cal; asserting the "Lutrin" of Boileau to be a
trifle only in appearance, covering the deep political
design of reforming the Popish Church!--With the yard of
criticism he takes measure of the slender graces and tiny
elegance of Pope's aerial machines, as "less considerable
than the _human persons_, which is _without precedent_.
Nothing can be so contemptible as the _persons_ or so
foolish as the understandings of these _hobgoblins_.
Ariel's speech is one continued impertinence. After he has
talked to them of black omens and dire disasters that
threaten his heroine, those bugbears dwindle to the breaking
a piece of china, to staining a petticoat, the losing a
fan, or a bottle of sal volatile--and what makes Ariel's
speech more ridiculous is the _place_ where it is spoken, on
the sails and cordage of Belinda's barge." And then he
compares the Sylphs to the Discord of Homer, whose feet are
upon the earth, and head in the skies. "They are, indeed,
beings so diminutive that they bear the same proportion to
the rest of the intellectual that _Eels in vinegar_ do to
the rest of the material world; the latter are only to be seen
through microscopes, and the former only through the false
optics of a Rosicrucian understanding." And finally, he
decides that "these diminutive beings are only _Sawney_
(that is, Alexander Pope), taking the change; for it is
he, a little lump of flesh, that talks, instead of a little
spirit." Dennis's profound gravity contributes an additional
feature of the burlesque to these heroi-comic poems
themselves, only that Dennis cannot be playful, and will
not be good-humoured.

On the same tasteless principle he decides on the improbability
of that incident in the "Conscious Lovers" of Steele, raised
by Bevil, who, having received great obligations from his
father, has promised not to marry without his consent. On this
Dennis, who rarely in his critical progress will stir a foot
without authority, quotes four formidable pages from Locke's
"Essay on Government," to prove that, at the age of
discretion, a man is free to dispose of his own actions! One
would imagine that Dennis was arguing like a special pleader,