No more brilliant, sparkling, vivacious trifle, is to be found in our literature than the _Rape of the Lock_, even in this early form.

Pope received permission from the lady to publish it in Lintot's Miscellany in 1712, and a wider circle admired it, though it seems that the lady and her family began to think that young Mr.Pope was making rather too free with her name.

Pope meanwhile, animated by his success, hit upon a singularly happy conception, by which he thought that the poem might be rendered more important.

The solid critics of those days were much occupied with the machinery of epic poems; the machinery being composed of the gods and goddesses who, from the days of Homer, had attended to the fortunes of heroes.

He had hit upon a curious French book, the _Comte de Gabalis_, which professes to reveal the mysteries of the Rosicrucians, and it occurred to him that the elemental sylphs and gnomes would serve his purpose admirably.