The next literary revolution led to a depreciation of this quality.

Warton (like Macaulay long afterwards) argued that in a higher sense, the Elizabethan poets were really as correct as Pope.

Their poetry embodied a higher and more complex law, though it neglected the narrow cut-and-dried precepts recognized in the Queen Anne period.

The new school came to express too undiscriminating a contempt for the whole theory and practice of Pope and his followers.

Pope, said Cowper, and a thousand critics have echoed his words,-- Made poetry a mere mechanic art And every warbler had his tune by heart.
Without discussing the wider question, I may here briefly remark that this judgment, taken absolutely, gives a very false impression of Pope's artistic quality.