Note 41 — CALAMITIES OF AUTHORS: (continued 2)

Dennis points his heavy cannon of criticism and thus bombards that aerial edifice, the “Rape of the Lock.” He is inquiring into the nature of poetical machinery, which, he oracularly pronounces, should be religious, or allegorical, or political; asserting the “Lutrin” of Boileau to be a trifle only in appearance, covering the deep political design of reforming the Popish Church!—With the yard of criticism he takes measure of the slender graces and tiny elegance of Pope’s aerial machines, as “less considerable than the human persons, which is without precedent. Nothing can be so contemptible as the persons or so foolish as the understandings of these hobgoblins. Ariel’s speech is one continued impertinence. After he has talked to them of black omens and dire disasters that threaten his heroine, those bugbears dwindle to the breaking a piece of china, to staining a petticoat, the losing a fan, or a bottle of sal volatile—and what makes Ariel’s speech more ridiculous is the place where it is spoken, on the sails and cordage of Belinda’s barge.” And then he compares the Sylphs to the Discord of Homer, whose feet are upon the earth, and head in the skies. “They are, indeed, beings so diminutive that they bear the same proportion to the rest of the intellectual that Eels in vinegar do to the rest of the material world; the latter are only to be seen through microscopes, and the former only through the false optics of a Rosicrucian understanding.” And finally, he decides that “these diminutive beings are only Sawney (that is, Alexander Pope), taking the change; for it is he, a little lump of flesh, that talks, instead of a little spirit.” Dennis’s profound gravity contributes an additional feature of the burlesque to these heroi-comic poems themselves, only that Dennis cannot be playful, and will not be good-humoured.

On the same tasteless principle he decides on the improbability of that incident in the “Conscious Lovers” of Steele, raised by Bevil, who, having received great obligations from his father, has promised not to marry without his consent. On this Dennis, who rarely in his critical progress will stir a foot without authority, quotes four formidable pages from Locke’s “Essay on Government,” to prove that, at the age of discretion, a man is free to dispose of his own actions! One would imagine that Dennis was arguing like a special pleader, rather than developing the involved action of an affecting drama. Are there critics who would pronounce Dennis to be a very sensible brother? It is here too he calls Steele “a twopenny author,” alluding to the price of the “Tatlers”—but this cost Dennis dear!