The eighteenth-century satirist, like any writer in any genre at any time, was faced with a series of literary choices. These would include such banal matters as the nature of his topic, the expectations of his several audiences, the relevant verse form, and the tone most appropriate for his particular satiric end. The satirist in and near the 1730s, however, had more choices than most other satirists before or after him. Pope and his contemporaries inherited fully developed, communicated, and appreciated traditions of Roman, French and, perhaps to a lesser degree, English formal verse satire, traditions generally understood as well by their victims as their friends. Fruitful use of such traditions meant neither worshipping nor breaking of icons. At his best and most characteristic the eighteenth-century poet is emulative not imitative, and comprehensive not exclusive in his uses of the past, a past he is more likely to see as an opportunity for his own improvement rather than debility, a past which must be understood and digested in the present before it can be valuable to the future. To grovel before one's sources of imitation is un-British servility; to ignore or not comprehend them is all-too-British duncery. Hence Pope describes the votaries of dullness as having “Less human genius than God gives an ape.” They offer “Small thanks to France, and none to Rome or Greece,” and produce “A past, vamped, future, old, reviv'd, new piece.”