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It is not often that knowledge of an artist's life sheds any significant light on his work, but in the case of Alexander Pope it does. Most of his poems are 'occasional'—that is, they are concerned with Pope's political and literary friends and enemies, so that without some knowledge about them we cannot properly understand what he wrote and why. Such knowledge, needless to say, does not explain why he wrote so well.

With respect to Pope, the passage is most concerned with