He may be a genius, but he's also a jerk

John Dennis is an early genius of 18C literary criticism. But, he despised Alexander Pope and attacked him on a very personal level. He would claim that Pope's writing were as natural as his physical deformity. As if this weren't bad enough, Dennis also sued his own mother:

Dennis brought a chancery suit against his mother. She had defrauded him, he claimed, of the interest on his uncle's bequest. Her son had become an unfilial spendthrift, his mother countered. It is likely that the family arrived at an out-of-court settlement.

Who sues their own mom???
He then proceeded to take the "Grand Tour" of Europe with one of his friends in 1688.

His literary criticism is genius, but there's only so much genius that can account for being that kind of jerk.