From his earliest years Pope set himself to introduce a new ‘correctness’ to English poetry. It seems an odd ambition to us; and not merely because it implies a censorious attitude towards the ‘irregular’ beauties of Shakespeare and Milton. Beyond all this, we are ill at ease with an aesthetic which places such a high value on what seem to us aridly technical skills. But for the Augustans it was different. The new polish they looked for in art was a matter of glamour, pride, self-confidence. ‘Correct’ poetry was part of a swelling nationalism and a swaggering modernism; it came ready equipped with a justification in cultural history:

Note the precise distinctions drawn between Waller and Dryden, Racine and Corneille, Shakespeare and Otway. Always Pope is busy discriminating.