John Arbuthnot Spanish Succession. The war had profited John and Sarah Churchill, and the Tory ministry sought to end it by withdrawing from all England's alliances and negotiating directly with France. Swift wrote "The Conduct of the Allies," and Arbuthnot wrote a series of five pamphlets featuring John Bull. The first of these, "Law Is a Bottomless Pit" (1712), introduced a simple allegory to explain the war. John Bull (England) is suing Louis Baboon (i.e. Louis Bourbon, or Louis XIV of France) over the estate of the dead Lord Strutt (Charles II of Spain). Bull's lawyer is the one who really enjoys
Epistle to Dr Arbuthnot Essays". In 1751, after the death of Pope, it was published at the beginning of "Imitations of Horace" and retitled "Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot, being the Prologue to the Satire", even though it lacks both Horatian and prologic characteristics. The poem includes character sketches of "Atticus" (Joseph Addison) and "Sporus" (John Hervey). Addison is presented as having great talent that is diminished by fear and jealousy; Hervey is sexually perverse, malicious, and both absurd and dangerous. Pope marks the virulence of the "Sporus" attack by having Arbuthnot exclaim "Who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel?" in reference to the form