attle; they give their proper help, and do their
proper mischief.

Pope is said, by an objector, not to have been the inventer of this
petty nation; a charge which might, with more justice, have been brought
against the author of the Iliad, who, doubtless, adopted the religious
system of his country; for what is there, but the names of his agents,
which Pope has not invented? Has he not assigned them characters and
operations never heard of before? Has he not, at least, given them their
first poetical existence? If this is not sufficient to denominate his
work original, nothing original ever can be written.

In this work are exhibited, in a very high degree, the two most engaging
powers of an author. New things are made familiar, and familiar things
are made new. A race of aerial people, never heard of before, is
presented to us in a manner so clear and easy, that the reader seeks for
no further information, but immediately mingles with his new
acquaintance, adopts their interests, and attends their pursuits, loves
a sylph, and detests a gnome.

That familiar things are made new, every paragraph will prove. The
subject of the poem is an event below the common incidents of common
life; nothing real is introduced that is not seen so often as to be no
longer regarded; yet the whole detail of a female day is here brought
before us invested with so much art of decoration, that, though nothing
is disguised, every thing is striking, and we feel all the appetite of
curiosity for that from which we have a thousand times turned
fastidiously away.

The purpose of the poet is, as he tells us, to laugh at "the little
unguarded follies of the female sex." It is, therefore, without justice
that Dennis charges the Rape of the Lock with the want of a moral, and
for that reason sets it below the Lutrin, which exposes the pride and
discord of the clergy. Perhaps neither Pope nor Boileau has made the
world much better than he found it; but if they had both succeeded, it
were easy to tell who would have deserved most from publick gratitude.
The freaks, and humours, and spleen, and vanity of women, as they
embroil families in discord, and fill houses with disquiet, do more to
obstruct the happiness of life in a year than the ambition of the clergy
in many centuries. It has been well observed, that the misery of man
proceeds not from any single crush of overwhelming evil, but from small
vexations continually repeated.

It is remarked by