It may be said of it, as Thackery
said of Gay's pastorals: "It is to poetry what charming little Dresden
china figures are to sculpture, graceful, minikin, fantastic, with a
certain beauty always accompanying them." The _Rape of the Lock_,
perhaps, stops short of beauty, but it attains elegance and prettiness
in a supreme degree. In imitation of the gods and goddesses in the
_Iliad_, who intermeddle for or against the human characters, Pope
introduced the Sylphs of the Rosicrucian philosophy. We may measure the
distance between imagination and fancy, if we will compare these little
filagree creatures with Shakspere's elves, whose occupation it was
To tread the ooze of the salt deep,
Or run upon the sharp wind of the north,...
Or on the beached margent of the sea
To dance their ringlets to the whispering wind.
Very different are the offices of Pope's fays:
Our humble province is to tend the fair;
Not a less pleasing, though less glorious, care;
To save the powder from too rude a gale,
Nor let the imprisoned essences exhale....
Nay oft in dreams invention we bestow
To change a flounce or add a furbelow.
Pope was not a great poet; it has been doubted whether he was a poet at
all. He does not touch the heart, or stimulate the imagination, as the
true poet always does.
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