Women, which would have formed the opening of the subject of the Fourth
Book of the Essay: the other pair shows character expressed through a
right or a wrong use of Riches: in fact, Money and Morals. The four
Epistles were published separately. The fourth (to the Earl of Burlington)
was first published in 1731, its title then being "Of Taste;" the third (to
Lord Bathurst) followed in 1732, the year of the publication of the first
two Epistles on the "Essay on Man." In 1733, the year of publication of
the Third Epistle of the "Essay on Man," Pope published his Moral Essay of
the "Characters of Men." in 1734 followed the Fourth Epistle of the "Essay
on Man;" and in 1735 the "Characters of Women," addressed to Martha Blount,
the woman whom Pope loved, though he was withheld by a frail body from
marriage. Thus the two works were, in fact, produced together, parts of
one design.

Pope's Satires, which still deal with characters of men, followed
immediately, some appearing in a folio in January, 1735. That part of the
epistle to Arbuthnot forming the Prologue, which gives a character of
Addison, as Atticus, had been sketched more than twelve years before, and
earlier sketches of some smaller critics were introduced; but the beginning
and the end, the parts in which Pope spoke of himself and of his father and
mother, and his friend Dr. Arbuthnot, were written in 1733 and 1734. Then
follows an imitation of the first Epistle of the Second Book of the Satires
of Horace, concerning which Pope told a friend, "When I had a fever one
winter in town that confined me to my room for five or six days, Lord
Bolingbroke, who came to see me, happened to take up a Horace that lay on
the table, and, turning it over, dropped on the first satire in the Second
Book, which begins, 'Sunt, quibus in satira.' He observed how well that
would suit my case if I were to imitate it in English. After he was gone,
I read it over, translated it in a morning or two, and sent it to press in
a week or a fortnight after" (February, 1733). "And this was the occasion