Thus he was a politician among the statesmen Bolingbroke, Buckingham, Oxford, Sunderland, Halifax, Harley, and Marlborough.

His _Essay on Criticism_ presents to us the artificial taste and technical rules which were established as a standard in literature.
His _Essay on Man_, his _Moral Epistles_, and his _Universal Prayer_ are an index to the semi-Christian, semi-Grecian ethics of an age too selfish to be orthodox, and too progressive to be intolerant.

His _Rape of the Lock_ is a striking picture of social life, sketched by the hand of a gentle satire.

His translations of Homer, and their great success, are significant of a more extended taste for scholarship; not attended, however, with many incentives to originality of production.

The nobles were still the patrons of literature, and they fancied old things which were grand, in new and gaudy English dresses.