[Gutenberg 12322] • Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham

[...]systematically shunned by Waller, has often been practised with success by poets far greater than either-such as Shelley and Coleridge. It is remarkable that Dryden, while he praised, did not copy our poet's manner, but gave himself freer scope. Pope, on the other hand, pushed his love of uniform tinkle and unmitigated softness to excess, and transferred this kind of luscious verse from small poems, where it is often a merit, to large ones, where it is a mistake. In his "Iliad," for instance, the fierce ire of Achilles, the dignified resentment of Agamemnon, the dull[...].