Alexander Pope, Epilogue to the Satires: Dialogues I & II

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On 16 May 1738, Pope published

One Thousand Seven Hundred and Thirty Eight: A Dialogue Something Like Horace

. Two months later he published its sequel

One Thousand Seven Hundred and Thirty Eight: Dialogue II

. These two poems, known together, since

The Works of Alexander Pope, Vol. II, Part II

, 1740, as the

Epilogue to the Satires: Dialogues I & II

, constitute Pope's most ringing indictment of “that insuperable corruption and depravity of manners, which he had been so unhappy as to live to see” in Hanoverian England in the 1730s. The two poems continue the style of the

Imitations of Horace

, written during the previous five years, but, unlike them, are not based on any single Horatian original. Written and published at two-month intervals, they were conceived in the same spirit of…

2806 words

Citation: Gordon, Ian. "Epilogue to the Satires: Dialogues I & II". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 21 March 2002 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=5337, accessed 19 March 2024.]

5337 Epilogue to the Satires: Dialogues I & II 3 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

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