ABSTRACT
A combative spirit has got Alexander Pope the man into more trouble than enough, though it prevented the poet from sinking into melancholia or despair when he met with hostility or discouragement. When Alexander Pope wanted to mount a counter attack he rarely acted on impulse. He was willing to wait for the right moment. Alexander Pope had to be careful in sending any message to the Jacobites. The Messiah, in which Alexander Pope described the Second Coming of Christ, an event used by Jacobite journalists and ballad writers to symbolize the return of their absent prince over the water. Alexander Pope saw no reason to placate his Protestant rival Ambrose Philips, whose pastoral poems had consistently put his own in the shade ever since both sets were published by Jacob Tonson in 1709. The correct Addison did not find Alexander Pope's rumbustious pamphlet an appropriate defence of himself.
