Besides this, an additional link in the chain which united the two friends was the similarity of their tastes in literature. Sir William Trumbull, who, in his early days, had been Fellow of All Souls' College, Oxford, had kept up his scholarship, and retained to the last day of his life his early fondness for Greek and Latin authors. The results of this friendship were of immense advantage to Pope. His earliest published poems, _The Pastorals_, modelled on Virgil's Eclogues, were first submitted to and discussed with Trumbull, as they rode together about the Forest, and the first Pastoral with much propriety was dedicated to his venerable friend. It was Trumbull who first suggested to Pope that he should undertake the translation of the Iliad, and thereby laid the foundation of his affluence. But far more than this, when the poet first went to London, and seemed, under the guidance of the old reprobate Wycherly, to be falling into evil ways, it was Trumbull who implored him to retrace his steps. "I now come," he wrote, "to what is of vast moment, I mean the preservation of your health, and beg of you earnestly to get out of all tavern company, and fly away from it _tanquam ex incendio_." As long as Pope remained at Binfield, their friendship was warm and unabated. In striking contrast with every other intimacy between Pope and his friends no coldness or quarrel ever arose between them. In April, 1716, the Popes left Binfield and removed to Chiswick, and in the following December Sir William Trumbull died. To return; in the meanwhile the elder Pope devoted himself to gardening, in the art of which, as we have seen, he was no mean proficient. A rival in the same pursuit was his friend, Mr. John Dancastle. And we find amongst the poet's correspondence a letter from Sir William Trumbull thanking Pope's father for sending him a present of "hartichokes" of superior size and excellence; and in another letter Mr. John Dancastle excuses himself, after the Popes had left, for not being able to procure them "some white Strabery plants" such as apparently the elder Pope had reared in the old garden at Binfield. While the father was thus occupied in gardening, the son was gradually creeping into notice as a poet. His early poems and shorter pieces appeared at first in Tonson's or Lintot's "Miscellanies," or the "Spectator," and similar publications. But as he became more widely known, Pope ventured on independent publication by the then usual mode of introducing new works, namely by subscription. In this way his fine poems the _Essay on Criticism_, _Windsor Forest_, and the _Rape of the Lock_, all written and composed at Binfield, appeared successively in 1711, 1713, and 1714.