ge themselves in
opposition, and to assert their right to be heard. The supremacy of
Dryden and Pope was the most despotic rule that English poetry has ever
known, and the revolt was strong in proportion. Satire and morality very
easily becomes tedious, especially when they are in close alliance.
Despotism may be tempered by epigrams, and so become tolerable, but it is
important that the epigrams should not be made by the despot. Outside
the charmed circle of his friendships, Pope was ready enough to use his
wit against any pretender.

The change began gradually, and in very innocent fashion. Poetry had
been taught to be scholarly, self-conscious, experimental; and it showed
its skill in half-playful imitations of the older English masters. Pope
himself imitated Chaucer and Spenser in burlesque fashion. John Philips,
in _The Splendid Shilling_, used Milton's heightened style to describe
the distresses of an impecunious poet. William Shenstone in _The School-
mistress_, parodied Spenser, yet the parody is in no way hostile, and
betrays an almost sentimental admiration. Spenser, like Milton, never
lost credit as a master, though his fame was obscured a little during the
reign of Dryden. His style, it must be remembered, was archaic in his
own time; it could not grow old, for it had never been young. Addison,
in _An Account of the Greatest English Poets_, says that Spenser's verse

Can charm an understanding age no more;
The long-spun allegories fulsome grow,
While the dull moral lies too plain below.

But the _Account_ is a merely juvenile work; its dogma is not the sword
of judgment, but the shield of ignorance. "The character he gives of
Spenser," said Pope, "is false; and I have heard him say that he never
read Spenser till fifteen years after he wrote it." As for Pope himself,
among the English poets Waller, Spenser, and Dryden were his childhood's
favorites, in that order; and the year before his death he said to
Spence--"I don't know how it is; there is something in Spenser that
pleases one as strongly in one's old age as it did in one's youth. I
read the Faerie Queene, when I was about twelve, with infinite delight;
and I think it gave me as much when I read it over, about a year or two
ago."

The lyrical Milton and the romantic Spenser found disciples among poets
in the early half of the eighteenth century. Two of these disciples may
be mentioned, both born about the year 1700, only twel