ate the ridicule yourself. In other words you write society
verses like Prior, temper sentiment by wit, and if you do not express
vehement passion, turn out elegant verses, salted by an irony which is
a tacit apology perhaps for some genuine feeling. The old pastoral had
become hopelessly absurd because Thyrsis and Lycidas have become
extravagant and 'unnatural.' The form might be adopted for practice in
versification; but when Ambrose Phillips took it a little too seriously,
Pope, whose own performances were not much better, came down on him for
his want of sincerity, and Gay showed what could be still made of the
form by introducing real rustics and turning it into a burlesque. Then,
as Johnson puts it, the 'effect of reality and truth became conspicuous,
even when the intention was to show them grovelling and degraded.' _The
Rape of the Lock_ is the masterpiece, as often noticed, of an
unconscious allegory. The sylph, who was introduced with such curious
felicity, is to be punished if he fails to do his duty, by imprisonment
in a lady's toilet apparatus.

'Gums and pomatums shall his flight restrain,
While clogged he beats his silver wings in vain.'

Delicate fancy and real poetical fancy may be turned to account; but
under the mask of the mock-heroic. We can be poetical still, it seems to
say, only we must never forget that to be poetical in deadly earnest is
to run the risk of being absurd. Even a Wit is pacified when he is thus
dexterously coaxed into poetry disguised as mere playful exaggeration,
and feels quite safe in following the fortune of a game of cards in
place of a sanguinary Homeric battle. Ariel is still alive, but he
adopts the costume of the period to apologise for his eccentricities.
Poetry thus understood may either give a charm to the trivial or fall
into mere burlesque; and though Pope's achievement is an undeniable
triumph, there are blots in an otherwise wonderful performance which
show an uncomfortable concession to the coarser tastes of his audience.

I will not dwell further upon a tolerably obvious theme. I must pass to
the more serious literature. The Wit had not the smallest notion that
his attitude disqualified him for succession in the loftiest poetical
endeavour. He thinks that his critical keenness will enable him to
surpass the old models. He wishes, in the familiar phrase, to be
'correct'; to avoid the gross faults of taste which disfigured the old
Gothic barbarism o