"Calm contemplation and poetic ease."

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