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 as "the best Memorial that I can leave, both of my Friendship to you, & of my own Character being such as you need not be ashamd of that Friendship." "Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot" has a "tangled" publishing history. The poem was first published as a folio of 24 pages on 2 January 1735 under the title "An Epistle from Mr. Pope to Dr. Arbuthnot", with a date of 1734. It appeared in Pope's "Works" the same year in folio, quarto and octavo, with a Dublin edition and an Edinburgh piracy. During Pope's lifetime, it was included among the "Moral