In one sense, The Rape of the Lock may be viewed as the romantic epic of the age of Queen Anne; at least, if this poem will not serve, the age has no other. It bears the same relation to its time that the Faerie Queene of Spenser bears to the age of Elizabeth; and the fact that it is a burlesque only goes to reinforce the point.

And, if one so takes it, how striking is the fact that through the whole poem we never escape into the region of either romance or epic at all! No Gloriana, queen of faerie, rules us here,-only "great Anna, whom three realms obey." The "action" is a squabble, the weapons bodkins and scissors. In no part of the poem do we get so clear a sense of the qualities and manners of the age as in the professedly supernatural portions. Through their occupations, their interests, their punishments, the airy Sylphs, touched with Pope's most demure and dainty pen, witness as no flesh and blood personages could do to the imprisonment of eighteenth century fancy within the habits of the day. The evil powers who launch disaster are the enemies of fashionable life,-Spleen, or moroseness, with her attendants, Headache and Illhealth, Affectation and Ill-nature. One has only to compare Pope's Ariel with the Ariel of Shakespeare, as to nature and function, to realize the contrast between an imagination voluntarily earthbound, and one that soars free in skyey space.

This sort of supernatural machinery is, of course, part of the imitation of the genuine epic, and one's pleasure in reading The Rape of the Lock is much keener if one has some knowledge of the original type

which Pope is burlesquing. All the proportions of the epic are here, reduced to the purposes of gallantry and realism: the pompous Introduction, with its appeal to the muse, the careful development of the action, the deed and its reprisals, the climax and catastrophe, worked out with a finish that extends to the last detail, yet with an effect of spontaneity that is the last triumph of conscious art. Nothing could catch the grand tone more effectively, more funnily, than such passages as the sacrifice of the Baron with his Altar "of twelve vast French romances, neatly gilt," than his Oath, or than the appeal of Umbriel to Spleen. Indeed, the mock-heroic tone is carried. out without faltering, and the piquant contrast between the assumed grandeur and the real pettiness is in the choicest vein of raillery..

The neat turns of phrase, the clever innuendoes, the polish and sparkle of the verse, each student must discover for himself, by line to line scrutiny. The Rape of the Lock is an excellent poem for group study also; it has charm, but a charm not too elusive for analysis nor too lofty to discuss. In the devices used, two recur most constantly: anti-climax and antithesis. Antithesis indeed is the life of the heroic couplet. It can easily degenerate into a trick; Pope himself describes to us a certain literary man,

His wit all see-saw between That and This,
And he himself one vile antithesis.

Sometimes, even in The Rape of the Lock, his own use of the figure annoys us by its perpetual iteration, yet we cannot as a rule deny its neatness, effectiveness,

and point. In this poem, it is continually blended with anti-climax, so soberly, so consistently carried out that it attains with inimitable success Pope's end, of belittling the important and exalting the petty.

Not louder shrieks to pitying heav'n are cast,

When husbands, or when lap-dogs, breathe their last;
Or when rich China vessels fall'n from high,
In glittʼring dust and painted fragments lie!
Not youthful kings in battle seiz'd alive,
Not scornful virgins who their charms survive,
Not ardent lovers robbed of all their bliss,
Not ancient ladies when refus'd a kiss,
Not tyrants fierce that unrepenting die,
Not Cynthia when her manteau's pinn'd awry,
E'er felt such rage, resentment, and despair,
As thou, sad virgin! for thy ravished hair.

This is epic in Looking-Glass Land, with all the emphasis reversed. By no other style probably could we gain so entertaining and felicitous a conception of the sentiments and customs of the period. Through its mock solemnity, the prosaic details of worldly life are invested with a certain glamor, even while we realize their absurdity. And our laughter is without meanness. Some people, to be sure, resent the patronizing attitude toward women, and find a concealed slight beneath the affected language of gallantry and compliment. But surely this is to break a butterfly on the wheel. It is not a poem to appeal to a suffragette, and perhaps no writer now-a-days, speaking of women, would indite such a line as that about "The moving Toy-shop of their heart." But toward "The Fair" Pope simply took the ordinary playful tone of his age, the tone of Addison; and cer

tainly Sir Plume is less an ornament to the one sex than Belinda to the other!

Is The Rape of the Lock poetry? Yes, if sensitive workmanship, bright fancy, and happy delineation of an attractive phase of life can make a poem. The Belle, lingering over her toilet and her tea, the Beau

of amber snuff-box justly vain,

And the nice conduct of a clouded cane

are less inspiring figures than Spenser's St. George fighting his dragon, or his sweet Una on her snowwhite ass; but they have their own place in the richlypeopled world of the imagination. At all events, the poem is nearer poetry than most things which Pope wrote, for it is less didactic and more concrete. No one would claim for it the highest imaginative qualities; but it is conceived with true delicacy of glancing and fantastic invention, and is carried out with deft precision. It is poetry, as the ivory fan of a belle of the period, or the snuff-box of a beau, painted in miniature with fine touches of pure gay color, may be art. Raphael and Leonardo are the great masters; but the fans and snuff-boxes too are treasured in museums, for into these also something of life's preciousness has passed.

THE RAPE OF THE LOCK.

AN HEROI-COMICAL POEM.

Nolueram, Belinda, tuos violare capillos;
Sed juvat, hoc precibus me tribuisse tuis.

MARTIAL.

TO MRS. ARABELLA FERMOR.

MADAM, It will be in vain to deny that I have some regard for this piece, since I dedicate it to you. Yet you may bear me witness it was intended only to divert a few young ladies, who have good sense and good humor enough to laugh not only at their sex's little unguarded follies, but at their own. But as it was communicated with the air of a secret, it soon found its way into the world. An imperfect copy having been offer'd to a bookseller, you had the goodnature for my sake to consent to the publication of one more correct: This I was forc'd to, before I had executed half my design, for the Machinery was entirely wanting to complete it.

The Machinery, Madam, is a term invented by the critics to signify that part which the Deities, Angels, or Demons are made to act in a poem; for the ancient poets are in one respect like many modern ladies: let an action be never so trivial in itself, they always make it appear of the utmost importance. These Machines I determined to raise, on a very new and odd foundation, the Rosicrucian doctrine of Spirits.

I know how disagreeable it is to make use of hard words before a lady; but 'tis so much the concern