In truth, Pope can be inimitably pungent, but he can never be simply playful.

Addison was too condescending with his pretty pupils; but under Pope's courtesy there lurks contempt, and his smile has a disagreeable likeness to a sneer.

If Addison's manner sometimes suggests the blandness of a don who classes women with the inferior beings unworthy of the Latin grammar, Pope suggests the brilliant wit whose contempt has a keener edge from his resentment against fine ladies blinded to his genius by his personal deformity.
Even in his dedication, Pope, with unconscious impertinence, insults his heroine for her presumable ignorance of his critical jargon.

His smart epigrams want but a slight change of tone to become satire.

It is the same writer who begins an essay on women's characters by telling a woman that her sex is a compound of Matter too soft a lasting mask to bear; And best distinguished by black, brown, or fair, and communicates to her the pleasant truth that Every woman is at heart a rake.
Women, in short, are all frivolous beings, whose one genuine interest is in love-making.