There is no author of that time of moderation and good sense who does not
thus more or less eat a crocodile. It is not necessary to go to the bad
poets; we need go no lower than the good.

And gasping Furies thirst for blood in vain,

says Pope seriously (but the sense of burlesque never leaves the reader).
Also

There purple vengeance bath'd in gore retires.

In the only passage of the _Dunciad_ meant to be poetic and not ironic
and spiteful, he has "the panting gales" of a garden he describes. Match
me such an absurdity among the "conceits" of the age preceding!

A noble and ingenious author, so called by high authority but left
anonymous, pretends (it is always pretending with these people, never
fine fiction or a frank lie) that on the tomb of Virgil he had had a
vision of that deceased poet:

Crowned with eternal bays my ravished eyes
Beheld the poet's awful form arise.

Virgil tells the noble and ingenious one that if Pope will but write upon
some graver themes,

Envy to black Cocytus shall retire
And howl with furies in tormenting fire.