiric portraits drawn by Pope in any of his works.  For caustic bitterness, sustained but polished irony, and merciless sarcastic malice, the characters of Atticus (Addison), Bufo, and Sporus have never been surpassed in the literature of political or social criticism.[18]