Essays. In 1751, after the death of Pope, it was published at the beginning of Imitations of Horace and retitled Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot, being the Prologue to the Satire, even though it lacks both Horatian and prologic characteristics. Analysis The poem includes character sketches of "Atticus" (Joseph Addison) and "Sporus" (John Hervey). Addison is presented as having great talent that is diminished by fear and jealousy; Hervey is sexually perverse, malicious, and both absurd and dangerous. Pope marks the virulence of the "Sporus" attack by having Arbuthnot exclaim "Who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel?" in reference to the form of torture called the breaking wheel. By emphasizing friendship, Pope counters his image as "an envious and malicious monster" whose "satire springs from a being devoid of all natural affections and lacking a heart." It was an "efficient and authoritative revenge": in this poem and others of the 1730s, Pope presents himself as writing satire not out of ego or misanthropy, but to serve impersonal virtue. Although rejected by a critic contemporary with Pope as a "mere lampoon", Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot has been described as one of Pope's "most striking achievements, a work of authentic power, both tragic and comic, as well as great formal ingenuity, despite the near-chaos from which it emerged." References External links An Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot at the Eighteenth-Century Poetry Archive (ECPA) Annotated text of the poem Works by Alexander Pope 1734 poems British satirical poems