as a literary amusement. One obvious reason is the
absence of the peculiar social backing which composed Pope's audience
and supplied him with his readers.

The growing sense that there was something wrong about the political
system which Pope turned to account was significant of coming changes.
The impression that the evil was entirely due to Walpole personally was
one of the natural illusions of party warfare, and the disease was not
extirpated when the supposed cause was removed. The most memorable
embodiment of the sentiment was Swift. The concentrated scorn of
corruption in the _Drapier's Letters_ was followed by the intense
misanthropy of _Gulliver's Travels_. The singular way in which Swift
blends personal aversion with political conviction, and the strange
humour which conceals the misanthropist under a superficial playfulness,
veils to some extent his real aim. But Swift showed with unequalled
power and in an exaggerated form the conviction that there was something
wrong in the social order, which was suggested by the conditions of the
time and was to bear fruit in later days. Satire, however, is by its
nature negative; it does not present a positive ideal, and tends to
degenerate into mere hopeless pessimism. Lofty poetry can only spring
from some inner positive enthusiasm.

I turn to another characteristic of the literary movement. I have called
attention to the fact that while the Queen Anne writers were never tired
of appealing to nature, they came to be considered as prematurely
'artificial.' The commonest meaning of 'natural' is that in which it is
identified with 'normal,' We call a thing natural when its existence
appears to us to be a matter of course, which again may simply mean that
we are so accustomed to certain conditions that we do not remember that
they are really exceptional. We take ourselves with all our
peculiarities to be the 'natural' type or standard. An English traveller
in France remarked that it was unnatural for soldiers to be dressed in
blue; and then, remembering certain British cases, added, 'except,
indeed, for the Artillery or the Blue Horse.' The English model, with
all its variations, appeared to him to be ordained by Nature. This
unconscious method of usurping a general name so as to cover a general
meaning produces many fallacies. In any case, however, it was of the
essence of Pope's doctrine that we should, as he puts it, 'Look through
Nature up to Nature's God.' God, that