ABSTRACT
The term 'neo-classic' has largely dropped out of the corridors of Englitbiz, usually to be replaced by 'Augustan', though there have been attempts in English studies to dislodge 'Augustan' too, on the grounds that some eighteenth-century authors took a dim view of Augustus Caesar. Gordon Pocock, in his book on Boileau and the Nature of Neo-classicism, 1980, is untroubled by problems of nomenclature, ignoring the existence of the particular non-problem. He uses 'Augustan' of English poets as readily as he uses 'neo-classic' of the French, though with a more refreshing air of prelapsarian innocence. The 'neo-classicism' which Mr Pocock attributes to Boileau comes near to the older version, although he would doubtless have us think otherwise. The little fable about Virgil in the Essay on Criticism illustrates a different neo-classicism. The declared pieties of neo-classical doctrine, the roll-call of revered masters, the sketch of Virgil's career act as a mere catalyst for the real point.
