SOURCE: “Goodness and Good Humour: Pope and the Later Eighteenth Century,” in Dutch Quarterly Review of Anglo-American Letters, Vol. 20, No. 1, 1990, pp. 37-50.

In the following essay, Rosslyn scrutinizes the evolution of the cultural significance of the term “good Humour,” tracing changes from Pope's era through the end of the eighteenth century.

In every culture there are words so loaded with significance for their users that they seem to require no explanation. These are precisely the words that to strangers, or a later generation, require most: for where there should be quivering, vital significance there seems merely to be a hole in the page—a blank. An effect is clearly looked for, but it cannot be supplied. We feel the stress of the intention, but we do not know how to respond.

One such word in Pope's culture is “reason”. We need only to glance at the Essay on...