nto which we know that a man is
really putting his whole heart. The comparison would not be fair, for in
such cases we are moved by knowledge of external facts as well as by the
poetic power. But it is simply that Pope always resembles an orator
whose gestures are studied, and who thinks while he is speaking of the
fall of his robes and the attitude of his hands. He is throughout
academical; and though knowing with admirable nicety how grief should be
represented, and what have been the expedients of his best predecessors,
he misses the one essential touch of spontaneous impulse.

One other blemish is perhaps more fatal to the popularity of the Eloisa.
There is a taint of something unwholesome and effeminate. Pope, it is
true, is only following the language of the original in the most
offensive passages; but we see too plainly that he has dwelt too fondly
upon those passages, and worked them up with especial care. We need not
be prudish in our judgment of impassioned poetry; but when the passion
has this false ring, the ethical coincides with the aesthetic objection.

I have mentioned these poems here, because they seem to be the
development of the rhetorical vein which appeared in the earlier work.
But I have passed over another work which has sometimes been regarded as
his masterpiece. A Lord Petre had offended a Miss Fermor by stealing a
lock of her hair. She thought that he showed more gallantry than
courtesy, and some unpleasant feeling resulted between the families.
Pope's friend, Caryll, thought that it might be appeased if the young
poet would turn the whole affair into friendly ridicule. Nobody, it
might well be supposed, had a more dexterous touch; and a brilliant
trifle from his hands, just fitted for the atmosphere of drawing-rooms,
would be a convenient peace-offering, and was the very thing in which he
might be expected to succeed. Pope accordingly set to work at a dainty
little mock-heroic, in which he describes, in playful mockery of the
conventional style, the fatal coffee-drinking at Hampton, in which the
too daring peer appropriated the lock. The poem received the praise
which it well deserved; for certainly the young poet had executed his
task to a nicety. No more brilliant, sparkling, vivacious trifle, is to
be found in our literature than the _Rape of the Lock_, even in this
early form. Pope received permission from the lady to publish it in
Lintot's Miscellany in 1712, and a wider circle admired i