Pope
declared, and critics have agreed, that he never showed more skill than
in the remodelling of this poem; and it has ever since held a kind of
recognised supremacy amongst the productions of the drawing-room muse.
The reader must remember that the so-called heroic style of Pope's
period is now hopelessly effete. No human being would care about
machinery and the rules of Bossu, or read without utter weariness the
mechanical imitations of Homer and Virgil which were occasionally
attempted by the Blackmores and other less ponderous versifiers. The
shadow grows dim with the substance. The burlesque loses its point when
we care nothing for the original; and, so far, Pope's bit of
filigree-work, as Hazlitt calls it, has become tarnished. The very
mention of beaux and belles suggests the kind of feeling with which we
disinter fragments of old-world finery from the depths of an ancient
cabinet, and even the wit is apt to sound wearisome. And further, it
must be allowed to some hostile critics that Pope has a worse defect.
The poem is, in effect, a satire upon feminine frivolity. It continues
the strain of mockery against hoops and patches and their wearers, which
supplied Addison and his colleagues with the materials of so many
_Spectators_. I think that even in Addison there is something which
rather jars upon us. His persiflage is full of humour and kindliness,
but underlying it there is a tone of superiority to women which is
sometimes offensive. It is taken for granted that a woman is a fool, or
at least should be flattered if any man condescends to talk sense to
her.
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