c accent--"led by the light of the Maeonian Star." Aristotle
illustrated by Homer--that was to be the standard of all poetic
expression. But literature had wandered far from Homer, and we have to
think of what rules the _Essay on Criticism_ laid down. The poet was to
be cautious, "to avoid extremes": he must be conventional, never
"singular"; there was constant reference to "Wit," "Nature," and "The
Muse," and these were convertible terms. A single instance is luminous.
We have the positive authority of Warburton for saying that Pope
regarded as the finest effort of his skill and art as a poet the
insertion of the machinery of the Sylphs into the revised edition of
_The Rape of the Lock_ (1714). Now this insertion was ingenious,
brilliant, and in strict accordance with the practice of Vida and of
Boileau, both of whom it excelled. But the whole conception of it was as
unlike that of Romanticism as possible.

In particular, the tendency of the classic school, in its later
development, had been towards the exclusion of all but didactic and
ethical considerations from treatment in verse. Pope had given great and
ever-increasing emphasis to the importance of making "morals" prominent
in poetry. All that he wrote after he retired to Twickenham, still a
young man, in 1718, was essentially an attempt to gather together "moral
wisdom" clothed in consummate language. He inculcated a moderation of
feeling, a broad and general study of mankind, an acceptance of the
benefits of civilisation, and a suppression of individuality. Even in so
violent and so personal a work as the _Dunciad_ he expends all the
resources of his genius to make his anger seem moral and his indignation
a public duty. This conception of the ethical responsibility of verse
was universal, and even so late as 1745, long after the composition of
Warton's "Enthusiast," we find Blacklock declaring, with general
acceptance, that "poetical genius depends entirely on the quickness of
moral feeling," and that not to "feel poetry" was the result of having
"the affections and internal senses depraved by vice."

The most important innovation suggested by Joseph Warton was an
outspoken assertion that this was by no means the object or the proper
theme of poetry. His verses and those of his brother, the _Essay on
Pope_ of the elder, the critical and historical writings of the younger,
may be searched in vain for the slightest evidence of moral or didactic
sentiment. The ins