Waller was smooth; but Dryden taught

to join

The varying verfe, the full refounding line,

The long majestick march, and energy divine.

Here are the swiftnefs of the rapid race, and the march of flow-paced majefty, exhibited by the fame poet in the fame fequence of fyllables, except that the exact profodift will find the line of fwiftness by one time longer than that of tardiness.

Beauties of this kind are commonly fancied; and when real, are technical and

nugatory, not to be rejected, and not to be folicited.

To

To the praifes which have been accumulated on The Rape of the Lock by readers of every clafs, from the critick to the waiting-maid, it is difficult to make any addition. Of that which is univerfally allowed to be the most attractive of all ludicrous compofitions, let it rather be now enquired from what fources the power of pleafing is derived.

Dr. Warburton, who excelled in critical perfpicacity, has remarked that the preternatural agents are very happily adapted to the purposes of the poem. The heathen deities can no longer gain attention we fhould have turned away from a contest between Venus and Diana; the employment of allegorical perfons always excites conviction of its own abfurdity;

T

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furdity; they may produce effects, but cannot conduct actions; when the phantom is put in motion it diffolves; thus Difcord may raise a mutiny, but Difcord cannot conduct a march, nor befiege a town. Pope brought into view a new race of Beings, with powers and paffions proportionate to their operation. The fylphs and gnomes act at the toilet and the tea-table; what more terrifick and more powerful phantoms per form on the ftormy ocean, or the field of battle, they give their proper help, and do their proper mischief.

Pope is faid, by an objector, not to have been the inventer of this petty nation; a charge which might with more justice have been brought against the

author

author of the Iliad, who doubtless adopted the religious fyftem of his country; for what is there but the names of his agents which Pope has not invented? Has he not affigned them characters and operations never heard of before? Has he not, at least, given them their first poetical exiftence? If this is not fufficient to denominate his work original, nothing original ever can be written.

In this work are exhibited, in a very high degree, the two moft engaging powers of an author. New things are made familiar, and familiar things are made new. A race of aerial people, never heard of before, is prefented to us in a manner fo clear and eafy, that the

reader feeks for no further information, but immediately mingles with his new acquaintance, adopts their interefts, and attends their purfuits, loves a fylph, and detefts a gnome.

That familiar things are made new, every paragraph will prove. The fubject of the poem is an event below the common incidents of common life; nothing real is introduced that is not seen fo often as to be no longer regarded, yet the whole detail of a female-day is here brought before us invefted with so much art of decoration, that, though nothing is disguised, every thing is striking, and we feel all the appetite of curiofity for that from which we have a thoufand times turned faftidiously away.

The