convent, mentioned Pope's work with very little
gratitude, rather as an insult than an honour; and she may be supposed
to have inherited the opinion of her family.

At its first appearance it was termed, by Addison, "merum sal." Pope,
however, saw that it was capable of improvement; and, having luckily
contrived to borrow his machinery from the Rosicrucians, imparted the
scheme with which his head was teeming to Addison, who told him that his
work, as it stood, was "a delicious little thing," and gave him no
encouragement to retouch it.

This has been too hastily considered as an instance of Addison's
jealousy; for, as he could not guess the conduct of the new design, or
the possibilities of pleasure comprised in a fiction, of which there had
been no examples, he might very reasonably and kindly persuade the
author to acquiesce in his own prosperity, and forbear an attempt which
he considered as an unnecessary hazard.

Addison's counsel was happily rejected. Pope foresaw the future
efflorescence of imagery then budding in his mind, and resolved to spare
no art, or industry of cultivation. The soft luxuriance of his fancy was
already shooting, and all the gay varieties of diction were ready at his
hand to colour and embellish it.

His attempt was justified by its success. The Rape of the Lock stands
forward, in the classes of literature, as the most exquisite example of
ludicrous poetry. Berkeley congratulated him upon the display of powers
more truly poetical than he had shown before; with elegance of
description and justness of precepts, he had now exhibited boundless
fertility of invention.

He always considered the intermixture of the machinery with the action
as his most successful exertion of poetical art. He, indeed, could never
afterwards produce any thing of such unexampled excellence. Those
performances, which strike with wonder, are combinations of skilful
genius with happy casualty; and it is not likely that any felicity,
like the discovery of a new race of preternatural agents, should happen
twice to the same man.

Of this poem, the author was, I think, allowed to enjoy the praise for a
long time without disturbance. Many years afterwards Dennis published
some remarks upon it, with very little force, and with no effect: for
the opinion of the publick was already settled, and it was no longer at
the mercy of criticism.

About this time he published the Temple of Fame, which, as he tells
Steele in the