ABSTRACT
I HAVE deliberately set these two, Pope and de la Mare, against each other, for the sake of contrast. The passage from Pope is satire, written in the so-called heroic couplet. It is the product of a narrow, brilliant age, compact in its social fabric, an age that dealt much in gossip, rumour, scandal; an age when the power of a pamphleteer or satirist was to be reckoned with seriously by governments and ministers; in which the latest witty epigram, scurrilous or complimentary, would run like a flame round the coffee-houses and clubs.
