Yet within this retired and narrow circle how much, and that how exquisite, was contained!  What discrimination, what wit, what delicacy, what fancy, what lurking spleen, what elegance of thought, what pampered refinement of sentiment!  It is like looking at the world through a microscope, where every thing assumes a new character and a new consequence, where things are seen in their minutest circumstances and slightest shades of difference; where the little becomes gigantic, the deformed beautiful, and the beautiful deformed.  The wrong end of the magnifier is, to be sure, held to every thing, but still the exhibition is highly curious, and we know not whether to be most pleased or surprised.  Such, at least, is the best account I am able to give of this extraordinary man, without doing injustice to him or others.  It is time to refer to particular instances in his works.—­The Rape of the Lock is the best or most ingenious of these.  It is the most exquisite specimen of fillagree work ever invented.  It is admirable in proportion as it is made of nothing.

      “More subtle web Arachne cannot spin,
      Nor the fine nets, which oft we woven see
      Of scorched dew, do not in th’ air more lightly flee.”

It is made of gauze and silver spangles.  The most glittering appearance is given to every thing, to paste, pomatum, billet-doux, and patches.  Airs, languid airs, breathe around;—­the atmosphere is perfumed with affectation.  A toilette is described with the solemnity of an altar raised to the Goddess of vanity, and the history of a silver bodkin is given with all the pomp of heraldry.  No pains are spared, no profusion of ornament, no splendour of poetic diction, to set off the meanest things.  The balance between the concealed irony and the assumed gravity, is as nicely trimmed as the balance of power in Europe.  The little is made great, and the great little.  You hardly know whether to laugh or weep.  It is the triumph of insignificance, the apotheosis of foppery and folly.  It is the perfection of the mock-heroic!  I will give only the two following passages in illustration of these remarks.  Can any thing be more elegant and graceful than the description of Belinda, in the beginning of the second canto?

        “Not with more glories, in the ethereal plain,
      The sun first rises o’er the purpled main,
      Than, issuing forth, the rival of his beams
      Launch’d on the bosom of the silver Thames. 
      Fair nymphs, and well-drest youths around her shone,
      But ev’ry eye was fix’d on her alone. 
      On her white breast a sparkling cross she wore,
      Which Jews might kiss, and infidels adore. 
      Her lively looks a sprightly mind disclose,
      Quick as her eyes, and as unfix’d as those: 
      Favours to none, to all she smiles extends;
      Oft she rejects, but never once offends. 
      Bright as the