300 POPE. 



his boyish correspondence with poor old Wycherley, one would 

 suppose him to be the man and Wycherley the youth. Pope s 

 understanding was no less vigorous (when not the dupe of his 

 nerves) than his fancy was lightsome and sprightly. 



I come now to what in itself would be enough to have immor 

 talised him as a poet, the Rape of the Lock, in which, indeed, 

 he appears more purely as poet than in any other of his pro 

 ductions. Elsewhere he has shown more force, more wit, more 

 reach of thought, but nowhere such a truly artistic combination 

 of elegance and fancy. His genius has here found its true 

 direction, and the very same artificiality, which in his pastorals 

 was unpleasing, heightens the effect, and adds to the general 

 keeping. As truly as Shakspeare is the poet of man, as God 

 made him, dealing with great passions and innate motives, so 

 truly is Pope the poet of society, the delineator of manners, the 

 exposer of those motives which may be called acquired, whose 

 spring is in institutions and habits of purely worldly origin. 



The Rape of the Lock was written in Pope s twenty-fourth 

 year, and the machinery of the Sylphs was added at the sugges 

 tion of Dr. Garth a circumstance for which we can feel a more 

 unmixed gratitude to him than for writing the Dispensary. 

 The idea was taken from that entertaining book The Count de 

 Gabalis, in which Fouque afterwards found the hint for his 

 Undine; but the little sprites as they appear in the poem are 

 purely the creation of Pope s fancy. 



The theory of the poem is excellent. The heroic is out of the 

 question in fine society. It is perfectly true that almost every 

 door we pass in the street closes upon its private tragedy, but 

 the moment a great passion enters a man he passes at once out 

 of the artificial into the human. So long as he continues artifi 

 cial, the sublime is a conscious absurdity to him. The mock- 

 heroic then is the only way in which the petty actions and 

 sufferings of the fine world can be epically treated, and the con 

 trasts continually suggested with subjects of larger scope and 

 more dignified treatment, makes no small part of the pleasure 

 and sharpens the point of the wit. The invocation is admi 

 rable : 



Say, what strange motive, Goddess, could compel 

 A well-bred lord to assault a gentle belle ? 

 O say what stranger cause, yet unexplored, 

 Could make a gentle belle reject a lord ? 



The keynote of the poem is here struck, and we are able to put 

 ourselves in tune with it. It is not a parody of the heroic style, 

 but only a setting it in satirical juxtaposition with cares and 



