st as a gentleman might not act naturally, but must follow exact rules in
doffing his hat, or addressing a lady, or entering a room, or wearing a
wig, or offering his snuffbox to a friend, so our writers lost
individuality and became formal and artificial. The general tendency of
literature was to look at life critically, to emphasize intellect rather
than imagination, the form rather than the content of a sentence. Writers
strove to repress all emotion and enthusiasm, and to use only precise and
elegant methods of expression. This is what is often meant by the
"classicism" of the ages of Pope and Johnson. It refers to the critical,
intellectual spirit of many writers, to the fine polish of their heroic
couplets or the elegance of their prose, and not to any resemblance which
their work bears to true classic literature. In a word, the classic
movement had become pseudo-classic, i.e. a false or sham classicism; and
the latter term is now often used to designate a considerable part of
eighteenth-century literature.[186] To avoid this critical difficulty we
have adopted the term Augustan Age, a name chosen by the writers
themselves, who saw in Pope, Addison, Swift, Johnson, and Burke the modern
parallels to Horace, Virgil, Cicero, and all that brilliant company who
made Roman literature famous in the days of Augustus.

ALEXANDER POPE (1688-1744)

Pope is in many respects a unique figure. In the first place, he was for a
generation "the poet" of a great nation. To be sure, poetry was limited in
the early eighteenth century; there were few lyrics, little or no love
poetry, no epics, no dramas or songs of nature worth considering; but in
the narrow field of satiric and didactic verse Pope was the undisputed
master. His influence completely dominated the poetry of his age, and many
foreign writers, as well as the majority of English poets, looked to him as
their model. Second, he was a remarkably clear and adequate reflection of
the spirit of the age in which he lived. There is hardly an ideal, a
belief, a doubt, a fashion, a whim of Queen Anne's time, that is not neatly
expressed in his poetry. Third, he was the only important writer of that
age who gave his whole life to letters. Swift was a clergyman and
politician; Addison was secretary of state; other writers depended on
patrons or politics or pensions for fame and a livelihood; but Pope was
independent, and had no profession but literature. And fourth, by the sheer
for