SOURCE: Alexander Pope, Cosmopolitan Book Corporation, 1930, 368 p.

Sitwell was a twentieth-century English poet who, extremely cognizant of the value of sound and rhythmic structure in poetry, experimented widely in these areas in her verse. In the following excerpt from her biography of Pope, she examines several passages from Pope's works to demonstrate various aspects of the poet's technical skill.

Sir Leslie Stephen, in his life of Pope, complains of the monotony of Pope's technique—as though the heroic couplet, with its infinite and subtle variation (especially in the hands of Pope)—were all of one depth, of one height, of one texture….

The stupidly despised Essay on Criticism leads us to understand with what care and infinite subtlety Pope studied and worked at his texture:

 But when loud surges lash the sounding shore,
The hoarse, rough verse should like the torrent roar:
When Ajax strives some rock's vast...