‘Nature to advantage dressed’: Alexander Pope’s triumph over anti-Catholicism By DAVID A. Swift might have been the dean of the Protestant St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin, but he was bitterly anti-Catholic. Wit meant being true to Nature, both physical and human. Being a true Wit meant that Pope and Swift could be close friends despite Swift’s anti-Catholicism. I confess that even I am often guilty of mistaking Shakespeare’s “brevity is the soul of wit” as the work of Pope.