Truly the age of the “Rape of the Lock” and the “Elegy” was an age of great wit and great poetry.  Yet it was untrue to itself.  I think no other century has cherished so persistent a self-conscious incongruity.  As the century of good sense and good couplets it might have kept uncompromised the dignity we honour.  But such inappropriate pranks have come to pass in history now and again.  The Bishop of Hereford, in merry Barnsdale, “danced in his boots”; but he was coerced by Robin Hood.