SOURCE: “The Politics of Style,” in Essays on Pope, Cambridge University Press, 1993, pp. 27-36.

Rogers is a prominent literary historian specializing in eighteenth-century studies and a recognized authority on Pope. In the following essay, which originally appeared in his An Introduction to Pope (1976), Rogers describes the principal features of Pope's poetic style and technique, emphasizing his virtuosity with the heroic couplet.

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From his earliest years Pope set himself to introduce a new ‘correctness’ to English poetry. It seems an odd ambition to us; and not merely because it implies a censorious attitude towards the ‘irregular’ beauties of Shakespeare and Milton. Beyond all this, we are ill at ease with an aesthetic which places such a high value on what seem to us aridly technical skills. But for the Augustans it was different. The new polish they looked for in art was a matter of glamour, pride, self-confidence...