The occasion on which Pope's pique against Addison began to develop into bitter resentment is sufficiently indicated by the date which the poet assigns to the first letter in the concocted correspondence--viz., July 20, 1713. This letter (which is taken, with a few slight alterations of names, from one written to Caryll on November 19, 1712) opens as follows: "I am more joyed at your return than I should be at that of the sun, so much as I wish for him this melancholy wet season; but it has a fate too like yours to be displeasing to owls and obscure animals who cannot bear his lustre. What puts me in mind of these night-birds was John Dennis, whom I think you are best revenged upon, as the sun was in the fable upon those bats and beastly birds above mentioned, only by shining on. I am so far from esteeming it any misfortune, that I congratulate you upon having your share in that which all the great men and all the good men that ever lived have had their part of--envy and calumny. To be uncensured and to be obscure is the same thing. You may conclude from what I here say that it was never in my thoughts to have offered you my pen in any direct reply to such a critic, but only in some little raillery, not in defence of you, but in contempt of him." The allusion is to the squib called _Dr. Norris' Narrative of the Frenzy of John Dennis_, which, it appears, was shown to Addison by Pope before its appearance, and after the publication of which Addison caused Steele to write to Lintot in the following terms: "Mr. Lintot,--Mr. Addison desired me to tell you that he wholly disapproves the manner of treating Mr. Dennis in a little pamphlet by way of Mr. Norris' account. When he thinks fit to take notice of Mr. Dennis' objections to his writings, he will do it in a way Mr. Dennis shall have no just reason to complain of. But when the papers above mentioned were offered to be communicated to him he said he could not, either in honour or conscience, be privy to such a treatment, and was sorry to hear of it.--I am, sir, your very humble servant." Pope's motive in writing the pamphlet was, as Johnson says, "to give his resentment full play without appearing to revenge himself" for the attack which Dennis had made on his own poems. Addison doubtless divined the truth; but the wording of the letter which he caused a third person to write to Lintot certainly seems studiously offensive to Pope, who had, professedly at any rate, placed his pen at his service, and who had connected his own name with _Cato_ by the fine Prologue he had written in its praise. Lintot would of course have shown Pope Steele's letter, and we may be sure that the lofty tone taken by Addison in speaking of the pamphlet would have rankled bitterly in the poet's mind.