would miss the needed clues. Pope is offering a formal 
causality, not an efficient causality, as an explanation of the 
metamorphosis from within. The entire matter is thus to be 
found in a single couplet (I, ll. 89­90):

     Now night descending, the proud scene was o’er, 
     But liv’d, in Settle’s numbers, one day more.

     Print, with its uniformity, repeatability, and limitless 
extent, does give reincarnate life and fame to anything at all. 
The kind of limp life so conferred by dull heads upon dull themes 
formalistically penetrates all existence. Since readers are as 
vain as authors, they crave to view their own conglomerate 
visage and, therefore, demand the dullest wits to exert 
themselves in ever greater degree as the collective audience 
increases. The “human interest” newspaper is the ultimate