It is still more evident that his merits were promptly and frankly recognized by his contemporaries.

Great men and distinguished authors held out friendly hands to him; and he never had to undergo, even for a brief period, the dreary ordeal of neglect through which men of loftier but less popular genius, have been so often compelled to pass.

And yet it unfortunately happened that, even in this early time, when success followed success, and the young man's irritable nerves might well have been soothed by the general chorus of admiration he excited and returned bitter antipathies, some of which lasted through his life.
Pope's works belong to three distinct periods.

The translation of Homer was the great work of the middle period of his life.

In his later years he wrote the moral and satirical poems by which he is now best known.
The earlier period, with which I have now to deal, was one of experimental excursions into various fields of poetry, with varying success and rather uncertain aim.