Philosophy remained though Nature fled,. . .
Exulting Folly hailed the joyful day,
And Pantomime and Song confirmed her sway."[33]

Everything was personified; Britannia, Justice, Liberty, Science,
Melancholy, Night. Even vaccination for the smallpox was invoked as a
goddess,

"Inoculation, heavenly maid, descend!"[34]

But circumstances or periphrasis was the capital means by which the
Augustan poet avoided precision and attained nobility of style. It
enabled him to speak of a woman as a "nymph," or a "fair"; of sheep as
"the fleecy care"; of fishes as "the scaly tribe"; and of a picket fence
as a "spiculated paling." Lowell says of Pope's followers: "As the
master had made it an axiom to avoid what was mean or low, so the
disciples endeavored to escape from what was common. This they contrived
by the ready expedient of the periphrasis. They called everything
something else. A boot with them was

"'The shining leather that encased the limb.'

"Coffee became

"'The fragrant juice of Mocha's berry brown.'"[35]

"For the direct appeal to Nature, and the naming of specific objects,"
says Mr. Gosse,[36] "they substituted generalities and second-hand
allusions. They no longer mentioned the gillyflower and the daffodil,
but permitted themselves a general reference to Flora's vernal wreath.