[Footnote 114: The reader might compare these twenty-eight lines
following, which contain the same matter, with eighty-four of Chaucer,
beginning thus:
Tho came the sixthe companye,
And gan faste to Fame cry, &c.,
being too prolix to be here inserted.--POPE.]
[Footnote 115: "A pretty fame," says Dennis, "when the very smartest of
these coxcombs is sure to have his name rotten before his carcase. When
the author introduced these fellows into the temple of Fame, he ought to
have made the chocolate-house, and the side-box, part of it." The
criticism was just. The contemptible creatures who buzzed their
profligate falsehoods for the hour, and were heard of no more, should
have been introduced, if at all, into the Temple of Rumour, and not into
the Temple of Fame. Pope followed Chaucer.]
[Footnote 116: Strokes of pleasantry and humour, and satirical
reflections on the foibles of common life, are unsuited to so grave and
majestic a poem. They appear as unnatural and out of place as one of the
burlesque scenes of Heemskirk would do in a solemn landscape of Poussin.
When I see such a line as