Note 94 — AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM.
Reading edition
Soame and Dryden's Translation of Boileau's Art of Poetry:
Keep to each man his proper character; Of countries and of times the humours know; From diff'rent climates diff'ring customs grow.
The principle here is general. Pope, in terms and in fact, applied it only to the ancients. Had he extended the precept to modern literature he would have been cured of his delusion that every deviation from the antique type arose from unlettered tastelessness.