when it dies; when it is used merely as a tradition, and not as the best
mode of producing the desired impression; and when, therefore, it
represents a rule imposed from without, and is not an expression of the
spontaneous working of minds in which the corresponding impulse is
thoroughly incarnated. In such a case, no doubt, the diction becomes a
burden, and a man is apt to fancy himself a poet because he is the slave
of the external form instead of using it as the most familiar
instrument. By Wordsworth's time the Pope style was thus effete; what
ought to be the dress of thought had become the rigid armour into which
thought was forcibly compressed, and a revolt was inevitable. We may
agree, too, that his peculiar style was in a sense artificial, even in
the days of Pope. It had come into existence during the reign of the
Restoration wits, under the influence of foreign models, not as the
spontaneous outgrowth of a gradual development, and had therefore
something mechanical and conscious, even when it flourished most
vigorously. It came in with the periwigs, to which it is so often
compared, and, like the artificial headgear, was an attempt to give a
dignified or full-dress appearance to the average prosaic human being.
Having this innate weakness of pomposity and exaggeration, it naturally
expired, and became altogether ridiculous, with the generation to which
it belonged. As the wit or man of the world had at bottom a very
inadequate conception of epic poetry, he became inevitably strained and
contorted when he tried to give himself the airs of a poet.

After making all such deductions, it would still seem that the bare fact
that he was working in a generally accepted style gave Pope a very
definite advantage. He spoke more or less in a falsetto, but he could at
once strike a key intelligible to his audience. An earlier poet would
simply annex Homer's gods and fix them with a mediaeval framework. A more
modern poet tries to find some style which will correspond to the
Homeric as closely as possible, and feels that he is making an
experiment beset with all manner of difficulties. Pope needed no more to
bother himself about such matters than about grammatical or philological
refinements. He found a ready-made style which was assumed to be
correct; he had to write in regular rhymed couplets, as neatly rhymed
and tersely expressed as might be; and the diction was equally settled.
He was to keep to Homer for the substance,