d oak," he gives us "the soft myrtle": for rocks, and seas, and
mountains, artificial grass-plats, gravel-walks, and tinkling rills; for
earthquakes and tempests, the breaking of a flower-pot, or the fall of a
china jar; for the tug and war of the elements, or the deadly strife of
the passions, we have

"Calm contemplation and poetic ease."

Yet within this retired and narrow circle how much, and that how
exquisite, was contained! What discrimination, what wit, what delicacy,
what fancy, what lurking spleen, what elegance of thought, what pampered
refinement of sentiment! It is like looking at the world through a
microscope, where every thing assumes a new character and a new
consequence, where things are seen in their minutest circumstances and
slightest shades of difference; where the little becomes gigantic, the
deformed beautiful, and the beautiful deformed. The wrong end of the
magnifier is, to be sure, held to every thing, but still the exhibition
is highly curious, and we know not whether to be most pleased or
surprised. Such, at least, is the best account I am able to give of this
extraordinary man, without doing injustice to him or others. It is time
to refer to particular instances in his works.--The Rape of the Lock is
the best or most ingenious of these. It is the most exquisite specimen
of _fillagree_ work ever invented. It is admirable in proportion as it
is made of nothing.

"More subtle web Arachne cannot spin,
Nor the fine nets, which oft we woven see
Of scorched dew, do not in th' air more lightly flee."

It is made of gauze and silver spangles. The most glittering appearance
is given to every thing, to paste, pomatum, billet-doux, and patches.
Airs, languid airs, breathe around;--the atmosphere is perfumed with
affectation. A toilette is described with the solemnity of an altar
raised to the Goddess of vanity, and the history of a silver bodkin is
given with all the pomp of heraldry. No pains are spared, no profusion
of ornament, no splendour of poetic diction, to set off the meanest
things. The balance between the concealed irony and the assumed gravity,
is as nicely trimmed as the balance of power in Europe. The little is
made great, and the great little. You hardly know whether to laugh or
weep. It is the triumph of insignificance, the apotheosis of foppery and
folly. It is the perfection of the mock-heroic! I will give only the two
following passages in ill