That is all, however, one can say with certainty. Beside the borrowings of his contemporaries, his debts are almost negligible. In the Augustan Age, of all periods, his poetic contribution was strikingly original.
In reading Swift 's poems, one is first impressed with their apparent spareness of allusion and poetic device. Anyone can tell that a particular poem is powerful or tender or vital or fierce, but all the paraphernalia of criticism seems inadequate to explain why. A few recent critics have carefully studied his use of allusion and image, but with only partial success. Thus it still seems justified to conclude that Swift 's prosody seldom calls for close analysis, his allusions seldom bring a whole literary past back to life, and his images are not very interesting in themselves. In general, Swift 's verses read faster than John Dryden's or Alexander Pope's. He apparently intends to sweep the reader along by the logic of the argument to the several conclusions he puts forth. He seems to expect that the reader will appreciate the implications of the argument as a whole, after one full and rapid reading. For Swift 's readers, the couplet will not revolve slowly upon itself, exhibiting intricate patterns and fixing complex relationships between fictive worlds and contemporary life.
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