In An Epistle to Dr Arbuthnot Alexander Pope gives an account of his poetic career, and particularly of his role as a satirist. The poem belongs to a long tradition of poems in which the satirist defends his art. Pope emphasizes the poem's composite construction, pointing out that it was 'drawn up by snatches', as the appropriate occasions presented themselves, but that he only published it when 'some Persons of Rank and Fortune', namely Lord Hervey and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, attacked him personally. An Epistle to Dr Arbuthnot is the most Horatian of Pope's original works, fusing the style of Horace's Satires and Epistles. The poem's most interesting dramatic creation, however, is that of Pope himself. The Pope who speaks in the poem is Pope as he would like the public to think of him; Pope without warts. Pope stresses his own outspokenness, honesty and sobriety.