own poetical convictions to be mortified by the absurdities of an intemperate rival. The error of Byron was akin to the misconception of the office of didactic poems, which De Quincey exposed in his criticism on Pope's Essay on Man. "As a term of convenience," he says, "didactic may serve to discriminate one class of poetry, but didactic it cannot be in philosophic rigour without ceasing to be poetry." If the object of Armstrong had been to teach Medicine, of Dyer to produce a manual for shepherds and cloth manufacturers, of Philips to write a treatise for gardeners and makers of cider, he maintains that it would have been idiotcy to begin by putting on the fetters of metre. He remarks that a worse restriction is the necessity of omitting a vast variety of details, and capital sections of the subject, and that in the constant need to forego either poetry or instruction the poet never hesitates to abandon the instruction. The true object, he conceives, of a didactic poem is to bring out the "circumstances of beautiful form, feeling, incident, or any other interest" which lurk in didactic topics. The sentiment which the tutor neglects the poet evolves, and he introduces utilitarian knowledge for the sole purpose of eliciting an element distinct from its bare, prosaic utility.[945] This is the rational theory. In Pope's generation, and for some years afterwards, a different idea was widely prevalent. "The end of the didactic poem," says Marmontel, "is to instruct. It were to be wished that the principles of the most important arts should all be reduced to verse. It is thus that at the birth of letters all useful truths were consigned to memory. To bring back the didactic poem to its primitive utility ought to be the object of emulation to the poets of an age of light."[946] The system which Marmontel recommended for an age of light was only fitted for an age of darkness. The utility of a didactic work depends on its lucidity, its precision, and its fullness. The use is defeated if the instruction is fragmentary, incoherent, circuitous, and cumbrous. When men emerge from ignorance, and when knowledge begins to grow systematic and exact, the employment of verse for expounding arts, sciences, philosophy, and history becomes puerile and impotent. The moment they are brought under the dominion of the enlightened understanding the freedom of prose is essential to unfold them with clearness, completeness, and accuracy. The suggestion of Marmontel for restoring didactic poetry to its primitive use was the way to reduce it to imbecility. The events of English history are of greater moment than the cutting off Miss Fermor's curl, and an English history in verse would be "higher poetry" according to Byron, more "useful poetry" according to Marmontel, than the Rape of the Lock. In reality it would not be high or useful, poetry or history, but simply a folly. The didactic poets who had a truer comprehension of the