The culmination of Pope’s early career, however, is undoubtedly his great mock-epic, The Rape of the Lock. The poem found its occasion in the falling out between two high-ranking Roman Catholic. The quarrel was caused by Lord Petre (the Baron of the poem) cutting off a lock of hair from the head of Arabella Fermor (the Belinda of the poem). Arabella, who was engaged to be married to Lord Petre, was so offended by this prank that she broke up their engagement. After this incident Pope was asked by his paternal friend, John Caryll, who was acquainted with both families, to write a mocking poem about the incident and thus, as Pope put it, “to laugh them together again”. The poem was first published in 1712 in two cantos, and although it did not achieve its original purpose (the reconciliation of the two families did not take place), it proved to be immensely successful. In 1714 Pope published a new version, this time in five cantos, in which he included the elaborate epic machinery of Sylphs and Gnomes (diminutive gods invisibly peopling the air). Together with the machinery, he also added implicit references to the great modern epic of his own age, John Milton’s Paradise Lost, whereas the previous version was entirely built on the classical tradition of the epic. The poem was published in its final form in Pope’s first collected book of poetry in 1717, this text containing only one major addition, Clarissa’s controversial monologue in Canto V.