His reputation as a scholar and a man of taste soon extended itself to the world of letters in London. In 1693, being then in his twenty-second year, he wrote his _Account of the Greatest English Poets_; and about the same time he addressed a short copy of verses to Dryden, complimenting him on the enduring vigour of his poetical faculty, as shown in his translations of Virgil and other Latin poets, some of which had recently appeared in Tonson's _Miscellany_. The old poet appears to have been highly gratified, and to have welcomed the advances thus made to him, for he returned Addison's compliment by bestowing high and not unmerited praise on the translation of the Fourth Book of the _Georgics_, which the latter soon after undertook, and by printing, as a preface to his own translation, a discourse written by Addison on the _Georgics_, as well as arguments to most of the books of the _Æneid_. Through Dryden, no doubt, he became acquainted with Jacob Tonson. The father of English publishing had for some time been a well-known figure in the literary world. He had purchased the copyright of _Paradise Lost_; he had associated himself with Dryden in publishing before the Revolution two volumes of _Miscellanies_; encouraged by the success which these obtained, he put the poet, in 1693, on some translations of Juvenal and Persius, and two new volumes of _Miscellanies_; while in 1697 he urged him to undertake a translation of the whole of the works of Virgil. Observing how strongly the public taste set towards the great classical writers, he was anxious to employ men of ability in the work of turning them into English; and it appears from existing correspondence that he engaged Addison, while the latter was at Oxford, to superintend a translation of Herodotus. He also suggested a translation of Ovid. Addison undertook to procure coadjutors for the work of translating the Greek historian. He himself actually translated the books called _Polymnia_ and _Urania_, but for some unexplained reason the work was never published. For Ovid he seems, on the whole, to have had less inclination. At Tonson's instance he translated the Second Book of the _Metamorphoses_, which was first printed in the volume of _Miscellanies_ that appeared in 1697; but he wrote to the publisher that "Ovid had so many silly stories with his good ones that he was more tedious to translate than a better poet would be." His study of Ovid, however, was of the greatest use in developing his critical faculty; the excesses and want of judgment in that poet forced him to reflect, and his observations on the style of his author anticipate his excellent remarks on the difference between True and False Wit in the sixty-second number of the _Spectator_.