ABSTRACT
The number and importance of the learned allusions in the Songs and Sonets, of allusions to theological, philosophical, scientific or pseudo-scientific doctrines, and, in general, to matters which require a factual or documentary, as distinct from an interpretative, note, has often been greatly exaggerated. This chapter examines more closely the formal structure of the Songs and Sonets: it proposes to attempt, in some considerable detail, to distinguish between them according to their degrees of seriousness, to decide what is jest and what is earnest, and to put the too-commonly exaggerated autobiographical element in its proper place. Pope later Stooped to truth and moralised his song but the notion that pure description was one of the chief ingredients of poetry, and that poetry which lacked it was scarcely poetry at all, long persisted. Dryden’s love-poetry is at least always entertaining, and was presumably found so by those of the fair sex who attended his plays.
