When Ariel, baffled and weeping, is compelled to resign his charge, the gnomes rush upon the scene, and retain their ascendancy till near the end. They are but slightly sketched, and all we hear of the appearance they present is that they have "a dusky, melancholy" aspect, and "sooty pinions." Their functions are the opposite to those of the sylphs,--they give lap-dogs diseases, discompose head-dresses, raise pimples on beauteous faces, engender pride, and spoil graces. Dennis detected a flaw. Umbriel descends to the Cave of Spleen, and procures from the goddess a bag filled with the impetuous, and a phial with the depressing passions. The gnome empties the bag of "sighs, sobs, and the war of tongues" on Belinda, who immediately "burns with more than mortal ire." The gnome next breaks over her the phial of "fainting fears and soft sorrows," when she exchanges her expression of rage for "eyes half-languishing, half-drowned in tears." "Now," says Dennis, "what could be more useless, whether we look upon the bag or the bottle?"[325] Without any assistance from the contents of the bag the "livid lightning had flashed from Belinda's eyes," and she had "rent the affrighted skies with her screams of horror." Without any assistance from the bottle she was found, on the gnome's return, sunk in the arms of a friend, "her hair unbound, and her eyes dejected." Pope replied on the margin of his copy of Dennis's pamphlet, that Juno in the Æneid summons Alecto from the infernal regions to stir up Amata, who was already burning with anger. This was no answer if the cases had been parallel, which they were not, for Amata's anger was only a passive irritation, and Alecto was sent to goad her into active fury. A few words would have obviated the criticism of Dennis, but the Cave of Spleen would still be out of place. The personifications of ill-nature, affectation, and diseased fancies are literal descriptions of men and women transferred from the surface of the globe to a pretended world at its centre. Where no invention is displayed, where there is nothing to gratify and beguile the imagination, the departure from fact is distasteful to the mind. Instead of copying classic fables, unsuited to modern times, Pope might have exhibited the inhabitants of his Cave of Spleen in the midst of that society to which they belonged, and ascribed their repulsive qualities to the instigation of the gnomes. These rather nugatory beings would have gained in importance, and the pictures of the peevish, the affected, and the splenetic would have gained in force and truth.