We can understand that Miss Fermor would feel such raillery to be
equivocal. It may be added, that an equal want of delicacy is implied in
the mock-heroic battle at the end, where the ladies are gifted with an
excess of screaming power:--
'Restore the lock!' she cries, and all around
'Restore the lock,' the vaulted roofs rebound--
Not fierce Othello in so loud a strain
Roar'd for the handkerchief that caused his pain.
These faults, though far from trifling, are yet felt only as blemishes
in the admirable beauty and brilliance of the poem. The successive
scenes are given with so firm and clear a touch--there is such a sense
of form, the language is such a dexterous elevation of the ordinary
social twaddle into the mock-heroic, that it is impossible not to
recognize a consummate artistic power. The dazzling display of true wit
and fancy blinds us for the time to the want of that real tenderness and
humour, which would have softened some harsh passages, and given a more
enduring charm to the poetry. It has, in short, the merit that belongs
to any work of art which expresses in the most finished form the
sentiment characteristic of a given social phase; one deficient in many
of the most ennobling influences, but yet one in which the arts of
converse represent a very high development of shrewd sense refined into
vivid wit. And we may, I think, admit that there is some foundation for
the genealogy that traces Pope's Ariel back to his more elevated
ancestor in the _Tempest_.
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