This strengthened his belief in the ability of the human intellect to investigate reality and to come to conclusions at odds with the traditional religious interpretations current until then and to formulate his own theories.
[1] During this period he also began a lasting friendship with Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, whose poems he translated,[2] and who made him the recipient of her more philosophical Turkish Embassy Letters (1717–18).
Starting in autumn 1716, he left to spend six months in dialogue with thinkers in the Netherlands and Germany, and then returned to England, continuing both scientific and literary projects there.
Coming from a patrician background and generally mixing with the titled and royalty, he vented his sarcasm upon the social pretensions of the Venetian composer Antonio Vivaldi.
A dramatic excursion of a different sort was the series of experimental long cantatas he wrote for the Venetian composer Benedetto Marcello: the duet, Il Timoteo, with a text translated from John Dryden;[7] then five monologues, Cantone, Lucrezia, Andromaca, Arianna abandonnata, and finally Cassandra.