Dryden and Boileau and the
French critics, with their interpreters Roscommon, Sheffield, and Walsh,
who found rules in Aristotle, and drew their precedents from Homer,
were at last stating the pure canons of unadulterated sense. To this
school, wit and sense, and nature, and the classics, all meant pretty
much the same. That was pronounced to be unnatural which was too silly,
or too far-fetched, or too exalted, to approve itself to the good sense
of a wit; and the very incarnation and eternal type of good sense and
nature was to be found in the classics. The test of thorough polish and
refinement was the power of ornamenting a speech with an appropriate
phrase from Horace or Virgil, or prefixing a Greek motto to an essay in
the _Spectator_. If it was necessary to give to any utterance an air of
philosophical authority, a reference to Longinus or Aristotle was the
natural device. Perhaps the acquaintance with classics might not be very
profound; but the classics supplied at least a convenient symbol for the
spirit which had triumphed against Gothic barbarism and scholastic
pedantry.
Even the priggish wits of that day were capable of being bored by
didactic poetry, and especially by such didactic poetry as resolved
itself too easily into a string of maxims, not more poetical in
substance than the immortal "'Tis a sin to steal a pin." The
essay--published anonymously--did not make any rapid success till Pope
sent round copies to well-known critics. Addison's praise and Dennis's
abuse helped, as we shall presently see, to give it notoriety.
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